If you were to ask a shooting instructor who’s been doing this a long time what is more challenging; correcting sight errors or trigger errors what do you think they would say? Most who I know overwhelmingly comment on trigger errors.
Master Level Aiming
It’s not surprising, mastering sight management is an easy task. Developing the skill to see the sights correctly is not difficult. Minus any vision issues that would preclude you from seeing the front sight. Through understanding the relationship between the front sight post and rear sight notch shooters are able to aim true. From time to time I do see a legitimate sighting error. The sighting error is either not seeing the front sight post or not looking at the top of the front sight post. That’s it! I’ve covered the sighting error in less than a paragraph. If you can avoid these two mistakes, you’ll be on your way to master level aiming.
It Only Moves One Way
Once we get past this point, shooting errors will mainly be a result of trigger management or lack there of. There could be other errors such as stance and grip, but once identified these too are easily remedied. Leaving the trigger’s movement to be the single greatest challenge to accurate shooting. To be honest the movement of the trigger is pretty simple. On the other hand, one of the hardest shooting skills to master. The level of precision needed to perform the tasks without disrupting the sights is high. Plus, it’s easy to overlook the trigger since it’s such a simple mechanism. Nothing more than a lever you move one way.
It’s Like An Island
What makes trigger errors difficult is the inability to see them in real time. They are obscured due to the recoil impulse, the round being fired. If there was a way to simplify the instruction so the student could see the errors it would be far easier to correct. Instead, many will through gear at the problem. That doesn’t work. If you were not accurate before the addition of the new gear, you are not going to be accurate after. Just because you invested in some novelty product doesn’t magically imbued you with accuracy. If you are still responsible for moving the trigger, self imposed trigger errors are still in play. You have to solve these errors first, before you can expect any return on an investment.
Do You Really Need Them
If you were to think about it, sights allow for precision. How precise is subjective, but if you were to remove the sights from the slide how accurate would you be if you had mastery of the trigger. Would you still be able to hit a man size target at 5 yards, 10 yards or even 15 yards. We had an old saying in the Teams, “what’s the most dangerous weapon…a bored frogman.” In my experience, moving the trigger with minimal disruption to the muzzle/sights is the challenge. I could remove your front sight completely and you would probably be accurate enough for most deadly force engagements. It is easy these days to forgo the importance of proper trigger management technique. Be careful as a new shooter, the amount of misinformation on the internet is at an all time high.
Even the terrible sight bumps on some factory guns are more than enough to start learning trigger management. The hard part is acknowledging it takes hard work…do the work.
