Why You Miss Low & Left With a Pistol
A part of the Better Shooter series.
I know why you miss low & left with a pistol. I do as well. So do most pistols, except it isn’t their fault. It is OUR fault. Learn to fix this common problem with the millionaire’s shooting coach, Shepard Humphries.
The reason most of us miss shots with a pistol are a two-fold, but the technique to repair in simple. Simple things are not necessarily easy.
When humans hold a hunk of steel or plastic 18 inches from their face, knowing an explosion is forthcoming, well, it just isn’t natural. our subconscious does not think it is a good idea, and when it learns from repeated shooting that the right handed shooter’s gun, and therefor hands are yanked up and to the right, well, it develops a defensive mechanism. Your subconscious sends a signal to your hands, just before your finger breaks the shot, that to counteract the “up & right” motion soon to come, that they should negate this movement my pushing the gun down and to the left or in some cases heeling it forward. This is Why You Miss Low & Left With a Pistol or sometimes shoot a bit high (heeling).
The solution for these misses is easy, and I have repeated the solution at least 10 times each session to more than 5,000 students. “Gentle Press.” I have watched my students send over a million shots downrange. This means that I have repeated the phrase “gentle press” over 50,000 times, and I have seen the results of over a million trigger presses, jerks and squeezes. Why do I mention my experience? Because I continue to anticipate my own pistol shots and push low left. I KNOW not to do so, I have the intellectual knowledge, I have told my brain many tens of thousands of times to press gently, and yet I still mess it up when I am under time stress.
So, we know the movement to fix the problem, but how do we implement it? Few become masters at this skill, and fewer still maintain mastery of it. Some years ago, when I was competing, I was shooting several thousand rounds of .45ACP each month in practice. More serious competitors (and those that get “free” ammo) shoot even more. Lot’s or proper practice is the solution. I discovered that during this time of my life, my accuracy at speed greatly improved. When I began taking it easy again, only shooting a couple hundred shots a month, my low left misses came right back.
At $30/box of 45ACP from the store or even $7/box if reloading, the necessary repetition gets expensive. The time it takes to get to the range, reload, clean your gun etc really adds up. This is why many good shooting instructors advise to do dry fire practice. ( Why You Miss Low & Left With a Pistol )
Well, hell has frozen over. In this video about pistol trigger reset, I actually say something semi-positive about a Glock, the brand of pseudo-gun that produces plastic “guns” that jam frequently until the owner spends 3 times the gun’s purchase price turning it into a real gun. -Shepard Humphries
