Together they made the long walk down one more level to the shooting range where Saitoh programmed two shooting simulations. Tokio was still trying to wrap her mind around what had happened when the two of them were enclosed in the blue-white light. She knew instinctively that something had truly shifted between them. The memory of the way he smiled at her would stay in her heart for a lifetime.
Captain Saitoh then took some ear protectors and clear poly carbon glasses off a shelf, handing them to her. As she settled the hearing protection over her ears and slipped on the glasses, she thought of all that she had learned over the years about guns and shooting.
Tokio never forgot the words of Ray Chapman, the first combat pistol world champion. Chapman said, “Shooting well is simple; it just isn’t easy.” Once she’d read those words, their truth stuck with her.
Shooting really did sound like quite a simple procedure. If the gun is aimed at the target, and the trigger is pressed, and the shot is released without moving the gun, then the bullet will strike the mark. Yes, it seemed simple, but there was much more to it than that, and it had been quite some time since the attorney had done any formal target practice.
As she gathered her thoughts, the things she learned from her father came back to her mind. She knew that handguns were the most difficult firearm to shoot successfully, because there was less to hang on to. The radius between the front and rear sight was shorter than that of a rifle, meaning a greater chance of human error when aiming. These days, laser sights took care of the aim, if your gun had one. Tokio’s new ones didn’t. A handgun also had no third locking point on the shoulder, like you had with a long gun’s butt stock.
Tokio mentally reviewed the shooter’s check list that her father, Takagi Kojuurou, had impressed on her so many years ago, when he first taught her how to handle a gun. She was twelve then. He was a newly elected official in Aizu. There was constant worry due to the political climate at the time, that the Takagi family would be targeted because of her father’s anti-corruption policies. He and his family needed to learn how to protect themselves. Everyone, including her mother, over much objection, learned how to shoot. Her father told her that shooting was like constructing a building; you started from the bottom up. There were five things to remember: the need for a strong stance, a high hand grasp, a hard grip, a front sight, and a smooth rearward roll of the trigger.
The attorney knew she needed to take a front stance just as if she was practicing karate. Her lower body would need to form a pyramidal base, a sort of triangle with depth. She was right handed and planned on shooting two-handed, so she wanted her hips at a 45-degree angle in relation to the target with her left leg forward and her right leg back. Then she would be properly balanced forward and back, and from left to right. She knew that this stance would make it easier to hold the gun on target, often the difference between life and death. She might need to have the captain help get her in the correct position the first few times.
In a rapid fire situation, her shoulders would need to be forward to get her body weight in behind the gun to help control recoil. She kept thinking of her father’s words, ‘Nose over Toes, Tokio’, to remember this point.
What was that about the hand hold? Oh yes, the higher the hand, the lower the bore axis which meant much better control of muzzle jump and less movement of the pistol upon recoil. Semiautomatics were supposed to be shot using a high hand grip, making it easier to press the trigger straight back as each shot was made. Tokio remembered that if her hand was placed too low on the handle, a straight rearward pressure on the trigger tended to pull the muzzle down, placing the shot low, causing a miss to the target. She would need to focus on that when using the small semi-automatic the captain gave her today.
Semi-autos, like the one Saitoh told her to keep in her purse as a last resort, were designed to operate as the slide moved against the abutment of a firmly held frame. A low grasp allowed the muzzle to whipsaw upward from recoil, as the mechanism automatically cycled, diverting momentum from the slide through the frame. The slide could then run out of momentum before it completed its work, causing the pistol to jam. A jammed side-arm usually spelled death for its user.
The tighter a gun was held, the less it kicked and jumped. The less kick and jump; the more efficient the shot. Kojuurou taught his daughter to hold the firearm as tightly as possible even to the point that hand tremors set in. Some people called this a ‘crush grip.’
Her father told her that the sights needed to be kept straight in line. If the sights were in line, and the hand quivered, the sights would quiver in the center of the target. When the shot broke, the bullet would strike the center. Once hit, the target would neither know nor care that the shooter quivered before the projectile was discharged.
‘The consistency of grasp is the key to consistent accuracy,’ those were her father’s wise words. Shooting was a multi-tasking exercise that gave a person a lot to think about. Stress levels could change during shooting, and the consistency of a person’s grasp could change, too. Her father told her there were only two ways to grasp the pistol with uniformity. One was to hold it with virtually no pressure at all, which gave poor control of recoil. The other was to hold it as hard as you could for each and every shot. The last way was the way that Tokio learned to shoot.
Holding a pistol with maximum grip strength makes it less likely that the firearm will be knocked or snatched from your hand while in a combat situation. In addition, it is the ultimate cure for a hand gunner’s malady known as ‘milking.’
‘Milking,’ a term meaning the movement a made by a hand as it milks a cow’s udder, occurs when the index finger closes on the trigger and the other fingers sympathetically close with it, changing the grasp and pulling the sights off target. This usually pulls the shot low and to the side of the intended destination.
If all fingers, except the index finger, are closed as tightly as possible around the gun, the tight grip hyper-flexes the fingers so they can’t tighten any more, even when the trigger is pulled. This eliminates the milking action, which can distort the accuracy of the shot.
Tokio remembered there were many ways to position the thumb. Some shooters learned to shoot with the thumb high, resting on the manual safety. Others preferred to point the thumb straight at the target. The straight thumb position seemed to align the hand in a way that allowed the index finger its straightest rearward movement. With powerful guns, curling the thumb down to add grasping strength and enhance control was a useful technique. A lot depended on how the gun fit the hand. The controls were a factor, too. With a conventional double action auto that had the safety catch mounted on the slide, it was good to have the thumb where it could push the lever into the ‘fire’ position, and confirm that it was in the correct position.
Kojuuro told his daughter that contacting the trigger at the crease of the distal joint of the finger, the spot old time revolver masters called ‘the power crease,’ gave a person much more leverage and therefore more control. This was particularly true on guns that had long and/or heavy trigger pulls. A lot depended on hand size and shape in relation to gun size and shape.
Usually, the gun’s front sight was centered in the notch of the rear sight with an equal amount of light on either side, the top of the front sight being level with the top of the rear sight. Tokio was told that human vision being what it is, a person can’t focus on the sights and the target at the same time. There was no way to focus on both the front and the rear sights at the same time, either. Once the target had been identified as something that needed to be shot, the primary focus goes to the front sight, the aiming indicator. Kojirou told Tokio that the way to lock the handgun’s projectile onto the target was by focusing on its front sight.
She remembered that failing to properly focus on the front sight was a widespread problem among shooters. Her father’s words hammered in her head, ‘Watch the front sight hard. Apply your primary visual focus there. Look at it until you can see every little scratch in the machining on its surface. If it has a dot on it, focus on it until the dot looks like a basket ball. Then you will see your shot groups tighten as if by magic.’ That was exactly what the prosecutor had done at the café yesterday to put the slug through the center of the AMP user’s forehead.
Takagi also taught his daughter to remember the prime directive: once the gun was aimed at the target, the trigger must be pulled in a way that does not pull the muzzle off target before the shot is fired. This means that the trigger must come straight back.
The goal is a smooth, even, uninterrupted pull. The best way to do that, Kojuurou told Tokio, was to think of the motion as ‘rolling the trigger,’ because that described the smooth, consistent, uniform pressure that must be applied. Although you didn’t want the shot itself to truly be a surprise, you did want the exact instant of the shot to surprise you, so you didn’t anticipate it and convulsively jerk the shot off target. Tokio’s mind was on overload. There was just too much to remember technique wise. Even though she had concentrated on her aim yesterday, she suspected that her shot was accurate because of luck.
The best way to master the trigger pull, once you knew what it was supposed to be, was to practice it over and over. Dry-fire, or ‘clicking’ the empty gun, was the best way to practice. The position of the sights when the gun went ‘click’ told the shooter whether the shot would have been on target or not. The more dry repetitions performed, the more the proper trigger pull would be ingrained into a person’s mind and body to the point where it could be done perfectly in an emergency situation without consciously thinking about the details.
All of her father’s lessons and bits of wisdom crowded together in her mind. She hardly knew where to start. She could just go and aim at the targets the captain had set up. But she felt she should at least practice her stance and she needed to get used to the feel of the trigger mechanisms on these new guns of hers by doing some dry-firing. After all, Tokio had no experience with the new, high powered type of automatic gun that the captain had chosen for her.
When she was just learning to shoot, her father helped her. He instructed her to take a strong stance, had her grasp the gun firmly, holding it on target. Next he told her to barely touch the trigger with her index finger and then to let that finger go limp. Kojuurou then placed his gun hand over her small one, his trigger finger over hers, letting his finger press hers straight back against the trigger. After several repetitions of this Tokio felt what it was like to make the perfect shot.
The second step of practice had the two of them pulling the trigger together at the same pace. During the third step, her father let Tokio’s finger pull the trigger with his trigger finger lightly touching hers to monitor its progress. Finally, Kojuurou sat back and watched his daughter perform by herself, only correcting her when necessary.
The sound from Captain Saitoh’s laser sight drew her away from her memories and her mental review. She looked at him, his weapon in hand, safety off, laser sight humming.
“Ready?” he asked.
The vest clad Tokio, her bare arms beginning to get a mild case of goose bumps, spoke clearly to the man beside her, “No, Captain Saitoh, I’m sorry; I’m not ready yet. It has been a very long time since I’ve had any formal target practice, so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to execute the correct technique.” She bit her bottom lip, trying to find the words for her next request, “Would you mind helping me with my stance, so I can be properly positioned, and then with some dry-firing of this automatic? I’ve never used a gun of this caliber before, and I would like to get the feel of the trigger before I use any live ammunition.”
no subject
Captain Saitoh then took some ear protectors and clear poly carbon glasses off a shelf, handing them to her. As she settled the hearing protection over her ears and slipped on the glasses, she thought of all that she had learned over the years about guns and shooting.
Tokio never forgot the words of Ray Chapman, the first combat pistol world champion. Chapman said, “Shooting well is simple; it just isn’t easy.” Once she’d read those words, their truth stuck with her.
Shooting really did sound like quite a simple procedure. If the gun is aimed at the target, and the trigger is pressed, and the shot is released without moving the gun, then the bullet will strike the mark. Yes, it seemed simple, but there was much more to it than that, and it had been quite some time since the attorney had done any formal target practice.
As she gathered her thoughts, the things she learned from her father came back to her mind. She knew that handguns were the most difficult firearm to shoot successfully, because there was less to hang on to. The radius between the front and rear sight was shorter than that of a rifle, meaning a greater chance of human error when aiming. These days, laser sights took care of the aim, if your gun had one. Tokio’s new ones didn’t. A handgun also had no third locking point on the shoulder, like you had with a long gun’s butt stock.
Tokio mentally reviewed the shooter’s check list that her father, Takagi Kojuurou, had impressed on her so many years ago, when he first taught her how to handle a gun. She was twelve then. He was a newly elected official in Aizu. There was constant worry due to the political climate at the time, that the Takagi family would be targeted because of her father’s anti-corruption policies. He and his family needed to learn how to protect themselves. Everyone, including her mother, over much objection, learned how to shoot. Her father told her that shooting was like constructing a building; you started from the bottom up. There were five things to remember: the need for a strong stance, a high hand grasp, a hard grip, a front sight, and a smooth rearward roll of the trigger.
The attorney knew she needed to take a front stance just as if she was practicing karate. Her lower body would need to form a pyramidal base, a sort of triangle with depth. She was right handed and planned on shooting two-handed, so she wanted her hips at a 45-degree angle in relation to the target with her left leg forward and her right leg back. Then she would be properly balanced forward and back, and from left to right. She knew that this stance would make it easier to hold the gun on target, often the difference between life and death. She might need to have the captain help get her in the correct position the first few times.
In a rapid fire situation, her shoulders would need to be forward to get her body weight in behind the gun to help control recoil. She kept thinking of her father’s words, ‘Nose over Toes, Tokio’, to remember this point.
What was that about the hand hold? Oh yes, the higher the hand, the lower the bore axis which meant much better control of muzzle jump and less movement of the pistol upon recoil. Semiautomatics were supposed to be shot using a high hand grip, making it easier to press the trigger straight back as each shot was made. Tokio remembered that if her hand was placed too low on the handle, a straight rearward pressure on the trigger tended to pull the muzzle down, placing the shot low, causing a miss to the target. She would need to focus on that when using the small semi-automatic the captain gave her today.
Semi-autos, like the one Saitoh told her to keep in her purse as a last resort, were designed to operate as the slide moved against the abutment of a firmly held frame. A low grasp allowed the muzzle to whipsaw upward from recoil, as the mechanism automatically cycled, diverting momentum from the slide through the frame. The slide could then run out of momentum before it completed its work, causing the pistol to jam. A jammed side-arm usually spelled death for its user.
The tighter a gun was held, the less it kicked and jumped. The less kick and jump; the more efficient the shot. Kojuurou taught his daughter to hold the firearm as tightly as possible even to the point that hand tremors set in. Some people called this a ‘crush grip.’
Her father told her that the sights needed to be kept straight in line. If the sights were in line, and the hand quivered, the sights would quiver in the center of the target. When the shot broke, the bullet would strike the center. Once hit, the target would neither know nor care that the shooter quivered before the projectile was discharged.
‘The consistency of grasp is the key to consistent accuracy,’ those were her father’s wise words. Shooting was a multi-tasking exercise that gave a person a lot to think about. Stress levels could change during shooting, and the consistency of a person’s grasp could change, too. Her father told her there were only two ways to grasp the pistol with uniformity. One was to hold it with virtually no pressure at all, which gave poor control of recoil. The other was to hold it as hard as you could for each and every shot. The last way was the way that Tokio learned to shoot.
Holding a pistol with maximum grip strength makes it less likely that the firearm will be knocked or snatched from your hand while in a combat situation. In addition, it is the ultimate cure for a hand gunner’s malady known as ‘milking.’
‘Milking,’ a term meaning the movement a made by a hand as it milks a cow’s udder, occurs when the index finger closes on the trigger and the other fingers sympathetically close with it, changing the grasp and pulling the sights off target. This usually pulls the shot low and to the side of the intended destination.
If all fingers, except the index finger, are closed as tightly as possible around the gun, the tight grip hyper-flexes the fingers so they can’t tighten any more, even when the trigger is pulled. This eliminates the milking action, which can distort the accuracy of the shot.
Tokio remembered there were many ways to position the thumb. Some shooters learned to shoot with the thumb high, resting on the manual safety. Others preferred to point the thumb straight at the target. The straight thumb position seemed to align the hand in a way that allowed the index finger its straightest rearward movement. With powerful guns, curling the thumb down to add grasping strength and enhance control was a useful technique. A lot depended on how the gun fit the hand. The controls were a factor, too. With a conventional double action auto that had the safety catch mounted on the slide, it was good to have the thumb where it could push the lever into the ‘fire’ position, and confirm that it was in the correct position.
Kojuuro told his daughter that contacting the trigger at the crease of the distal joint of the finger, the spot old time revolver masters called ‘the power crease,’ gave a person much more leverage and therefore more control. This was particularly true on guns that had long and/or heavy trigger pulls. A lot depended on hand size and shape in relation to gun size and shape.
Usually, the gun’s front sight was centered in the notch of the rear sight with an equal amount of light on either side, the top of the front sight being level with the top of the rear sight. Tokio was told that human vision being what it is, a person can’t focus on the sights and the target at the same time. There was no way to focus on both the front and the rear sights at the same time, either. Once the target had been identified as something that needed to be shot, the primary focus goes to the front sight, the aiming indicator. Kojirou told Tokio that the way to lock the handgun’s projectile onto the target was by focusing on its front sight.
She remembered that failing to properly focus on the front sight was a widespread problem among shooters. Her father’s words hammered in her head, ‘Watch the front sight hard. Apply your primary visual focus there. Look at it until you can see every little scratch in the machining on its surface. If it has a dot on it, focus on it until the dot looks like a basket ball. Then you will see your shot groups tighten as if by magic.’ That was exactly what the prosecutor had done at the café yesterday to put the slug through the center of the AMP user’s forehead.
Takagi also taught his daughter to remember the prime directive: once the gun was aimed at the target, the trigger must be pulled in a way that does not pull the muzzle off target before the shot is fired. This means that the trigger must come straight back.
The goal is a smooth, even, uninterrupted pull. The best way to do that, Kojuurou told Tokio, was to think of the motion as ‘rolling the trigger,’ because that described the smooth, consistent, uniform pressure that must be applied. Although you didn’t want the shot itself to truly be a surprise, you did want the exact instant of the shot to surprise you, so you didn’t anticipate it and convulsively jerk the shot off target. Tokio’s mind was on overload. There was just too much to remember technique wise. Even though she had concentrated on her aim yesterday, she suspected that her shot was accurate because of luck.
The best way to master the trigger pull, once you knew what it was supposed to be, was to practice it over and over. Dry-fire, or ‘clicking’ the empty gun, was the best way to practice. The position of the sights when the gun went ‘click’ told the shooter whether the shot would have been on target or not. The more dry repetitions performed, the more the proper trigger pull would be ingrained into a person’s mind and body to the point where it could be done perfectly in an emergency situation without consciously thinking about the details.
All of her father’s lessons and bits of wisdom crowded together in her mind. She hardly knew where to start. She could just go and aim at the targets the captain had set up. But she felt she should at least practice her stance and she needed to get used to the feel of the trigger mechanisms on these new guns of hers by doing some dry-firing. After all, Tokio had no experience with the new, high powered type of automatic gun that the captain had chosen for her.
When she was just learning to shoot, her father helped her. He instructed her to take a strong stance, had her grasp the gun firmly, holding it on target. Next he told her to barely touch the trigger with her index finger and then to let that finger go limp. Kojuurou then placed his gun hand over her small one, his trigger finger over hers, letting his finger press hers straight back against the trigger. After several repetitions of this Tokio felt what it was like to make the perfect shot.
The second step of practice had the two of them pulling the trigger together at the same pace. During the third step, her father let Tokio’s finger pull the trigger with his trigger finger lightly touching hers to monitor its progress. Finally, Kojuurou sat back and watched his daughter perform by herself, only correcting her when necessary.
The sound from Captain Saitoh’s laser sight drew her away from her memories and her mental review. She looked at him, his weapon in hand, safety off, laser sight humming.
“Ready?” he asked.
The vest clad Tokio, her bare arms beginning to get a mild case of goose bumps, spoke clearly to the man beside her, “No, Captain Saitoh, I’m sorry; I’m not ready yet. It has been a very long time since I’ve had any formal target practice, so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to execute the correct technique.” She bit her bottom lip, trying to find the words for her next request, “Would you mind helping me with my stance, so I can be properly positioned, and then with some dry-firing of this automatic? I’ve never used a gun of this caliber before, and I would like to get the feel of the trigger before I use any live ammunition.”
(All of the shooting techniques paraphrased in this post are from ‘How to Shoot a Handgun Accurately’ by Massad Ayoob http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob85.html)