Pistol Shooting Mistakes Explained by a Retired Navy S.E.A.L.
Hey guys, what’s going on, I’m retired Navy SEAL sniper instructor, Chris Sajnog and founder of The New Rules of Marksmanship training system. In this post, I’m going to teach you some of the pistol shooting mistakes that you might encounter and how do we fix them. Let’s go ahead and get started.
A lot of people complain about always shooting low and left, this is generally for a right-handed shooter. So if you’re a left-handed shooter, all of these same things are going to apply if you’re shooting low and right.
These are three things that you can do very quickly to kind of self-diagnose yourself and see if you’re shooting low and left and how to fix them.
Pistol Shooting Mistakes
#1 Milking The Gun
The number one problem that I’ve seen with people shooting low and left is that they are milking the gun. If you just take your hand right now and put it out like you’re going to shoot a gun and squeeze it, you’ll see that your hand naturally moves to the left.
Now the way to fix this is with a proper grip. So the thing you need to focus on with a proper grip is getting your arm directly behind the firearm when you shoot. What most people tend to do is draw their pistols with their elbows out.
Make sure that your arm is directly behind the gun. By doing this you will be able to squeeze the gun without it moving down or to the left. So that’s one of the ways to fix these pistol shooting mistakes.
#2 Trigger Finger
So the second way that I’ve seen people shoot low and left is they’re actually pushing the trigger with their trigger finger. This is going to be fixed with a proper grip. When you have that set properly, your finger is going to naturally land on the face of the trigger.
So don’t put your finger where somebody else tells you to put it. Start off with a proper grip and then your trigger finger is going to land on the face of the trigger.
If you’re shooting low and left, you may be pushing over like that. It may be because somebody told you, “Hey, you have to put this pad of your finger on the tip of the trigger.” Of course, you don’t need to.
#3 Natural Point Of Aim
So the last and third thing, is if you’re shooting too fast and your natural point of aim is not correct. It could be pushing your shots low and left. If your natural point of aim is off from the target, then you will have to use muscle to bring back that recoil every time you shoot, and this is going to cause your shots to be scattered.
The cure for this is to make sure that your hips are pointed directly at your target and that your natural point of aim is correct. That way your recoil is going to be straight up and straight down.
Those are three things that could cure your problem if you’re shooting low and left. So try those out. Remember this, only you can diagnose this problem because there are so many things that go into shooting that somebody watching you can’t tell what you’re doing.
If you are practicing properly and you’re present when you’re training, you’ll be able to tell what you’re doing wrong and you’ll be able to fix it. I hope you understand now these pistol shooting mistakes and how to fix them. Until next time, keep paving your path to perfection.
