quote:

* (Among other gems: “Don’t dry fire. Dry firing teaches bad habits.”)

How? Personally, I don't think dry firing is very useful unless it includes some sort of feedback about where the bullet would have struck if you had fired an actual shot, but this is the first I've heard that.

I agree. I think this started from a place of well-meaning, but it has devolved into the assclown's choice of a backhanded comment. He may just own a Glock 19 and 500,000,000,000 rounds of Speer Lawman to put through it and when he says you should do the same, maybe he hates that you have the option of buying a more interesting pistol, or he may have bought everything you'll never be able to and he thinks you don't deserve to play with toys as nice as his. The odds that he actually thinks this is the best thing for everyone every time he suggests it seem pretty low to me. Either way, I'm sick of hearing that guy's shit. He's everywhere, and if it isn't his sub-$500 polymer pistol, it's his fucking BCM or Daniel Defense Standard Guy Rifle he can't shut up about.

Make no mistake, the training industry is an industry, and they've got everyone with a Youtube channel convinced that we all need to pay some former Tier 1 bearded Brovet a few thousand bucks for a weekend of his spin on How It's Really Done, and there's only four of five overlapping generations of those guys running schools right now. I'd happily go to a Clint Smith or Gray Guns course or something of that caliber, but I am not going to spend all of my gun budget flying around the country burning up ammo. Training is a perishable skill, and ammo you shoot up, you don't get back. You know what I still have? Every gun I bought in the last five years, and that means all the stock parts they came with and the whiz-bangs I replaced them with. Have all that stuff.

Not really. Guns will certainly smooth out over time. They will never get to the level of a quality trigger job. Never seen that happen ever in a modern DA gun. And I bet if you are honest neither have you. Guns get better over time, they don't miraculously become as good as a good trigger job. I have a 35 year old Beretta 92F. It was my first semi auto. That sucker got shot and dry fired a metric shit ton. A couple years ago I put Langdon's TJIAB in it. It was like a new gun with a significantly better trigger. That is the reality.

As for your other point you sound like the guys over there on the other forum. It's not an either or scenario. There is no substitute for good training and lots of practice. Once you get that I would bet you the adult beverage of your choice that improving the trigger, sights, and grips of your favorite handgun would lead to a better performance that you could objectively prove over and over. At no time have I ever said you can't work very well with a stock trigger. Nobody said anybody was "spraying shots" all over. Nobody said stuff makes up for skills acquired through practice. What I did say and if you disagree then you are nuts is that if you do all that and then make your trigger better than stock, put on sights that work for your eyes, and put on grip tape, stipple, more aggressive grip panels, whatever, you personally will shoot that gun better than you did before.

Very rare is the individual in any endeavor that pulls the symbolic club out of the rental bag and hits better than they do with a fitted club.

Like everything, I think there needs to be some balance. Ideally, yeah, we'd all have custom guns with perfect ergonomics, sights, and triggers, shoot 10k+ rounds a month, and attend multiple classes with top-tier instructors several times a year. But money, time, and ammo are all finite, and we have to live within those limitations.

My problem is that I'm a gun whore. I see some particular design that I think is interesting, and I want it. So I buy it, which uses up money that I could have otherwise spent on ammo, training, or improving my current gun, and now I have to put time and ammo into that new gun at the cost of neglecting my previous gun. I'm also into reloading, tinkering, etc...so getting into any new platform is a pretty big investment.

The problem is that guns are both a hobby and a job for me, and the two don't always mix well. A lot of relaxation and enjoyment comes from acquiring and playing with different stuff, but there's also the serious side that needs to be dedicated to that one particular platform (which is in a lot of ways outside of my control, both in regards to selection and modification).

If I put in 100% of my time, money, and effort into getting better with my P320, I'm sure I'd see improvements. There have been points in my career where I've done that, and I did achieve the improvements that I was looking for. But it was definitely work, and lost the "fun" aspect of playing with my more recreational stuff. The trick is to find that balance of putting in the necessary time to keep improving on my "work" gun while still getting to enjoy my hobby.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:

quote:

* (Among other gems: “Don’t dry fire. Dry firing teaches bad habits.”)

How? Personally, I don't think dry firing is very useful unless it includes some sort of feedback about where the bullet would have struck if you had fired an actual shot, but this is the first I've heard that.

It's the second or third time I've heard it. Their line of thinking is that it "trains" you to get in the habit of racking the slide or pull the bolt after each shot.

My line of thinking is that they're full of shit and making excuses/rationalizing to themselves as to why they "can't" (can't be bothered to) train in their non-range time.

Dry fire can be useful without other feedback as it can be used to train out flinches/pulling. I personally can see when I mess up simply by observing how much the front sight does/does not not move during my dry fire practice.

Yea I think this is the Mantis (?) crowd talking. Every time I dry fire I could tell you within a reasonable margin exactly where that bullet would go. It is the same concept as when you are live firing, 9 times out of 10 you can call your flier without even seeing where it lands.

Dry fire is a wildly effective use of your time.

I tend to go through phases. I have had a 320 phase, they are easily one of the easiest guns to shoot well out of the box I have ever owned. I found the frames way too slick for my taste but I got pretty decent at stippling them and I like the X series grip modules as well. Great gun but I drifted away from strikers so now I only have a couple 320's left. I bought a bunch after the "shoot yourself in the melon" phase. I got them cheap, Sig upgraded them, sold them and made some money.

Beretta 92's were a phase which I am still in. Overall one of the best hammer guns out there. Easy to work on and with Langdon parts you get a "custom" gun doing it yourself. I have a couple LTT Elites that he worked on and a couple I put his parts in. I don't believe you can tell the difference but they are all very good now. Like make you shoot noticeably better than stock good.

Right now and for the foreseeable future I am a P30 V1 guy (with some light mods). I actually think I have found MY alltime favorite gun for life. I truly can't find any negatives that I can't or haven't rectified. IF I had a wish list it pretty much nails the list. Plus it is one of those guns that instantly shot well out of my hands with little effort. Once I swapped out to the steel flat trigger it was markedly better.

I have put in lots of flat triggers in lots of guns. This P30 flat trigger is the first time I have put one in a gun and now couldn't live without it. My 320's I shot fine with curved and flat. I still have a 365 with a curved trigger. I can go either way on most platforms. On the P30 the flat trigger transforms the gun. I think it is because it takes the break to a perfect 90 degree angle where before it was further back towards the frame and "mushy". It should come from the factory this way. lol

That was the funny thing about that discussion. I don't even consider what I did to this gun a trigger job in proper terms. I swapped one physical trigger for another. Didn't even mess with the sear, angles, polishing, nothing. Just the flat trigger made a huge difference. Best 90 bucks I ever spent on a gun.

I generally agree.

However, some considering modifications don't seem to be particularly experienced or seasoned shooters. They seem to often turn to gun modifications in an almost knee-jerk fashion after they get a new gun.

They do this before they shoot it a while, and develop any sense of what really might help or be useful.

And also some seem to be the types that don't shoot a lot or practice, and are mostly just hoping that some modification will be the magic item that turns them into a good shooter.

Its your gun. Do what you like. And, of course, better equipment does make it easier to be a better shooter. But some of the criticisms seem to come from the fact that some compulsive gun-modifiers don't seem to be dedicated shooters. Those may not see much benefit from their modifications.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:

quote:

* (Among other gems: “Don’t dry fire. Dry firing teaches bad habits.”)

How? Personally, I don't think dry firing is very useful unless it includes some sort of feedback about where the bullet would have struck if you had fired an actual shot, but this is the first I've heard that.

If you dry fire consistently, you will develop the skill of knowing where the sights are when the trigger breaks even without a shot. It is one of the benefits of doing it. You will then know how to manage the trigger so that the sights are right when the shot goes.

You are probably correct. I am spoiled by this forum though. For the most part I believe I am discussing pistoleros with competent, experienced shooters. For the most part.

After five and half decades on this globe and shooting for almost all of those years, I know what I like and what I need in a gun. I can pick up a gun instantly and almost always tell if it would work better for me than something else. Occasionally something will surprise me but not usually.

If anybody read my posts from the past it was clear I didn't even give the P30 a chance. My USPc's weren't my favorite and the spiderman grip turned off my aesthetic vibe. Said no to them without even trying. I am glad I did try it finally. I could have saved myself a bunch of $$$.

Bottom line, of course it's your gun do what you want. I have zero issue with that. It is the thinking that if JMB wanted you to have a umperteen squatch he would have built it with one. Or it was good enough to win the war as issued that is good enough for you. Well, I don't have the arbitrary limitations that commercial sales and govt contracts require so I can improve on an already very good gun. To think that upgrades are a travesty or blasphemous is just silly.

Keep in mind that “other forum” has some, well let’s just say “enthusiastic and dramatic” folks who I sometimes think have a very narrow width of firearm experience. There are some good folks and info to be gleaned there though.

That said I fall into the camp of it’s your gun do what you want with it. I fall into the DA/SA leave the trigger alone and just learn it camp for any “serious” guns. That doesn’t make me RIGHT or anybody else WRONG just makes it right for me. Crappy triggers speak to me.

People get their panties in a twist all the time about what other people do and it alway boggles my mind as to why. As far as guns go I will give you my, hopefully educated, opinion and leave it at that unless what “you” are doing is dangerous or the product is dangerous truly flawed.

I HATE the LEM trigger. Doesn’t make it a bad trigger, doesn’t make it flawed, and it certainly has its place and is well engineered. I totally get why folks love it but I HAAAAATEEEE it.

Point is folks, especially on the net, seem to go Delta Bravo at the drop of the hat, those are not the folks you want to take advice from in my experience.

But what do I know. I’m just some idiot on the net.

Take care, shoot safe.
Chris

I was also thinking about all the folks who basically say you are a dead man walking if……
-you have a revolver
-you have less then 20 rounds in the gun
-you don’t have an optic
-you don’t use a SIG or HK or Glock or…….
-you don’t have a light
-you do have a light
-night sights or not
-your gun is too small
-your gun is too big
-blah blah blah etc.

Always cracks me up. Does technology matter and change, mature and provide real world benefit? ABSOLUTELY. In terms of raw self defense it all still comes down to mindset, skill and dare I say luck. I wouldn’t get into a gunfight with a dude with a single action army even if I was rocking the “full AR” so to speak given any choice in the matter.

Like cars, guns are a super personal thing and raw numbers and stats don’t always tell the whole story. Run what works for YOU.

Ha ha, all true. I always have followed your HK threads with interest. I too have fallen head over for the P2000. Now it is the P30 which takes the good of the P2000 and bakes even more HK love into the cake batter and makes a nearly perfect pistol, the P30.

As for LEM. Ooooh, that is quite a conundrum. I keep buying LEM HK's because quite frankly I like stock guns but I find the stock HK DA stroke to be maddeningly bad. The upside is that all those bad DA strokes are mated with very good SA pulls. It seems like an easy fix on HK's part but they truly don't seem to be concerned.

Enter LEM. I absolutely am not a fan of it in any USP platform. I have USPc and fullsize USP in LEM. In fact the fullsize is a Combat Competition with the Match LEM. Impressive name for a trigger that I still don't love.

I have discovered though that it isn't LEM that I don't like its the USP in general. Its a hand brick. It absolutely demolishes the skin between my thumb and forefinger if I shoot more than one box of ammo. I would rather burn myself shooting 3 boxes of ammo through my P7 than shoot 3 boxes of warm 40 through my HK's. Go figure.

In a P2000 or P30 the LEM shines. Add that stupid 90 dollar GG flat trigger and it sings. Yes I am getting poetic. It is that good.

Here is my unsolicited advice cslinger. Go buy the 90 dollar GG flat steel trigger. Get the TRS pliers or email me and I will loan you mine. The flat steel trigger in the P30 is a game changer. If GG made one for my P2000 I would be all over it. One guy over there modded this trigger to fit a P2000 but that might be a bit much for me. Try it, I bet you will like it. And in all reality, it isn't really like you are screwing with doing a trigger job. All the real trigger parts remain stock, its just the trigger itself but the design is genius. No flex, no huge curve, 90 degree break, and a built in overtravel stop. What is not to love?

Flat triggers I can sort of take or leave honestly. I don’t mean that as a “get off my lawn” comment hell I am not actually old I just feel like it.

I’ve always kind of liked the curved triggers. I think the biggest failing of the HK trigger, as you have alluded to, is the flex in it and I could see where the GG trigger, simply being all steel, would address a ton of that.

I am fairly trigger agnostic. I mean I certainly know the difference between a good and a bad trigger, I’ve just never found bad triggers all that difficult to run, but I have a lot of DA under my belt. What’s funny is if I run something like a high end 1911 with an awesome trigger, it takes me quite a bit of time to adjust to GOOD triggers. .

I have shot some rare guns where the trigger was truly an impediment to me buts it’s rare. HK VP70, early Ruger LCP’s, a Turkish Hi-power clone that they must have gone out of their way to engineer a poor trigger but that’s about it really.

The biggest impediment to my shooting is …….. well quite frankly……my shooting . If I was able to ramp up my practice and skill level and you know learn to actually shoot I’d probably tinker with triggers more.

That GG trigger has been in my head though since you posted about it……and I should probably own the TRS pliers just because……………

But of course all HKs are perfect, blessed on the backs of naked virgins by Tibetan mystics and have absolutely no issues, or deficiencies ………or so we have been told by the “enthusiastic and dramatic”.

They are perfect as is and blessed by gods so this is heresy but get the trigger.

I too am meh about flat triggers. I have both curved and flat in multiple platforms and they are no better or worse in my hands for the most part. Mind you, the curved are nowhere near as curved as the HK.

On the P30 the biggest advantages are zero flex which I find very annoying and the position where the trigger breaks is moved forward away from the frame. That is a very good thing to me. Added bonus it breaks at a flat 90 degrees. The overtravel limit is just another bonus. Best 90 bucks I have spent in a long time. At this point I would never own a P30 without swapping this part out. (My spare P30 has one, money where my mouth is lol)

Thank you for enabling. . Next time I’m bored I might pick one up to try.

Almost nothing I enjoy better than spending other people's money. lol

I don't think that dry firing is a good idea.

Rimfires anyway.

Because my one example of an inane idea presented in the “some training” we’re admonished to get has caused somewhat of a drift and question, a bit about dry firing:

First, I was surprised by the “Why dry fire?” question, but I guess I shouldn’t have been when someone like the trainer I mentioned believes it’s a bad idea. I was obviously wrong in thinking that he was the only one.

Although I am a firearms instructor myself and have developed some very firm ideas over the decades, I still pay attention when other instructors and highly skilled shooters speak. On this subject, some of our members here have stated that they dry fire their guns, and not only a little. I recall that at least one who definitely knows what he’s talking about (mostly, anyway ) says he dry fires at least 10 times as much as he fires live rounds. It’s been remarked about how much professionals whose skill with firearms can literally be a matter of life or death observe the practice.

I’m not in one of those camps, but even if I don’t dry fire as much as would benefit me just as I eat too much sugar in my diet, I do at least recognize the value of the practice. Like many things, though, there’s more to it than just mindlessly pulling the trigger of whatever gun is handy.* Bruce Gray did a much better job of explaining how to do it right than I can, so I’ll just recommend looking at what he had to say:
https://grayguns.com/dry-fire-secrets-of-the-pros/

In short, though, mindful dry firing helps train and condition us to a number of things that are benefits to our shooting well.

* Back in the days of double action revolvers, I actually heard of a man who had an S&W revolver with an extra heavy trigger pull that he used simply to exercise and strengthen his trigger finger. But that’s not what I’m recommending.

During my last CHP renewal class the Instructor did a 20 minute spiel on optics , including which one was his favorite , etc. I had zero interest in handgun optics but I had to sit there and listen to it .