Firearm safety is the first step in getting range ready. The next is becoming familiar with your handgun and week two of our challenge with Shoot Like a Girl addresses getting comfortable with your firearm.
I’ve been shooting since I was a teenager and despite the years, I can still remember how it felt shooting those first shots and learning gun handling skills. To build my confidence, I needed to become familiar with my equipment. Aside from range time, I also practiced at home with dry practice or dry fire.
Dry fire means going through the motions of shooting without ammo. In order to dry fire, you’ll need to know how to unload your pistol. Part of that process involves manipulating the slide. Depending on your firearm, this might be challenging. Here’s a video on how to unload a pistol and another on how to make racking the slide easier.
Once you ensure your firearm is unloaded and you have removed all ammunition from the vicinity, you can begin to work on the fundamentals –grip, stance, sight alignment, and trigger control. Watch these videos for a breakdown of these skills:
Your challenge this week is to watch the videos and spend 15 minutes a day becoming more familiar with your pistol, by gripping it properly, learning how to unload it, and learning about the fundamentals. This familiarity is an important step because next week, I’m introducing a dry fire drill.
Did you miss Julie’s week one SLG range ready challenge ? Don’t worry! Follow this link to the first challenge.
Julie Golob is one of the most accomplished professional shooters in the world and captain of Team Smith & Wesson. She has won more than 120 championship titles in international, national and regional marksmanship competitions in seven different shooting disciplines. Learn more about the champion, author, veteran, hunter and outdoor television personality at JulieGolob.com. View all posts by Julie Golob
[…] confidence with your handgun. If you’re new to Julie’s Challenge, check out weeks one, two, and three as important foundational steps. If are following along, this week I introduce another […]