{"id":152,"date":"2009-08-05T17:41:45","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T22:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grayguns.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2022-03-04T16:06:38","modified_gmt":"2022-03-05T00:06:38","slug":"in-the-beginning-there-was-a-gunshow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grayguns.com\/in-the-beginning-there-was-a-gunshow\/","title":{"rendered":"In the beginning, there was a gunshow"},"content":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m often asked how I became a good pistol shooter. Looking back across some 35 years of pulling a trigger, I can see how fortunate I was to be exposed to some good techniques and attitudes early on.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, it’s not how long you shoot per se, it’s what you choose to train yourself to do that matters. It takes 5 to 10 thousand reps for an action or routine (such as resetting and pressing the trigger) to become hard wired into your subconscious as an automatic response to a command or stimulus (such as the appearance of the aligned sights on the target area). If you learn that action incorrectly, it probably takes five times that many reps to overcome your erroneous skills by learning a new, dominant routine. We tend to stick with what we learn first. The old platitude about teaching an old dog new tricks applies to us.<\/p>\n
Thus, the difference between a decent shot and a great one may simply be that the great shot was fortunate enough to be exposed to correct technique early in his or her career, and therefore had fewer technique problems to unlearn and correct later on.<\/p>\n
In my case, I was really lucky. I bought a Smith & Wesson M&P revolver (4″ barrel, s\/n 120607, made in 1906, with factory stag grips no less) at the Sacramento gun show when I was, ahem, almost 15. (OK, that was then.)<\/p>\n