My friends suggested a Red Dot vs Laser. Again its a me fighting me battle. Thoughts?
My friends suggested a Red Dot vs Laser. Again its a me fighting me battle. Thoughts?
Assuming pistol shooting.
Next time you are at the range and have fired a few rounds, unload the gun and do a few dry fires. You might find that you are flinching.
Last edited by Michaelk; 04-25-2021 at 07:31 PM.
Trustee
on a pistol?
red dot will be more accurate, but are harder to use because you have to get an eyeball positioned juuuust right compared to a laser that will show you roughly where the bullet is going as long as the button is switched on.
but then again, red dots don't chew through batteries, are less likely to get tweaked out of alignment, etc.
try both, buy both, get extra guns to use them all
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First I am assuming you are referring to shooting a handgun, and second that you are a right handed shooter.
If both of these assumptions on my side are right then, the argument I am to build in the successive paragraphs hold, otherwise if one or both of these assumptions do not hold then ignore my comment.
1. Shooting low and left by a right handed shooter shooting a handgun (assuming his gun is properly sighted) (and assuming the he is using the appropriate sight picture for that particular gun and ammo combination) means poor trigger control as the shooter is doing two things wrong at the same time. The shooter is twisting his whole right hand to the left as he pulls the trigger and he is pulling the gun down either due to flinching or due to poor grip control. These are fundamental observations I have seen a lot of new shooters go through and is only remedied by proper (repeat, proper) practice, dry fire, and experimenting with grip techniques to help stabilizing the gun in the shooter hand as he/she presses the trigger to a break.
2. A lot of my friends complain about this low/left scenario and blame it on their Glock stock triggers as they tend to be heavy around 5 lbs. They sell their glocks and jump onto other fancier guns with lighter triggers and think that this problem will correct itself. As a matter of fact shooting a 2.5 lb trigger in most cases remedies that phenomena to a certain degree because the shooter will be surprised by the light trigger break before they start to flinch down and also due to the light force needed to break the trigger the tendency to rotate the hand to the left is minimized or eliminated altogether resulting in some sort of the elimination or minimization of the low & left printing point by the bullet.. However, after they become familiar with the light trigger, they start anticipating when it will break and the flinching and the pushing downward comes back to hunt them. Again the pushing left is greatly minimized by the light trigger break as the trigger finger doesn't have to do extra effort and thus less need for the hand to interfere and starts twisting to the left.
3. Back to your question on the red dot. If you put a red dot, it will enhance the sight picture and make you acquire the target faster and clearer, that's all about it. if you pull the trigger and you still haven't solved the fundamental problem of learning trigger control in combination of the best grip to help you control and stabilize the gun during the trigger breakage stage, guess what, your shot will print low and left.
4. Recommendation: learn the fundamentals of grip control and trigger control.. I use my weak hand (left hand in my case) a lot in order to stabilize my right hand and that helps my right hand to ease a little bit to focus the movement mechanism only on my trigger finger, thus eliminating the urge to both twist my hand to the left or flinch and push down upon trigger breakage. To me after a shooting session, my week hand is more tired than my shooting hand.. That is how much pressure I exert with my week hand on my shooting hand. Google the gorilla grip on YouTube and see what some instructors say about it.. I do not use that grip per say but over the years of shooting and competing I came up with my personalized grip which is very close to the gorilla grip but with one variation as it suits my physique and body build more appropriately.
Last edited by JimSig; 04-25-2021 at 08:48 PM.
Sounds like you are anticipating the round going off. If shooting a semi-auto, load a couple of rounds and put in a dummy round, and you will see you are pushing the gun forward, anticipating the shot being fired. With a revolver load some live rounds and put in a dummy round and you will see the same thing.
Sympathetic movement from the three amigos. Practice shooting one handed while only gripping the gun with your thumb and index finger and leave the other three fingers open (3 amigos). You have to learn to feel the isolated movement of only pulling the trigger with your index finger, not the whole hand.
This is a drill I found from a high end pro instructor for right hand shooters that shoot low left due to anticipation, which is really due to the sympathetic movement of the three fingers.
Warm up like this and you’ll shoot better and grip the gun high and tight with the web of your hand and dominant
Thumb and only pull with your trigger finger, not your whole hand.
And if none of that works:
The only other thing it could be is your finger placement on the trigger and likely compounded by not squeezing the trigger 180° straight back.
What I mean is, instead of just your index finger point/pad on the trigger - you may be wrapping it around/bending with the first joint as the point of contact instead of your finger tip/pad. This almost always results in a trigger pull that is not straight back, but instead pushes the trigger to the left while squeezing off a round.
A bent index finger not centered (vertically) on a rounded trigger, but contacting the lower ⅓ - thereby pushing left AND down.
I assume you're better (not low left) past 10yds...meaning you're concentrating more on the mechanics.
JimSig almost certainly has you covered though.
Last edited by MCPO_SOCM_RET; 05-24-2023 at 08:18 AM.
Dry fire ..... Watch your sight alignment .
Friend had same problem , I saw his front sight dip . He said no ,, I loaded mag behind his back, put in pistol . _Three rounds , 4 th trigger pull ,dip. He said no , loaded one round , 2 nd pull dip . He said no . Loaded couple rounds and unloaded mag . Gave him empty mag , told him shoot a couple more , click .... Ah ,, he saw sight dip ...
Using dummy rounds will show you what you're doing. Also practice dry firing with an empty case sitting on the front sight. You should be able to pull the trigger and have the hammer/striker fall and not knock off the case. The dummy rounds were helpful with my buddy (he's retired Navy now) who years ago had a terrible flinch that he didn't recognize and denied it when I said that was his problem. So I started loading his gun for him with sometime no dummy rounds and sometimes as many as 2-3 in a 7rnd 1911 mag. He was pushing the gun away in anticipation of recoil. It helped him vastly.