In this post, I expect my audience to be an ordinary civilian with no firearm experience. For whatever reason, you have decided to purchase a firearm for home defense and do not want to use a shotgun. What would I recommend?
It may sound boring and old school, but I would recommend a large caliber double action revolver. The primary reason is how well you can practice without shooting ammunition. In my view, many ordinary civilians won’t be going to the range as much as they should. In this case, you can still practice very well at home and your practice won’t invalidate how you handle your weapon.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you dry fire a semi-automatic pistol, you’ll either need to cock back the hammer, or continually rack the slide to get a trigger pull/hammer-drop/striker-fire. These are not things that you will normally do when shooting a normally operating semi-automatic pistol. Thus, you are training in a way that doesn’t make sense with how you use the weapon. Of course, you can spend money and fix this to a certain extent. For example, there exists a product called a Cool Fire Trainer which uses CO2 to simulate live ammunition, and it will cycle the slide on a pistol. You can also invest money in an infrared laser and infrared laser targets, or perhaps even set up a simulation environment like Point Blank Simulator or Smokeless Range.
A more cost-effective approach is to simply buy some snap caps for your double action revolver. These help to protect the firing pin of your revolver. You can also buy some more snap caps and put them in a speed loader to practice revolver unloading and loading. Snap caps allow you to inexpensively break in the trigger of your revolver, as after several hundred cycles will do, all without shooting any ammunition.
Here is how I would train inexpensively with snap caps:
- First break in the trigger. I would recommend only shooting by pulling the trigger (double action mode) rather than cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger. You’ll simply load up the snap caps and pull the trigger 6 times (or 5 times depending on how many rounds your revolver holds). You can do this over several days. By the time you are done, you should have a broke in trigger. If it still feels yucky, you may want to take it to a trusted gunsmith and have them look at it.
- Once you get the trigger the way you want, you can now work on your grip. You’ll want to get a good grip on your gun. Also, always use two hands. The Revolver Guy has a nice article on it: https://revolverguy.com/revolver-grasp-techniques/ (he refers to it as grasp).
- Now you can work on sight picture. First, you’ll want to try different stances and see how each one impacts your sight picture. Here are some: https://www.police1.com/police-products/firearms/training/articles/the-3-shooting-stances-which-ones-right-for-you-LA3iowVFZFC9hE24/ For each stance, you’ll want to aim the revolver at a safe target (using snap caps of course). You’ll use your grip and slowly squeeze the trigger watching how your sight picture moves. You’ll want to be sure and steady. Don’t worry about speed. Just try and be smooth. You’ll want to focus on your sights staying on target through the trigger squeeze. There may be a stance that feels better for you and allows you to keep a good sight picture through a trigger squeeze. That is the one you should use.
- When you are working on your sight picture, count each time you squeeze the trigger. When you get to the number of rounds your cylinder holds, you’ll want to reload. It is a good idea to have an extra set of snap caps and a speed loader. Again, we simply want to be smooth here, not fast. If you have a spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, or child, they can gather up the discarded snap caps and put them back in the speed loader while you continue to work on your sight picture. Then, your speed loader is ready for use again. By doing this practice, you’ll be keeping track of the number of rounds you shoot unconsciously.
- Now you are ready for the range. You can set up a target about 10 feet away is all and practice with live ammo. Again, speed is not important. Being smooth is important. All you want to do is put your rounds in center mass of your target.
- An excellent way to correct for flinching is to use snap caps when you are at the range. Using your practice ammo and snap caps, have a spouse or friend load the pistol with a random combination of live ammo and snap caps. They’ll place the revolver down and then you’ll pick it up and start shooting normally. When you hit a snap cap, your revolver should not move all over the place. If it does, recoil is impacting your accuracy because you are flinching or expecting recoil.
These simple techniques will make you a better shooter than many semi-automatic pistol shooters out there. The reason is that you are inexpensively practicing with your pistol in the same manner you will be using it. If your revolver goes click, you squeeze the trigger again, just like you do in practice. If you’ve squeezed the trigger 6 times (depending on your cylinder capacity), you reload, just like in practice. You can do all this without live ammunition. When you do use live ammunition at the range, you can mix in snap caps to correct any flinching that you may not realize you are doing.
In my next post, I’ll talk about selecting a revolver for home defense.