Friday, January 12, 2007

Stop The Presses...

"'The lack of trigger control is the biggest reason people don't shoot well.' Is what Clint Smith just said in the new issue of Handguns. Im a beginner shooter {16} but to me that even sounds so basic did it really needed to be mentioned? ...Also, are the schools like his that good to rate asking for so much money and why does he always mocking new shooters in his stories...?"


Here's the bees knees. Take 3 days and shoot with me. Let's say 5 hours each day of actual trigger time. At the end of this sojurn, one of two things is definitely going to happen. I'll have strangled you after the first hour of Day-1, or, if you have the necessary hand-eye coordination decent enough vision, and put some effort into it, you'll go home with the requisite skills to become capable of defending yourself. I donate far too much of my time to make this a freebie, so lets say you pay for the ammo and have your mom make me lunch. If the end result is something you are happy with, then by all means come back and bring along friends, relatives, household pets, but it has to be at one of my ranges and I'm still going to want the lunch.

There are what, thousands of guys who'd do the same? Then how do the "pros" get away with charging hundreds of dollars to impart similar information?

For the same reason a woman will spend $12,000 on a designer handbag. And, you'll learn how to scour a thesaurus for synonyms because, for example, one is no longer taught to squeeeeeeeeze the trigger, but to presssssssssss the trigger. Never mind that "press" is entirely the WRONG word, it's new but at the same time in sync with the age-old premise of dazzling them with bullshit.

Now, of course there's a big difference between learning how to shoot and learning how to pie a room, and that we cannot do because I have no available rooms that are so pie-able. Then you're on your own and will have to ante up some big bucks when you finally get a good job to have some self-annointed Jesse James teach the pie thang.

And I wouldn't focus too much bile towards Mr. Smith. He came AFTER Mr. Cooper, and since Clint was an enlisted Marine and Jeff was an officer, Clint of course learned a helluva lot more about shooting, but Jeff paved the path and few are ready willing and able to lay blacktop over the Colonel's corduroy.

Trigger control IS paramount and if you plunked down $6 bucks just to read that epiphany from Smitty then you've been ripped off royally, but think about this; there are those who know even less than you do about shooting and maybe, just maybe, those 2 or 3 dudes might have had the old lightbulb flick on above their head after hearing what he had to say. I really don't like it much when Smith castigates shooters new and old who are not as lucky as he to have so bully a pulpit, and his name-calling IS getting stale and tiresome. But an awful lot of people are going to think, hell, here's one of the world's best shooting instructors and if he thinks I'm an idiot then maybe I am.

From there to handing over a check is but a short step.

Try not to let his admonitions bother you. He's egomaniacal and untouchable so such condescension isn't ending anytime soon. Better yet, stop giving him your money just to be insulted each issue. Check around for local trainers who will work with a young man, but run like hell the first time you hear "mindset" or "warrior". It's horrid English and you're not dumb, just unknowledegable.

By recognizing such disrespect, you've taken the first step towards the light. Rome wasn't built in a day but time waits for no man so keep searching for informative reads. You seem to know what's genuine and what's bogus so keep up the good work.

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