Pistol Shooting

It's great therapy after being effectively in isolation from the world for so long. I shoot with a group that practices defensive pistol drills. Practicing a "draw, present, aim, shoot" drill works your coordination and reaction time. The "Mozambique" drill improves the ability to shoot quickly and change targets rapidly, if required. The "El Presidente drill is for quickly dealing with multiple targets and a forced reload in the middle.

In case you were wondering, the Mozambique drill envisions an encounter who is wearing body armor, which is not immediately apparent. On command, you draw your gun, and fire 2 shots to the body, then, as you notice the critter failing to fall, you follow up with one to the head, which is seldom armored. As the doggerel goes:

2 to the body
one to the head
makes darn sure
the varmint's dead.

The El Presidente is known as "the drill we never do the same way twice" in some circles, as there are variations that can be added. The simple version starts out with 3 human silouette targets at a distance of 7 to 10 yards, and the shooter facing away from them with his hands in the air. On command, the shooter turns, draws his gun, and fires 2 shots at each of the targets in turn, reloads, weather he really needs to or not, then repeats the shooting part, for a total of 12 rounds.
Variations on this can call for the second set of shots to be one round each to the head.

With practice, an average shooter with an automatic pistol and a spare magazine can do the standard drill in 10 seconds. A friend of mine did it in 6 seconds with a .45 auto, which is mighty fast. Revolvers normally take a bit longer as the reload time is greater. I've done it in 12 seconds, which is OK. There's a fellow out there who did this in 4 seconds with a revolver. The video is out there on the web, I don't have it to hand. Maybe tomorrow.

I only had 2 misfires tonight. One in the first 6 shots of the El Pres, and one in the second 6 shots. Figures. In competition there is scoring based on elapsed time and accuracy. Fortunately, we didn't use the timer. Nothing to complain about with the accuracy, though.

Stay back, folks! I've got a banjo, and I'm not afraid to use it!