Shooting guns isn’t exactly easy. Sure, anyone can pull the trigger, but being both a fast and an accurate shooter is what most people are after, and hopefully being fast and accurate will translate best to what most of us probably carry for - self-defense. However, owning a pistol is not enough to ready you for self-defense. To become a truly competent pistol owner, you must learn how to correctly use your gun to defend yourself and also quickly adapt to various situations or problems that may arise either in your environment or to the gun itself. One of the best ways to master using your gun is by performing shooting drills at the range or even at home. Practicing drills on your own costs less than hiring a personal trainer, and you can practice a drill at your convenience and preferred pace until you master it or even mix a lot of them into one practice session just to keep track of your performance over time. Today I’ll share my favorite pistol shooting drills for improving your handling, accuracy, speed, and overall tactical readiness with a handgun.
MALFUNCTION CLEARING
If your gun jams due to a faulty round or dirty or fouled mechanism, learn how to get it back up and running quickly so you can continue the fight. While modern handguns are all boringly reliable with good ammunition, various circumstances like foreign debris, and obstacles in the way of the gun's action resulting in a malfunction. For most guns, this means that the gun’s slide will have to be racked to clear the malfunction, but sometimes you’ll also be required to clear the magazine and then rack the slide in order to clear the malfunction.
How to Practice for this:
- Simulate a complication with an empty brass case or a snap cap
- Get into the ready position
- Eject the magazine and clear the malfunction by working the action several times
- Reload the gun and chamber a round
- Fire a shot to complete the drill
Use a timer when performing this drill and work towards shortening the time it takes to clear the malfunction and fire a shot. Also, practice the drill repeatedly until the process of malfunction clearing becomes an automatic response when your gun jams. A gun can malfunction at any point, leaving you defenseless. Fortunately, you can clear most malfunctions and quickly restore your weapon if you know what to do. This drill can save your life by helping you master how to unjam your gun quickly and get back into a fight.
FAILURE-TO-STOP (MOZAMBIQUE) DRILL
The Failure-to-Stop or Mozambique drill requires shooting a target twice in the chest and once in the head without pausing. Supplies you will need for the drill include your handgun, ammo, and USPSA targets (or any other human-shaped target). The idea here is to simulate an assailant wearing body armor necessitating the need for individual follow-up headshots forcing you to carefully meter your shots to accommodate the increased accuracy requirements after six relatively fast double taps to a wider target area.
How to Practice for this:
- Set up a USPSA-style target at 7 yards
- Present your loaded pistol from your holster or the low-ready position
- Fire two consecutive shots into the target’s chest and one round into the center of the head
- Keep the gun aimed at the target until you are sure they are down (confirm the headshot through the sights)
- Repeat the action of pulling your gun and firing the three shots until you can hit the designated spots within two to four seconds. You can increase the difficulty of the drill by adding movements and placing the target farther away.
Not every threat will go down after one or two shots to the body, especially if they are wearing body armor. Practicing the Mozambique drill will teach you to automatically aim for the most critical areas (head and chest) to take down an assailant quickly and efficiently. After mastering the drill, you should notice a dramatic improvement in your target transitioning, defensive pistol shooting accuracy, and speed.
BILL DRILL
The Bill Dill is probably one of the most famous types of “fast” pistol shooting drills. This quick little ammo-hungry drill is likely the closest thing you’ll do at the range to what might simulate a justified self-defense shooting.
How to Practice for this:
- Set up a USPSA or B-8 Target at 7-yards
- On the buzzer draw and engage the target with 6 shots to the target as fast as possible
- The goal is to have all shots land within the Black of the B-8 Target, or all in the “A-Zone” of the USPSA target.
- An “expert” level time for the Bill Drill is about 2 seconds from the holster which might seem fast but is definitely attainable with sufficient practice.
- If you don’t have a B-8 or USPSA target you can use a paper plate as a replacement target.
Closing Thoughts/ What Are Your Favorite Drills?
Due to the movements required to perform these drills, I’d recommend first practicing with an unloaded weapon or an airsoft gun before using a loaded weapon. Familiarizing yourself with the movements before like your draw, can be done at home without using ammunition which should also save you money. In addition, using an unloaded gun will reduce the risk of an accidental discharge while running one of the drills. There are a lot of good dry-fire simulator tools out there if you like to use those. Practicing combat pistol shooting drills with real ammunition will help you get used to the sound, and shock of gunfire. It will also teach you how to correctly respond to various combat scenarios and speed up your reaction time to increase your chances of survival - so make sure you actually go to the range and don’t just dry-fire all the time. If you have a favorite drill, avoid the trap of limiting yourself to just that drill as you can develop training scars or a false sense of proficiency that won’t translate well to other shooting skills.
As always we’d like to hear from you! What are some of your favorite shooting drills and why? Feel free to share with us down below to let us know what your favorite pistol practice techniques are.
