The Next Steps

I have a confession to make. For the last, oh, five years or so, my goal hasn’t been to get better with a pistol. Rather, it’s been to be keep myself in the middle of the third column on John Hearne’s semi-famous automaticity chart. You know, this one:

Which, if I’m honest, isn’t a bad place to be. In that zone, I’m better than the vast majority of American gun owners, and probably able to respond effectively if the need to use my defensive pistol should ever arise. But the dirty little secret is, I’ve stayed there not because I know I can get better, (I can), but because I know that beyond the middle of the third column is the land of diminishing returns. The amount of effort it will take me to move from C to B Class is significantly more than it took me to move from D to C Class, and, well, I’m lazy, and I don’t want to do it.

And it’s not like I’ve been doing training. I have, quite a lot of it, in fact. What’s lacking, though, is the sheer repetitious practice to get better at things like reloads or trigger presses or other such stuff. The raw, root-level skills of marksmanship which underlie everything we do on the range. This irks me, because I am asking my students to put in the effort to improve their shooting, but I’m not willing to do it myself. I figure, then, that the least I can do is put in some effort to improve my shooting as well.

Let’s see how it goes.