pisgah
Buckeye
I am now four months short of my 65th birthday. I learned the basics of driving at age 12 in a 1964 VW Bug – 4-speed manual transmission, a mighty 40 horsepower engine. The Bug had no gas gauge, just a lever you turned with your foot with which you could switch from the main fuel supply to a reserve that would get you about another 50 miles down the road when the main ran dry and the engine started stumbling. No heater, either – just a vent you could open that allowed hot air from the engine compartment to gently waft in to the cabin once the engine was at operating temperature – and it took a LONG time to get there on cold mornings! Needless to say, no air conditioner, not even a radio, much less a CD or MP3 player. The latter were just Star Trek fantasies at the time -- and Star Trek hadn't even been invented yet!
Looking back, it really wasn't much of a car but it got you where you wanted to go reliably and economically and – this was the important part – it was quite well-suited to teaching a young man the basics of driving. I knew that one day I would have better cars, so I concentrated on learning to be the best driver I could be in anticipation of transferring those basic skills to other, different, and unquestionably better vehicles down the road. Since then I have done just that, having learned to drive everything from tiny, high-performance sports cars to the giant luxury gas hogs of the '70's, to 18-wheelers, to farm equipment – you name it. Each one different from the others, sometimes radically so, but in each case calling for reliance on the same old basics I learned so well in the VW Bug. I guess I could call myself a skilled, well-rounded driver.
Much the same could be said for my evolution as a shooter. I learned handgun shooting basics on a S&W .22/.32 Target revolver, popularly referred to as the Bekeart model, that belonged to my grandfather. A single-shot Springfield Meteor .22 bolt action taught me rifle basics. Using the principles of safe handling, trigger control and sight alignment learned on those guns I gradually moved on to magnum revolvers, single-action, double-action and Glock-style semi-auto handguns, and rifles of just about any type you could name. Like the vehicles I have learned to drive, each gun was different, and each required learning some new technique to be employed effectively, but the learning experience on all of them still fell back on the basics I learned 'way back. I am not bragging when I say that nowadays you can hand me just about any type of firearm ever made, and within a few minutes I will have it loaded and will be hitting targets with satisfying regularity. I have made myself in to a skilled, well-rounded shooter.
I bring all this up because one of the most frequent questions I see asked by new gun owners on this and other gun forums is, "What are the must-do modifications I need to make on this gun?" Now, don't get me wrong – I have modified many a gun in my day Sometimes the mod was meant to improve function, other times to improve its appearance in a way pleasing to me, and sometimes it was just out of the desire for something to do. But the problem I have with the question is that it presupposes that there is something wrong with the new gun that needs fixing before it can be employed for its intended use. In fact, this is rarely true. It's much more often the SHOOTER who needs modification and not the gun.
A quite common example of this is the experienced 1911 shooter who gives in to peer pressure, or just whim, and buys a Glock or some Glock-type clone like the various S&W M&P models. Immediately he discovers that at best all his shots, seemingly inexplicably, are going low/left or low/right – or, worst case, he's not grouping his shots at all. His first query to the forums will usually be "Is there a trigger-mod kit to fix this?" Well – no, not really.
You see, the main problem he's experiencing isn't coming from the gun. The Glock-style trigger isn't WORSE than the 1911 trigger – it's DIFFERENT, just like the Mercedes AMG S63 is different from the 1964 VW Bug. If he insists on trying to make the Glock in to a 1911, disappointment will be the inevitable result. On the other hand, if he takes the trouble to learn the proper employment of the Glock system he may learn that such a trigger is in some ways actually superior in a self-defense pistol.
I guess what I am saying here is pretty simple. Although it is a common human trait, the first question we should always ask in a case like this is not, "What is wrong with this gun?", but rather, "What am I doing wrong?" In the majority of cases, that is the direction in which we will find answers. And sometimes, frankly, the answer may be that you never should have tried to make the transition to a different type of gun – but if you can make that transition successfully you will have made significant progress towards becoming a skilled, well-rounded shooter.
Looking back, it really wasn't much of a car but it got you where you wanted to go reliably and economically and – this was the important part – it was quite well-suited to teaching a young man the basics of driving. I knew that one day I would have better cars, so I concentrated on learning to be the best driver I could be in anticipation of transferring those basic skills to other, different, and unquestionably better vehicles down the road. Since then I have done just that, having learned to drive everything from tiny, high-performance sports cars to the giant luxury gas hogs of the '70's, to 18-wheelers, to farm equipment – you name it. Each one different from the others, sometimes radically so, but in each case calling for reliance on the same old basics I learned so well in the VW Bug. I guess I could call myself a skilled, well-rounded driver.
Much the same could be said for my evolution as a shooter. I learned handgun shooting basics on a S&W .22/.32 Target revolver, popularly referred to as the Bekeart model, that belonged to my grandfather. A single-shot Springfield Meteor .22 bolt action taught me rifle basics. Using the principles of safe handling, trigger control and sight alignment learned on those guns I gradually moved on to magnum revolvers, single-action, double-action and Glock-style semi-auto handguns, and rifles of just about any type you could name. Like the vehicles I have learned to drive, each gun was different, and each required learning some new technique to be employed effectively, but the learning experience on all of them still fell back on the basics I learned 'way back. I am not bragging when I say that nowadays you can hand me just about any type of firearm ever made, and within a few minutes I will have it loaded and will be hitting targets with satisfying regularity. I have made myself in to a skilled, well-rounded shooter.
I bring all this up because one of the most frequent questions I see asked by new gun owners on this and other gun forums is, "What are the must-do modifications I need to make on this gun?" Now, don't get me wrong – I have modified many a gun in my day Sometimes the mod was meant to improve function, other times to improve its appearance in a way pleasing to me, and sometimes it was just out of the desire for something to do. But the problem I have with the question is that it presupposes that there is something wrong with the new gun that needs fixing before it can be employed for its intended use. In fact, this is rarely true. It's much more often the SHOOTER who needs modification and not the gun.
A quite common example of this is the experienced 1911 shooter who gives in to peer pressure, or just whim, and buys a Glock or some Glock-type clone like the various S&W M&P models. Immediately he discovers that at best all his shots, seemingly inexplicably, are going low/left or low/right – or, worst case, he's not grouping his shots at all. His first query to the forums will usually be "Is there a trigger-mod kit to fix this?" Well – no, not really.
You see, the main problem he's experiencing isn't coming from the gun. The Glock-style trigger isn't WORSE than the 1911 trigger – it's DIFFERENT, just like the Mercedes AMG S63 is different from the 1964 VW Bug. If he insists on trying to make the Glock in to a 1911, disappointment will be the inevitable result. On the other hand, if he takes the trouble to learn the proper employment of the Glock system he may learn that such a trigger is in some ways actually superior in a self-defense pistol.
I guess what I am saying here is pretty simple. Although it is a common human trait, the first question we should always ask in a case like this is not, "What is wrong with this gun?", but rather, "What am I doing wrong?" In the majority of cases, that is the direction in which we will find answers. And sometimes, frankly, the answer may be that you never should have tried to make the transition to a different type of gun – but if you can make that transition successfully you will have made significant progress towards becoming a skilled, well-rounded shooter.
