Smooth gets you speed

Ref Lawdog's post, I'll mention a man I wrote about once before: Capt. Dan Combs of the Ok Highway Patrol. This gentleman(and he really was) did safety programs a lot, and started doing shooting demos to spice them up. And he was good. Bill Jordan good. With every firearm you can think of. One of his stunts was to hold a foam coffee cup on the edge of his holster, flip it at the ground, draw and blow it up before it hit. Then, saying something along the lines of "Trooper So-and-So says that's just luck, so let's try it again," would do it again; this time missing the first shot and blowing it up with the second. Again, before it could hit ground. He was damn good with rifle and shotgun also, but right now concentrating on short irons.

Something I heard him say, and I'd heard dad mention was how he got that good: "You start slow, get every motion right, and when that's done you can start speeding up. S-l-o-w-l-y." As Lawdog points out, smooth and correct that's worked into the spinal reflexes can be amazingly fast in time of trouble; it also takes care of that saying that "You cannot miss fast enough to win."

Just to add to the crapstorm that crops up now and again over "Always use the sights!" vs. "Point-shooting can be handy", I'll throw in that the man could point-shoot better than many can with sights. And faster. That was how he taught while running firearms training: up close, point-shoot; as range increases, get the piece up and forward for greater accuracy. It worked, quite well, and still does. Should you use the sights? Of course you should, when circumstances allow. I do think that up close, some practice point-shooting(hip-shooting if you prefer) is a very handy tool to add to your toolbox.