Posted by phenrichs: I have seen alot of threads on range practice and quick shooting and the like. How about a good "for the beginner" thread.
Basics of handgunning: stance, grip, sight picture, ranging.
I have been rifle shooting for years and have spent a very limited time with pistols of varying type and caliber (all owned by friends) so I am not a complete beginner. However I know that other than basics and safety it is a different world as far as doing it correctly. Anyone can pull a trigger and put a ball down range. I want to do it accurately. I have a local range that will allow me to rent and practice but can I ask them to show me the right way? Is that allowed?
Several links and suggestions have been provided. By all means, pursue them. Read about the basics and watch a few videos, but I do suggest not stopping there if you are serious.
As Fiddletown has pointed out, there is no substitute for personal instruction. The instructor can tell you what you are doing wrong and why and suggest ways of correcting your mistakes.
I had been shooting bulls eyes informally, and rather well, with different handguns (target, service, and frontier type) at different ranges for just under fifty years, off and on, when I switched to a two hand hold. I had read books, studied training manuals, and so forth, but somewhere among the nuances, I was doing a few little things wrong that were hurting my performance. It took a little personal instruction to get it right. My results improved markedly.
If your sole objective is to be able to "put a ball down range accurately", just a little one-on-one instruction at the range from a qualified person, perhaps followed up after you start to improve, should suffice. I got some valuable help from one of the range masters and from a guy at the next target who shoots more than a thousand rounds a week with a Model 1911 pistol similar to mine with great results on the target range.
If your objective also happens to include gaining skills to defend your self with a handgun, learning the basics is a necessary first step, but being able to apply them appropriately them in realistic conditions is also necessary.
The best way to see that real training for self defense shooting is a good idea is to observe a good training session. Watch the participants at the beginning; time them from the signal to draw to their first shots; count hits; count misses. Repeat these observations after a day of training. Consider the difference in results.
In my recent training, almost all of the participants showed improvements of more than 30% in both accuracy (number of hits out of the shots fired) and time (time from the signal to completion).
We were firing rapidly at three steel plates at seven yards. That provides
some of the skills for hitting a rapidly moving target very quickly or for defending against more than one assailant. Getting the stance, grip, sight picture, and trigger pull down pat was the essential first step. After that, repetition, with evaluation and coaching. We had one-on-one one instruction from professional instructors who compete in things like IDPA matches.
That's a pretty simple exercise, but it was an eye-opener to me, and the degree improvement clearly shows the advantage of actual training.
For more realistic exercises, which bring in shooting while moving at moving targets, the improvement is almost always more impressive.
One thing I noted, both in regards to my practice at the range and among the participants at the defensive pistol shooting course I took recently, was how the instruction helped in the "unlearning" of bad habits.
So--reading and watching videos is a good idea, necessary I think, but most probably not sufficient for most people.
I hope this expansion on the answer for which you asked proves helpful, phenrichs. Good luck!