"Russell, ....you indicate that you just started shooting, let me make a few
sugestions, you can use some or all of them .

First of all,  you MUST focus your eye on the FRONT sight. Which is your
dominant eye?

To find out, place your hands at arms length palms out, fingers joined and pointed about forty five degrees upward, right hand fingers up to the left and left hand fingers up to the right, thumbs extended.  Overlap the hands so a small "window is formed by your thumbs and index fingers. Look through this "aperture" at a small object some distance away. Continuing to look through the "window" at the object bend your elbows and bring your hands to your face.  The eye the window is in front of when your hands touch your nose is the dominant eye.

It is now generally thought that no matter which is your dominant hand, you
should learn to shoot with your dominant eye. Therefore, grasp the pistol with the hand on the dominant eye side. This is especially easy for you since your
experience level is low, and we do not have to overcome years of training wrong.

Second, and of the five factors in the aiming; the front sight, rear sight, the target, sight alignment (the relationship of the front and rear sights to each other), and sight picture (the relationship of the sights to the target), SIGHT ALIGNMENT is THE MOST important.

Proper sight alignment is a sharply focused front sight centered in the rear sight notch with equal light on both sides, and the top edge of the front sight level with the top edges of the rear sight leaf on either side of the notch.

Properly viewed sight picture is merely superimposing the sharply defined front sight in correct alignment on that portion of traget which will place the impact where you want it.  I suggest the the sights be adjsuted for a "center hold".  The point of aim and point of impact are the same in this method.

The eye, once again, is sharply focused on a detail of the front sight. Sometimes it helps to make a mark on the back of the front sight so that you can focus on a
portion of the mark.

There are five steps  to learning a new position.

    1.  Study the position

    2.  Practice the position with out a firearm.

    3.  Practice the position with a firearm

    4.  Align the position.

    5.  Test the position:

        a.  Dry fire

        b. Live fire

I am going to recommend that you START with bench rest position. This will
allow us to ensure that you understand the variables of sight picture, sight
alignment and trigger and breath control before we introduce you to having to try to do all that while trying to hold still enough to allow yourself to smoothly break that shot.

Using a sturdy table, or other solid object, sand bags or other simililar objects and a chair or a bench. (Target holder should be positioned between 9' and 15' in front of the bench). Position the BLANK side of a large target, say a 25 yard timed and rapid fire full face NRA target or an IPSC silhouette target on the holding device.

First study a picture of the bench rest position (Should be able to find one in a
back issue of one of the gun rags or you can refer to Chapter 7 of the NRA's "The Basics of Pistol Shooting"). Note that the shooter is sitting with his feet falt on the ground and his upper body in fairly erect. This allows him to fully oxygenate his blood supply by breathing deeply between shots.

Now practice the position without a pistol. Place your firing hand in the support
hand with the index finger extended towards the target. ). Using your trigger finger as an index place enough support (sand bags, or other soft supports such as a bedroll, or a rolled up winter coat, a grain sack, etc.) So that the tops of your hands are about 1.25" below the line of your vision as you look over your hands to the target. Check the alignment by glancing down and (or closing your eyes) breathing deeply and slowly a couple of breaths, then stop at the end of a natural breath cycle exhalation. This is the natural respiratory pause. Open your eyes, you should be indexed on the target center. If not move your seat until you are, and the alignment remains good when you test it.

Now practice the position with the firearm. First ensure that the firearm is clear, (we are eventually going to dryfire) so remove the magazine and draw the slide to the rear and while holding into the chamber and magazine well ensure the pistol is NOT loaded and that NO ammunition is in the pistol, in the chamber, or the magazine well.  If the pistol is equipped with a magazine safety you will need to have an UNLOADED magazine to dryfire with in the pistol when dry firing.

The pistol is held with both hands, dominant eye side hand on the grip first, this
will now be your "strong hand" or "firing hand" the other hand will be the
"support hand". Grasp the pistol in the firing hand by first holding it in the
support hand by the slide, support thumb to the rear and hand over the top on the slide (keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction and keep your anatomy, all of it, clear of the muzzle).

Place the grip in the firing hand by pressing the butt of the pistol into the heel of
the hand and rolling the pistol up into the hand, the web of the hand should be as high on the back strap as you can go and yet avoid having any portion of the web of the hand behind the slide. Grip firmly and keep you finger off the trigger.

The support hand is placed on the grip with the heel of the hand on the spport
hand side of the grip so that the thumb lies along the frame adjacent to the dust
cover and take down latch. The length of your thumb should be aligned with the
radius of the forearm. The heel of the hand and the base of the thumb are on the
support side grip between your rearward curving strong hand lower three fingers and the base of the firing thumb. Wrap all four of the support hand fingers over the middle, ring and little fingers of the firing hand. Grip firmly, about 40% of the pressure is applied with the firing hand and about 60% with the support hand.

Practice the position and grip several times before you attempt to dry fire. Check for natural sight alignment. This done by first obtaining good sight alignment and then closing the eyes or averting (lowering)  the gaze to the table for a couple of deep slow breaths and then checking the natural alignment of the front and rear sights at the natural respiratory pause.

If the sights are not remaining aligned, then you should shift the pistol in the
firing hand and adjust the support hand until the sights are naturally aligned.

Now Check the sight Picture, which is the process of putting the top of the front
sight on the portion of the target you wish to engage. Let me reempahsize that we are going the check the natural alignment of the position with the target center and shift our seat (for standing positions the trail foot) until the same process of taking two slow deep breaths with our eyes closed and then a natural breath, and stopping at the natural respiratory pause, reveals when we open our eyes that the front sight is both naturally aligned with the rear sight and that the sights on center on the center of the target.

REMEMBER we merely check to ensure that a blurry target is centered up behind the front sight. The dominant eye is clearly focused on a detail of the back of the front sight.
 

Test the position:

Dry fire about 10 to 20 shots. [You should dry fire about 3- 10 times for every shot of live ammunition that you actually fire for the rest of your life.]

Focus on the front sight after we have taken a couple of deep slow breaths and
then a normal one and stopped at the natural end of a exhalation. Place your finger on the trigger and then start to pull it smoothly and slowly to the rear. Re intensify the focus on the front sight and continue to apply POSITIVE, STEADILY increasing pressure on the trigger until the shot startles you. This is a 'SURPRISE BREAK'.

Pay attention and be honest, was the front sight in truly sharp focus when the shot broke?

LIVE FIRE! (The part of the movie we have ALL been waiting for!)

Now loading one round, fire five separate shots at the center of the target, reloading and rebuilding the position for every shot.  From the bench you should be able to group these fire round at 10' into one hole about
the size of a dime. Continue to shoot and dry fire on the back side of the target (the blank target ensures that you are concentrating on the sights).

When you have developed confidence in you ability to drill holes in the traget
exactly one on top of the other, move out to 30', then when you have that in the bag move to 45' and so forth until you can shoot about 3" from sand bags at twentyfive yards. THEN you may learn another position. The next should be the isocoles position and and I will go through that if anyone indicates that they read this one.

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