Page 2 of 2

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 4:24 pm
by luftskytter
Good discussion, here are a couple of additional thoughts:

Question:
Are we trying to find the technically best/most efficient shooting platform,
or the one that's natural for our body? They are not always the same.
Under stress I guess most of us will involuntarily fall back into the latter.
I think this is important.

For me personally NPA is probably something I "produce" e.g. by opening or closing my stance and shoulder alignment, but it's the most important decision criterion for rejecting a shot. If I find I have to "force" the sights into the center, I figure my stance is wrong and I should start the shot all over with a corrected stance that makes it easy to centre the sights. If I carry through, the shot will often be a bad one.
Of course I should have sorted this out before raising the gun......

Sideways sight alignment is often a matter of placing the grip correctly into your hand before closing your fingers. You may want to establish a routine for this and maybe some indicator mark to make it repeatable.
I'm the happy owner of a pistol with a sideways adjustable grip.

Canting may involve control of twisting your arm.
I'm surprised how little they say about this in the manuals.
Awareness may be enhanced by a simple excercise: Raise your arn as if shooting and rotate your hand as if canting the gun.
You will most likely be twisting your lower arm.
Now bend your arm at the elbow so you'll point straight up.
Now rotate the arm again with the elbow kept at right angles so you would be shooting to the left.
This time the rotation will be in the shoulder joint.
Being aware of this, you should be able to control how you rotate your arm to correct for canting the gun.
So what's right or wrong? I don't know, maybe what suits you best.
And of course, like others have said, there's nothing wrong about modifying the grip as well.

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 5:41 pm
by Isabel1130
One additional thought. As Brain Zins and Adny Moody state, there is really nothing "natural" about sitcking your arm out from your body at a 90 degree angle. It is natural for your arms to hang more or less straight down at your sides. When you aim the gun, it is totally a learned position and there will be some muscle tension on your body somewhere because you are fighting gravity among other things with a 2 1/2 lb weight hanging off your hand. It is your job to find the most comfortable and repeatable position possible that will allow the sights to align with your eye and then with the target. Isabel