Most people make some very common mistakes in their firearms training at one time or another. Often those have to do with how the firearm is gripped, bracing your body when shooting (stance, etc.), and how you focus on sights or optics for accuracy.
There is a common gun training error that many people make, though, that they don’t even realize, and that is taking into account mechanical offset.
What do I mean by that? I mean taking into consideration the distance of your shot so that you can adjust your aim appropriately in order to hit what you intend to hit instead of the bullet’s impact being higher or lower than your intended target (depending on how your sights are zeroed).
Carter with Patriot Training Center has a short video (just over three minutes) about this which you can see below.
Did you get that? You need to adjust your aim to factor in the distance that your actual target is from you, taking into consideration how your gun is zeroed.
And how do you get used to doing this?
Well, as Carter said, in stressful situations, you will fall to the level of your training. So, in your training, you need to know what your gun is zeroed for, and take some shots at different distances so that you know how you need to adjust your aim and how much you need to adjust your aim to hit your intended target.
And if you’re not sure why this is, it comes down to the physics of shooting. If your sights are zeroed at a certain distance, then they are targeted to hit what you see through your sights at that distance, and that zeroing already takes into consideration the affect of gravity on your shot over that distance.
But if your sights are zeroed at 25 yards and you’re taking a 35 yard shot, for example, then your sights aren’t taking into consideration how much more the bullet’s trajectory will go lower over the greater distance. So you have to aim a little differently to still get an accurate shot.
And, of course…
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