Home Defense Tips | Firearm Safety Tips | Safer At Home Episode 1

hi everyone and thank you for joining us tonight as we spend the next 60 minutes with you educating and demonstrating how new and first-time gun owners can safely begin learning how to become a responsible gun owner so you need to stick with us here and we're going to teach you about gun safety how to get your new handgun ready to shoot ammunition selection how to load and unload your handgun handgun marksmanship fundamentals how to clear a malfunction storing and staging your handgun so we got a lot to give to you today and we're also gonna touch on the journey that lies ahead the journey that should be taking effective to effectively and efficiently begin building defensive handgun competencies and for those of you experienced gun owners please stay with us we need you to join with us to help share this sound and valuable information we need you to share this information with the people that you know or come to know that are new to defensive gun ownership so I'm Steve Fisher UNCC a training operations manager that's what I do here and I'm joined by two of our top instructors we've got Beth Alcazar and Justin Peters with us today and they've been critical to the development of over 5,000 firearms instructors throughout the US who in turn have taught hundreds of thousands of students how to safely and effectively use a handgun for the purposes of self-defense so before we get going here I want to invite everyone to be a part of our family today so if you join the u.s. CCA today I want you to know that you could receive a bonus package you could get this really cool Kershaw knife it's a folding knife right here it looks like now here's what it looks like right now you got the u.s. CCA logo on it you can kind of see the size of it it's a good quality Kershaw knife but maybe even more importantly you could receive this it looks like a bullet right this here is a USB this USB contains over 50 hours of educational and training material okay all you got to do is twist off the top half here plug it into your computer and start your learning journey right so just go to USC see a comm and you'll be guided through the signup process so Beth Justin welcome you guys I appreciate you being here with us today and I got a question real quick did either of you guys see this coming and what I'm talking about is did you see the tens did you see it coming where tens of thousands of people are gonna be flocking to gun stores and searching frantically online to purchase their first firearm as far as instructors in pro-second amendment virtuosos what's been going through your minds these last few days Beth why don't you start us off you know Steve what's really interesting is I think all of us in the - a community we have just wanted so bad for this surge of new gun owners and for people to kind of join our community and realize the importance of protecting themselves and their loved ones but I gotta be honest I never thought it would happen this way never crossed my mind what about you Justin yeah same exact thing I mean I'm totally open to inviting more people the Second Amendment community I think it's great I just want to let them know that training and and safety are two of the most important things and it comes to firearm ownership now when we talk about safety Beth and we both know we all three know I should say is that every class that we teach starts off with the talk on safety in our concealed carry and home defense fundamentals materials we talk about the four universal rules of safety can you go through them and Justin well you get an opportunity while Beth has talked anybody through it can you kind of demonstrate what she's talking about yeah absolutely safe go ahead Beth yeah the universal safety rules those are something we call Universal because we can pretty much use those in most situations and with just about any firearm the first one we often refer to is something that basically says treat all firearms as if they are loaded so obviously that's not going to be the truth in every single situation you can see that Justin has a syrup Estill you can see he has a yellow gun you can see he also has some live fire guns that have different implementations to make sure that they're clear and safe we know that these firearms are unloaded or not even usable but we treat them as if they're loaded which means we have the mentality of respect we're going to respect these guns and we're going to realize that we're the ones ultimately in control of the gun so we have to be mindful of the fact that they could be dangerous if used negligently or maliciously so no matter what the situation respect the gun be in control and be mindful of it yeah absolutely I'm sorry go ahead Steve I'm sorry so you talked about assert pistol and a yellow gun so those aren't guns that can go bang are they they're not nope they're simply training tools but again just like Beth said we are gonna treat them as if they are real firearms we're gonna keep them pointed in safe directions and one other thing with that safety reel that I like to tell my students is always know the condition of your firearm so we're gonna treat every gun is if they are unloaded but you should also know the condition of your firearm at all times well Justin just led us into that second role he was talking about keep it pointed in the safe direction technically that's our second universal safety rule or one of the four and in any circumstance you want to find the safest direction possible so here in the studio Justin's going to pick which direction would be a safe direction for our demonstration purposes today in your own home if you are doing dry fire practice or if you are loading unloading if you are cleaning your gun whatever the case may be you've got to pick a safe direction and realize that there could be people around you behind that wall could be your your daughter's room your son's room your husband it could be a lot of different things so pick that safe direction and realize that the muzzle needs to be pointed in that direction at all times the safest direction possible at all times yeah we've all heard stories about people that didn't follow these rules and somehow some way they were practicing with their firearm not a training firearm like the sir pistol or the yellow gun and they press the trigger and the gun went off so this rule if you follow it it should prevent anything to happen after that mistake that could cost somebody their life well Steve you just led us into the third rule so a great segue you said press the trigger well that is another very very important role and it's something that we find especially as instructors or with new folks it's hard to get that stuck in your brain really because our finger naturally wants to go to that trigger as kids when we've picked up I don't know the nerf pistol or the the squirt gun we automatically go to that trigger but we have to just imprint this rule in our brains that we do not put our finger on the trigger or even in the trigger guard until we have intent and justification to shoot you as an instructor Beth when you're looking up and down the firing line with your students what are you looking for a lot of times well you're making a teaching point you want to make sure that nobody has that finger and a trigger so if you look at Justin right now is he doing it right absolutely Justin explain what you're doing so that people understand it's not just where not to put your finger but we do try to tell people where they should put that finger while they're waiting for that opportunity or that justification to shoot correct so in our classes when we teach we don't tell people just keep your finger off the trigger until you're decision to shoot we told them it specifically where to place their fingers so like when I'm grabbing this firearm you can see my finger it's flagged high it's on that seam in between the slide and the frame so it's a good tactile reference and the reason for that is we've got a grasp reflex it's a survival instinct that's built in you may have experienced if you've ever slipped down the stairs and you've grabbed on your railing instinctively same thing happens to the firearm if you're startled and your finger is here in front of the trigger guard and you're - you have that startle I mean your fingers going right back onto the trigger and it could be unintentional so that's why we specifically tell you to put it high in between the seam of the slide in the frame yeah on the range you've seen people flinch when somebody next to them shoots a gun that has a load announcement to being shot right yeah I've seen it all the time so if that fingers in that wrong spot bang the gun goes off now hopefully they were following one of the other safety rules right which is only pointed at something that you're willing to destroy so we've got another rule right that's right and this rule usually people like to think of it as know your target and what's beyond it I am really I guess I'm a word nerd and I like all the prepositions so I like to think not just what BL is beyond the target but what could be in front of the target around the target on the target we just need to be mindful of our situation we need to be sure that we're paying attention to what is around us for let's say we're on an outdoor range and you're shooting at that target you've got to make sure that that bullet is gonna impact at a berm you've got to make sure it's not gonna go over the berm you got to make sure there's no wildlife or some unauthorized person walking around where they shouldn't be for the indoor range - it's just the same we want to make sure that people around us are safe that maybe the target is in place it hasn't fallen down and of course you know the people next to you what if they start stepping over that firing line or they get closer to that target area you need to be aware of where they are so you can make smart decisions and think about how that translates into the real world if you are needing to use your pistol in a defensive scenario you've got to be sure of that target and everything around it because your loved ones could be there and as if bystanders could be there and you've got to make sure that you are keeping them safe as well Justin can you do a real quick recap on the four Universal safety rules yeah absolutely so we're gonna know the condition of our firearms to treat every gun as if they're unloaded even our molded plastic yellow safety gun we're gonna treat it as if it's loaded we're also going to keep our firearms pointed in a safe direction and then we're gonna keep our finger off the trigger until we've made the decision to shoot so like if I'm punching on my target got my sights aligned and then snap my finger to the trigger when I've made that decision to shoot yeah I like that demonstration so you saw how he pointed the gun he had his arms fully extended and his finger was still off of or away from the trigger so he didn't put it there until he was ready to shoot that did he cover all four of them well and then know your target and what's beyond it so don't forget that one yep no Beth you and I when we were on at sig sauer Academy our good friend George Harris he had a real simple way to help people to understand how to be safe with a firearm what did he always talk about oh I love this it's really boiled down to two really important things the first one muzzle management so the muzzle being the business end of the gun or where that projectile is going to leave the gun make sure you know where that is at all times so muzzle management the second one trigger finger discipline so if you are disciplined with that trigger finger and you keep it along the the seam away from the trigger until you're ready to shoot those two things are going to help you and sure that you're safe yep and that leads us into what we do Justin when we come home with a new gun so we've got this box with this new gun what do these new gun owners have to do yeah absolutely so you're gonna bring your gun home it's gonna be in a box very similar to this so you got the box inside that box you are going to have your firearms owner manual I highly recommend going through this it's going to tell you how to clean your firearm it's going to tell you how to disassemble it how to reassemble it so the first thing that I like to do obviously I like to make sure that my firearm is clear and it's pointed in that safe direction we're gonna disassemble it so on a modern striker-fired pistol they're all pretty much the same when it comes to disassembly there may be some minor nuances with your specific firearm but what you're gonna do is you're gonna pull back slightly on the slide pull down on the takedown lever there and your gun comes apart so you've got the slide and the barrel in one hand and you've got the frame in the other we're gonna set the frame of the side and then you have the recoil spring that comes out and then you've got your barrel so what I like to do once I've got this apart is I like to wipe off any of the the factory packing grease notice I said grease typically it's not a lubricant it's because the firearms manufacturers they don't know how long these firearms are gonna sit on the shelves before someone buys them so it's definitely a good idea to get that out of there so just wipe it down you can use it a solvent to get that out of there so I like to do that also your firearm is going to come with this chamber brush typically they come with this or you can buy them with any any gun cleaning kit but I like to run this through the barrel a couple of times just to verify that there's no obstructions in my barrel and that's free grease also then what you're gonna do is with a good quality gun lubricant or gun oil just place a few drops on the slide so like on a Glock here it's four drops just front rear on the slide rails I like to put a drop on the barrel and spread that around and then also on the barrel lug here and then you're gonna do the same thing on this on the frame here so you've got one on each lug and then the gun goes back together and the reverse order you take it apart so the barrel goes into the slide recoil spring and this goes right back together that didn't take any time at all did it no it did not um yeah and I like to do a function check too so I've got it back together I like to again gun is unloaded firearms pointed in a safe direction we're gonna drive fire it just for function I like to hold the trigger to the rear then and then make sure my trigger resets okay yeah once you take the gun apart you have to put it together make sure you put it together too right makes a lot of sense that owner's manual is your guide for that so it gives you a little bit more details and it helps you with illustrations even on how to take it apart you know you saw Justin do it pretty quickly because why Justin's done a thousands of times so with practice at home you get as efficient as he was and taking apart that firearm and cleaning it so Beth we've got a clean brand-new firearm or even a used firearm that's just been cleaned right and we familiarize ourselves with that owners manager so that owners man tells us what the names of the parts are in the gun what their functions are so now we're thinking about going to the range and doing some practice right so we need to get ammunition and I'm sure that both of you guys have had the same challenges from friends of yours that are new to the gun owner world what ammunition should I get so you got letters jhp FMJ you got numbers with letters after it you know the 62-grain you know whatever whatever it's going to be what does green mean oh can you help everybody through that Beth please well I think with especially those that are new to the firearms world it's it's gonna be a little bit overwhelming to go to the store and see all those boxes of ammunition of course the easiest and probably the best thing that you can do first is make sure you're buying the right ammunition for your gun be it semi-automatic viet revolver make sure that you check the box the manual and possibly even the gun itself a lot of these firearms actually have that marked right on the gun itself justin showing us right now he probably sees nine-millimeter somewhere there I know that my M&P is marked just like that so find the right size ammunition it's probably either a 40 a 45 a 9 a 380 those are probably some of the most popular calibers that you're going to be working with and then you're gonna have to make some decisions as well about the difference between your training ammunition the kind that you're going to use for for fun for plinking for maybe competition and the difference between that and the ammunition you need to put in your gun for defensive purposes so that's where we really get into some important differences between like your full metal jacket or your ball ammunition and your hollow-point ammunition you need to know the difference between the two and why that's important well what is important about it is that you have to separate the two into their purposes the jacketed hollow points primary purpose defense the full metal jackets primary purpose practice but they are interchangeable aren't they Justin yeah they can be I like to run some jacketed hollow points through my firearm for practice just because you want to make sure that the ammunition that you're using for self defense is gonna function reliably in your firearm so whenever I buy new jacketed hollow points I like to run a box of them through my firearm just to ensure function so yeah you can definitely practice with jacketed hollow points on the range you can use full metal jackets for self-defense however they do have a likelihood of over penetration so I don't I don't recommend using full metal jacket for self-defense purposes good advice you guys so before we go any further I'd like you guys I'd like to guide you to find some more valuable educational and training resources all you need to do is click on the link that you'll find below or you can simply enter the URL USC CA comm slash training resources so what you're going to find here again are hundreds of hours worth of valuable educational and training resources at a very very affordable price as a matter of fact for those who are watching right now we're gonna have some really good discounts on these training resources so again click on the link before to find them on the link below to find them or go to USC CA comm slash training resources and we'll help you find them now Justin let's talk about handgun marksmanship fundamentals okay what does that mean yeah so shooting fundamentals that's going to determine whether or not you're getting your hits so extremely important so we're gonna be talking about this for the new gun owner we have to emphasize that right so new gun owners are they gonna be out there driving from the holster and moving behind cover and shooting on the move or any of that kind of stuff yet I mean are we at that point for these new shooters or these new gun owners no sorry probably not that's definitely something that you'd want to move toward in your journey and that's that's the beauty of all of this all of us start at the beginning so those of you who are new don't feel bad we all were there at one point but those of you who are further along hopefully these are really good tips for you to be reminded of or that you can use to maybe share with others ultimately they'll all this needs to be practiced live on the range at some point in time hopefully in the near future until then we're just gonna try some safe dry fire versions of even loading and unloading as simple as that okay so there's seven roughly or usually people refer to seven marksmanship fundamentals correct am I on track right now and we usually all start in the same place so Justin where do we start working on the fundamentals yeah so the first one that I like to get down is stance so I'm gonna move this table out of the way here so I can demonstrate good proper stance so with stance we like to talk about the natural neutral stance so you can see my feet working from the ground up my feet are approximately shoulder-width apart I like to drop my my strong side foot back just a little bit I mean I'm not in like a fighting stance or anything like that my foots just drop back a little bit for stability knees are slightly bent my shoulders they are forward they're about over my toes and then the one of the important things is getting a full extension for good recoil management and with stance you want to be able to move around in your stance you want to be able to get bumped from either side or from the back of the front and maintain that that stability Justin can you show us a bad stance yeah so I mean a bad stance yeah you've got what I see with a lot of new shooters is they like to lean back like this like they're almost afraid of it obviously that's not good for recoil management a couple of shots in and you're gonna be going back like this I mean you can have a stance like like this like the old Weaver stance that's great for if you're trying to shoot super super tight groups but if you want to be able to move and be dynamic that natural neutral stance is going to be what you're looking for what do you mean by moving dynamically can you do a quick demonstration for us yeah so I mean if you're you're sitting here and you know something happens you want to be able to be able to move get from side to side move forward and backwards you want to be able to move around within your stance if you're stuck like this it's it's really difficult and clumsy to be able to move so you want to be able to be dynamic so Beth when you're working with students and you're building these fundamentals and you're talking about stance it can you add anything to what justin has just talked about well just exactly what Justin said you know being able to have the ears over the shoulders and the shoulders in front of the hip so it sounds weird but that that leaning in or leaning a little bit more forward and engaging the shoulders is really gonna help with that recoil management I see a lot of people standing straight up and that's gonna be either uncomfortable or it's gonna start pushing you back into what I call that scared shooter position so definitely you want to consider that stance is really a matter of convenience you're probably not going to get in that perfect stance all the time especially if you're out and about and it happens that you know a bad guy is there and he's attacking you stance is not gonna be even in in your brain at all especially if you're trying to find cover or use cover but we try to practice this and get a real good stable platform so we can build the other fundamentals and hopefully lock that into our brains and maybe refer to it even under those stressful scenarios yep a lot of people are gonna struggle they're gonna want to naturally go too we talk about natural neutral and a lot of people naturally want to go to that bladed fighting stance right but dash cam video and security cameras said they've been showing violent encounters they show that people do the stance exactly the way you and Justin we're talking about in demos straining so once we get a good solid stance and wait let me add one more thing can you practice stance at home can you do it without a gun can somebody help you realize that you have a good balanced position there's definitely ways to do that even finding that you're on the balls of your feet if you don't have any shoes on your your your toes are probably gonna curl up a little and almost kind of lock you into the floor a lot of people who've played sports volleyball basketball even soccer you know tennis we're told to stay on the balls of the feet so that you can remain active and remain able to do those dynamic moves that justin was showing us so you can try that at home anytime you don't need anything in your hands whatsoever that was a chance to wives out there go ahead and bump your husband and see if he's got a good stance stumbles and falls probably all right so let's go what's next we go into we'll go from stance to Justin yeah grip that's gonna be the next most important thing so grip I'm gonna show you guys how to build a proper grip here so when I grab the gun you notice I'm grabbing it nice and high on the back strap or the Tang here so I want to get the web of my in between my pointer finger and my thumb as high as I can up on that the handgun on some guns it's gonna allow you to go too high so just be cognizant of that like on I know some people have that issue with Glocks this slide comes back so make sure that that slide is able to clear the top of your hand so you want to get nice and high you can see my trigger finger is staying away from that trigger and that seam between the slide and the frame and I'm gonna come around to this side here I'm gonna flip it over so you can see my thumb is flagged high when I'm building that grip then what I like to do is take my support thumb and I like to point it at the target what that's gonna do is it gets your wrist candid forward and in that lock position and then that's just gonna take up the space on the firearm that was it comes back can you back up just a little bit because I'm not sure if you're in the frame there you go now we can see it pretty good yep so again you want to lock that thumb out towards your target and then it's gonna lay in that space that your strong hand wasn't taking up you want to get a full 300 60 degrees on it firearm for a good recoil management Beth what can you add well for a lot of people the most important thing I think is what Justin refer to as locking that wrist we have natural ability within our joints to only move a certain way and if you can lock that wrist especially that support hand wrist down so it doesn't move any further you're gonna basically have a platform of stability for managing that recoil already built in you're using what your body naturally does to help manage that recoil of the gun so anything you can use that your body's already doing is a plus in my book so other than that the grip can change a little bit if you're using a revolver and that might be an important factor to bring up I'm sure not everybody has purchased the semi-automatic so just to show that really quickly you don't want to have to self-correct if you're on the range but obviously the revolver has different form and function than that semi automatic and you'll see that there's that large cylinder that would be in the way of a thumbs forward or a thumbs pointing forward grip so make sure that if you are a revolver user that you're modifying that grip just a little bit where the thumbs actually cross behind yep Justin's showing us right now cross behind where that grip is you're still getting that stability you're still able to manage the recoil but you're not getting in the way of the movement of that cylinder so important thing to note on grip the revolver grip is very different and don't use the revolver grip on your semi-automatic because talking about self correct you will self-correct with that very quickly as that slide moves backward and well it's going to interfere with your thumbs yeah so be very cautious at a semi-automatic don't cross your thumbs behind the slide now Justin did start off with a different type of grip the one that you described is very very common another one is the crush grip too so Justin if you can show one more time the difference between a grip on a revolver of the crush grip which you started with and then the cross the thumbs cross grip that Beth talked about yes your fresh grip here I believe Massad Ayoob teaches that and then the one that Beth is talking about what the thumbs cross looks more like that yep so when you get a chance to go to the range everybody make sure you're with a good credentialed highly experienced instructor especially one that works a lot what revolvers and let them take a look at the way you're gripping that gun I mean even if you are shooting semi automatics you still need to have an instructor take a look at what you're doing so though we're showing you this great information online here it doesn't take away from the fact that when you get your chances you need to get to the range you know we talked about being to the range at least once a week to get your skills you know if they're depreciable right so if you're not going to the range they're going to go down we can slow that depreciation down by working at home like we're showing you here today but ultimately you have to be looking for opportunities that get in front of an instructor and I have those eyes on you and help that person's experience to help your experience so we've gone through stance and grip so far right so that's correct Beth I believe what we're going to talk about next is sight alignment correct yes sight alignment very important fundamental of marksmanship shooting where that bull's eye shooting getting on target we actually have some tools on the gun itself that you can use to help make sure that your bullet ends up where you want it to go now we call this sight alignment we have a graph that graphic that's going to hopefully explain this a little bit better than just words alone but imagine if you were gonna hang up three pictures on the wall of your home you want those three individual pictures to be lined up across the top you want all those frames to be even and of course you want them to be equidistant from one another you don't want one to be a little bit too close to that middle one or one just far off to the side you want what we call in the training world equal height and equal light and as you can see on this next image this is what it looks like when you take that idea to your gun itself you want that front sight to line up with the rear sights so that there's equal height equal light this is not an easy concept to get one thing that I like to do with my students is I like to get them going with their hands and you can kind of try this out yourself even at home so imagine that your thumbs right straight out in front of you that would that would that would kind of mimic your front sight right so you got a thumbs out and then back here closer to your face I want you to do a peace sign and then want you to line up so that your thumb is gonna be centered and I'm trying to see it on the camera and it's hard to do but I want you to look at it yourself and center that thumb in the peace sign and that's reminiscent of what that front sight lined up with the rear sights would be so a little confusing hopefully those images help you every site system is going to look a little different on your gun so don't think it's gonna be identical to what you saw in that image but doing the thumbs up in the peace sign and kind of practicing and that 3d will help you figure out how site alignment works with your firearm love it so Justin anything to add on site alignment um there's also great training tools that you can use out there like the the cert pistol that's gonna help with site alignment it's got a laser that he missed and you press the trigger so you know you're sorry sights are aligned when you're aiming at an object and you press the trigger and that laser comes out so I'll just do a quick demonstration like if I'm aiming at this wall over here there's a little little black dot if I'm punched out and I've got proper sight sight alignment I press that trigger and you hit what you're aiming at and you know you're doing a good job of getting equal height equal light all right cool now we have another firearm in front of you on the table Justin right so that other firearm has a an optic on it it's yeah we've done our Mr correct you have that so how does that affect the idea or the fundamental of sight alignment so the red dot actually simplifies things a little bit so instead of trying to line up a rear sight with a front sight and then also a target you're just going to be focusing on the target and you're gonna be superimposing the red dot over the target so what it does is instead of having three different points of focus it now limits it down to just one so flower viewers or any of our viewers had purchased a firearm that came with a red dot it would make a lot of sense at the time that you can find an instructor you would want to find one that's got experience shooting with red dot optics and their handgun correct correct yeah a lot of people think that putting a red dot on a handgun is the end-all be-all solution to becoming a great shot the other fundamentals are also very important myself I don't have a lot of repetitions behind a red dot and when I pick it up sometimes it's hard to get that dot in my field of view so just like anything else in the training world repetition repetition repetition yeah you see a lot a lot more people are coming out with those red dots now so that's actually my gun in front of you and I'm now putting in the time to get the repetition so that it works better for me too right now I'll tell you I like it you know one real quick thing before we move to the next fundamental what happens when a battery goes out on a red dot something to think about right yep then you've got to know how to shoot with irons yep Beth what comes next after sight alignment well you know Steve you mentioned focus or image and I think Justin you talked about it as well our eyes can't look at three different things at the same time we can't look at the target the front sight and the rear sight so sight picture is what gives us this idea of what we're actually going to focus on with our eyes so as you've lined the target up as you've lined your firearm up with the target you've got your sights aligned properly you're actually going to be looking at your front sight I know that seems a little maybe anti to what you would think a lot of people would think you're looking directly at the target and in some cases you probably are especially under that stress scenario or if you're very close to the target but if you've lined up sights all ready to go you're going to glare right at that front sight as if it's the only thing in your field of view Justin anything they add yeah and the one thing too is when you're doing that we've got binocular vision so you have to be closing an eye to get that crisp hard focus on that front sight so when you're doing this and you're trying to get that precise shot and make sure you're closing and I yeah we talked about an image right here to Steve we got an image that shows you see that target is blurry you'll see the rear sights are blurry but if you look at this picture very closely look at that front sight that green dot that is our front sight is crystal-clear and like Justin says you close that one eye and you're looking at that that front sight you should be good to go yeah you know we these fundamentals are geared to get help people to get their rounds on target so it's very very focused on precision like shooting right defensive shooting it's a lot different now I mean we'll talk about that a little bit before we wrap this training session up but when we are shooting defensively not very often are we using the sites we will that only when we have to correct yep correct all right cool so we go from stance to grip we went from grip to sight alignment we went from sight alignment to sight pitcher and now Beth what are we going to talk about next trigger press and I think this is probably one of my favorite and most important fundamentals for most people trigger press is is definitely a unique animal we want to make sure that we're not squeezing the trigger that we're actually just pressing the trigger rearward in fact it was George Harris at 6:00 hour again that kind of gave us this idea that basically all you have to do is move the trigger all the way rearward till the gun goes bang without adding any additional movement to the gun and that sounds so simple and easy but it's actually a little bit more difficult than you would think your your hand wants to move together as a unit and just kind of isolating that trigger finger by itself is is something you got to practice of course a good friend of mine Julie Gallup competitive shooter she's awesome she said imagine that trigger finger is just going smoothly through some creamy peanut butter so think about that smooth motion it's one smooth motion all the way rearward until the gun goes bang without adding additional movement and that's where a lot of people get in trouble we jerk the trigger or we try to make the gun work and of course all that does is pull are our rounds off target and Justin with that sir pistol can show us exactly what I mean by that yeah and again this is why a cert pistol makes such a great training aid so it's got the laser that emits and you shoot so when you've got a good clean trigger press what you're looking for is you're looking for dots so you can see got a nice dot there that's what you're looking for that means you're pulling the trigger smoothly back to the rear a lot of times with shot anticipation people they jerk the trigger they slap the trigger so that's going to give you the the lasers like that so it's a - but we're looking for is dots if you don't have a circle that's fine there's other great training aids barrel blocks are great that's gonna allow you to reset your firearm you know it's clear because you've got this orange piece of plastic for treating out the barrel and in the chamber that's gonna allow you to reset your trigger get that nice trigger press and reset the other thing that you can do too is snap caps I like to do this is called a dime washer drill but if you don't have a dimer washer handy you can actually set this on the slide get that out there Jason can you back up a little bit so they can see the end of the gun a little more back up all right so at that snap cap on the end of the slide there what you want to really focus on now is that smooth trigger press and if you do it nice and smooth that snap cap will stay on top of the gun if you have a jerky trigger press exit that's gonna happen so if you have a jerky trigger press that that's going to move and it's going to fall off so if you get really good at that you can actually set it on top of the front sight post and that's gonna really show you if you have any deficiencies in your trigger press when you're shooting for precision shooting you have the time to be able to move it smoothly to the rear when we're practicing at home like this taking the time and having those conscious smooth repetitions will help build us into having a our finger will follow a path and when you have to shoot faster it'll follow that same path that you have burned into your muscle memory into your your trigger finger correct now there's one thing I want you to also talk about you guys is if the gun doesn't fit are you gonna get your finger on the trigger where it needs to be and will that affect your trigger press Beth why don't you start us off with that oh no doubt I remember I was shooting a very very small revolver and to engage the laser that was actually part of the system you had to have proper grip because there was a kind of a grip safety going on and my finger was curled all the way in I was almost trying to pull it with my knuckle it was uncomfortable my shots were terrible and it was very clear to me that even though I could shoot that gun it's probably not the right fit for me at all yeah very good information so guns could be two big guns can be too small it's gonna affect where your finger lies on that trigger and if that's not fit right you're never going to get a good smooth solid consistent trigger press so make sure again when you have the opportunity to let an instructor take a look at the gun and how it fits your hands so they can help you decide got the right gun the right fit so we've gone from stance to grip to sight alignment to sight picture to trigger control that what comes next breathing and honestly with this fundamental a lot of times I just tell people remember to do it okay so Justin can you demonstrate how breathing can affect where the bullet hits when you press the trigger yeah I can certainly do that so and again breathing comes into play when you're trying to have that super precise shot it's not always going to happen in a defensive situation it certainly can but it's not going to be the majority of the time it's for that super precise shot but what I'm gonna do is I'm an email here I'm gonna press the trigger alright so the triggers press and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to inhale and you're gonna see this rise and then I'm gonna exhale so you can see how much that affected my my site site picture I or my site alignment on the target when you breathe in it's gonna make the gun rise up when you exhale it's gonna go down I mean even at this distance it's it's about six so I mean that's that's pretty significant that can be the difference between a hit or a miss yeah so we're not asking we're not teaching people how to take a big gulp of air and hold their breath we're teaching them that once they find their natural point of aim and they breathe whether it's on the inhale or the exhale they'll figure out which one works best for them they have that respiratory pause before the trigger is pressed and the ROM goes downrange correct oh and I like that you said just pause and like best I just keep breathing if you stop breathing your eyesight is gonna go blurry your muscles they're gonna not have oxygen going to so you're gonna start developing a shake and it's just gonna make shooting that precise shot even harder yep Beth anything else to add on breathing that's basically it again unless you're going for that precision shot you should mostly just remember to do it just breathe naturally and find your own rhythm very good so Matthew and I were fortunate to go to gunsight together and one of the lessons the most powerful lessons that I took from gunsight was the next fundamental that I'm gonna ask you to introduce for us that's right we learned a lot about follow through and when we talk about shooting a lot of people say okay let's get a sight picture take the shot but what we learned at gun sight is how many sight pictures you should actually have with one shot and the answer to that question is two so for every every shot that you're taking you're gonna line up get your perfect sight picture sight alignment make sure that everything is on target you're gonna press the trigger and instead of stopping and looking over the gun to see if you hit the target you're going to make sure you get that follow up or that follow through and get another sight picture so this is very very important that we kind of instill this into our brain so we're not having bad habits of trying to see oh my gosh where did I hit the target we don't want to do that so follow-through allows you to kind of take a moment to ask those questions if you need to take a follow-up shot if you need to make any adjustments or other things like that yeah new shooters love to see where that bullet hit press the trigger and Justin did a pretty good job of an exaggerated look over the top of the sights right but do people have to actually move their head back and up to look over their height sites they can just look over they can take their focus off of the the target and the focus off of the front sight look over the top to see where the bullet landed and that habit there will cause you to be very very inaccurate in your shot groups will not be what you want them to be so I mean don't look for the target finish by following through look at the site make sure that you got everything lined up the right way so the rule of thumb if you press the trigger one time to sight pictures if you press it two times three sight pictures so you just over make time to press trigger you gotta add a sight picture right anything else to add Grayson yeah and this is we're finding a really good instructor is important if you seek out a good instructor and you're taking a class from them they're gonna be able to let you know usually if you can if you're gonna hit the target before you even press that trigger just by looking at your stance and your grip so you know have to be looking over the top of your sights seek out a good instructor and they're gonna let you know exactly what needs to change before you actually even start putting rounds on paper now these instructors we're talking about the ones that I introduced at the beginning of this video we're Beth and Justin have trained thousands of instructors you can find them you just go to USC CA comm slash training and then click on find an instructor and you'll see instructors that are actually teaching not only the concealed carry and home defense fundamentals course but you'll find the ones that are teaching the defense of shooting fundamentals course and that's the one you're gonna want to take once this whole it's everything back opens back up and you're allowed to be able to go to ranges and be in groups of people groups people that have a common interest which is to learn how to defend themselves with a handgun right so you SCC a.com slash training find an instructor that's where you'll find them so we've gone through the seven fundamentals of handgun marksmanship we went through stance grip sight alignment sight picture trigger control breathing and follow-through now again these were this is a 30,000 foot looked down this is a big overview on this stuff and these are the things you're going to want to practice at home but then get additional practice under the watchful expert eyes of firearms instructor now let's say we're going to go to the range and where we're ready to do this now we're gonna need to know how to load and unload that firearm correct so that's neat Justin why don't you demonstrate and baphu as you see opportunities here help guide people to what what we're gonna be doing so we have a revolver let's start with the revolver for the revolver people right so Justin why don't you demonstrate Beth why don't you talk him through this yeah sure for those who do have the revolver this is actually one of the reasons people choose revolvers they're fairly easy to load and unload there's not much to it what Justin's gonna do is he's gonna find that cylinder release and usually press that down it's usually some kind of a button or it kind of feels like it's sliding you're gonna press that you see that the cylinder pops open and now all those cylinders are right there for you to very easily insert your ammunition whether it's six round seven rounds eight depending on the kind of revolver that you have he'll just very easily turn the cylinder as you need to insert that next round until it is full and once that cylinder is full you can snap that back in place and you are ready to go it's that easy once you need to unload though that that's a little different from that semi-automatic as well because you're not gonna have that empty brass ejected as you shoot so you're gonna have to manually do that you're gonna have to take that out of the revolver so once again you're gonna press that cylinder release and you're gonna use the ejector rod which is that little piece that kind of stands out and you're gonna just push that downward maybe use a little gravity to help you and all that empty brass should come out very very easily or in this case the snap caps are coming out and that's pretty much all there is to the revolver unloading and loading or loading and unloading in whichever order you know what I want to point out and bet that was an awesome talk through I want to point out how Justin was following that rule don't point the gun at something that you don't intend to destroy so while he was working the loading and the unloading he made sure that his hands never crossed in front of the muzzle of that firearm so like he used his strong side hand to be able to manipulate the cylinder release and then he reached under the gun with the support hand to be able to press that cylinder out so and then that that those fingers are straight through that little space where the cylinder normally would be and then he can rotate the barrel that load the ammunition so it's a very simple engineering marvel here that revolver isn't it yeah and what's cool is there are tools that can help you load a little bit faster so there are speed loaders and something called a moon clip you can see I've got some snap caps actually in the moon clip right now and that makes it a little bit easier to basically this one's not full but I can load the whole thing at one time instead of individually so there are a couple tools out there to help you out yeah help you speed things up a little bit so revolver how about a semi-automatic so again Justin you can why don't you grab the semi-automatic and a magazine and talk everybody through the loading and then clearing of a semi-automatic yeah so let's get started with a semi-automatic so it's a little bit different so instead of putting rounds directly into the gun you're gonna first load them into a magazine so I've got some snap caps here Lok loaded into the magazine to load them make sure obviously you're putting the round in the right direction refer to your owner's manual will tell you exactly which way they go typically you can only get them in one way but some magazines do allow to put them in backwards you can load them by hand like this a lot of times though when you first get these magazines they are very stiff the springs in them are stiff so you may have to use a tool block is kind enough to send along this magazine loading tool what that allows you to do is push down on the around it compresses the spring and allows you to just slip under around in there so I know up Lulla makes one I know Beth she uses one of those to load her magazines so once you've got that loaded then what you do is you insert that into the firearm you notice I did that forcefully when you're operating these I see a lot of new shooters they're very like dainty with their firearms you're not going to break this thing it's it is made to contain a miniature explosion so you're not gonna hurt it then once that's in there what you're going to do is you want to forcefully pull this slide to the rear you're not gonna see me pull it back and then let it go that can cause a malfunction what you want to do is you want to pull it back forcefully and there we go now there's a round load in the chamber to empty it then what you're going to do is you're gonna press the magazine release here's the magazine release right here so you're gonna press that releases the magazine then what you're going to do is you're going to rack the slide to the rear you can see it spent out that snap the snap cap there and what this gun is unloaded right now but we like to double and triple-check things so what we're going to do is we're going to wrap it a couple of times and then pushing up on the slide lock lever right here so I'm gonna be pushing up on that and you can see now the slides lock back to the rear so I'm going to visually and physically inspect that chamber to verify that firearms clear and unloaded yeah if you have somebody with you you can have them visually and physically inspect it as well correct yeah absolutely and that's one thing we teach on the range is you know always takes two people to declare a firearm unloaded yeah and if you don't have two people John Lovell does a great job he taught me this a while back when he was working with us last year actually look away and then look back to the gun again - yeah yep so it goes like this and then just to verify look back and then look again just to make sure that you're not missing anything all right cool so that is how to load and unload both a revolver and a semi-automatic now what happens you know again we're doing this at home but we want to make sure that we help everybody understand what they're gonna be looking for when they do get to see a trainer trainers teach people how to deal with malfunctions don't they so let's start off first with revolver why don't you talk Justin through how to deal with a malfunction with a revolver absolutely you know as we were talking about there are small explosions happening in that gun so sometimes things can go wrong whether the ammunition is malfunctioning maybe it was user error maybe it was the gun itself another reason people do choose the revolvers it's typically easier to work through that malfunction so if Justin pressed the trigger and nothing happened all he would have to do is press the trigger again and in most cases that cylinder will revolve it'll be able to access the next round and it should be able to go ahead and go bang like you want it to if not for the revolver there could be more catastrophic failure happening there which means maybe the cylinder is off on the timing that's something a gunsmith or somebody really expert in the revolver world world would have to fix for you but in most cases another trigger press should be the way to clear that malfunction and get to the next round good good good good help right there about Justin let's go over quickly how to clear malfunction on the semi-automatic yeah absolutely so you got the semi-automatic here again we're using snap caps it's the same thing if you're shooting that firearm and you get a click when you're supposed to have a bang really easy with a semi-automatic all you're going to do is tap the mag to ensure that that seed in the gun a lot of times what happens is when people insert that they don't insert it hard enough so the slide isn't able to strip into your round of the gun so you want to ensure that's fully seated and what you're going to do is behind the ejection port you're gonna graphs the slide pull the rear just like you do when you load it and then you're good to go again the reason I say to grasp behind the ejection port is because if you're over the ejection port you then can create another malfunction so always keep your hand behind the ejection port that's keeping it simple so what what we wanted to do is show you how you can clear malfunction when you get the opportunity to get out there and get physical training they'll go they'll take a deeper dive on this for you and they'll help you understand the different types of malfunctions and what happens when your first attempt at clearing it doesn't work so they'll take you through that a little bit more Hey let's go into safe gun storage and staging so I'm gonna have Beth and Justin kind of talk you through and demonstrate a little bit about safe gun storage and staging and then we're gonna wrap this up Beth you want to start just probably George is probably a very important topic a lot of people again with those new guns you can keep them in the things that it came with you could lock up that case you could keep it in a place where it's not accessible to unauthorized users including children or if you're able to spend a little money on that that quality safe go do that it can be a big safe or it can be a small one like the one that Justin is demonstrating right now a biometric safe or RFID safe allows you to use a fingerprint or even a bracelet or a code or a key to get into that safe easily or you can do something as simple as like a cable lock like I have right here nothing to it it's it's a very simple construction a lot of people give those to you free it might even come with your gun this happens to come from project child safe and that's something to ensure the gun is not only empty and clear but it is locked so it is not usable at that moment of course that's storage if you need to get to your gun staging is what you really need to pay attention to and obviously that's different right Justin yeah it is different so staging is where you want the gun to be easily accessible so like if someone breaks in your home you be able to grab that gun within seconds and you can do so inside one of these biometric safes just the one thing for safety purposes that I like to stress on is if you're going to store this firearm loaded so if this this gun is loaded I don't want to place this directly in the in the safe just like in the condition it is just for that simple reason I talked about the grasp reflex earlier when you're talking about finger outside the trigger and so you've made the decision to shoot you don't want to be digging in there and like Eagle clawing this firearm so you want to make sure you've got you know at least something some holster that covers that trigger guard so right there perfect that's a good example if you don't have a holster like this maybe just bought the firearm and all you have is a safe cool we can work with that so we're gonna get the fire mount you want to store the magazine separately right so keep the magazine there have the gun with a slide lock to the rear have that placed in there the reason I like to have the slide lock to the rear is that is a good visual indicator that that firearm is unloaded and needs to be loaded before you deploy it in defensive shooting fundamentals we teach in the home simulation sometimes will put the firearm in the safe with the slide forward and a loaded magazine with an empty chamber and we explicitly tell our students you need to rack that firearm before it's able to be effective and in a stressful situation I can't tell you how many people forget to rack the slide before they engage the firearm so store the magazine separate with the slide lock to the rear okay so that was again a quick look at putting the gun away at home right more to come that being said you guys I want to I want to help you out a little bit here too so we talked about earlier about training resources that you can find training resources at USC CA comm slash training resources you also can find some of these training tools that Justin and Beth we're showing you here especially Justin the snap caps you can get those in the US CCA store the barrel blocks you can't but you can go to our good friends at barrel block and purchase those those come pretty cheap the cert pistol we do have a product that we've two with Mike Hughes from next level training Mike is an IPSec Grand Master man that guy couldn't run a gun and he credits that his skill set with the training he's done using that cert pistol and you guys have seen Mike shoot Wow right so Mike has done a really good project that we've called laser train and you can get that online training now here's a situation where you can train with a grandmaster shooter instructor with that cert pistol and you can get a really good deal on that too so if you go to USC see a comm and if you you can go and search the store for it if you don't find it in a store then just give us a call because it's a brand new product we just launched that shot show this year but it's an incredibly powerful product so I highly recommend that if you have an opportunity and you have a desire to really become a good defensive shooter check out laser the laser train product other than that you guys I want to wrap this up again like I was saying I want to say one more time that if you aren't not currently ause see a family a family member we want you to join today okay so if you do that we do have this really cool bonus going on at this time where you can get one of these Kershaw knives okay you can get one of the Kershaw knives with you Seca logo on the blade and then maybe even more importantly you can get this USC this bullet USB so if you unscrew the top part of it to see that it is a USB it's got 50 over 50 hours of educational and training material that you can use to build yourself to be an effective and efficient defensive handgun ER so just go to UNCC a comm for that and you'll be guided through that signup process so one more time thank you all for joining us allowing us to guide you through your journey to self-reliance we will see you next time thank you all my friends be healthy and be safe [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: USCCA

Views: 27,607

Rating: 4.8965516 out of 5

Keywords: uscca, Safer At Home, firearm safety, handgun fundamentals, handgun fundamentals 101, firearm maintenance, marksmanship fundamentals, defensive gun handling, gun staging, basic handgun fundamentals, gun safety, gun safety 101, handgun training, gun safety video, gun safety rules, firearm safety training, handgun training at home, gun training for beginners, home defense tips, firearms safety training, firearm training for beginners, firearms training for beginners

Id: 7MUPcmQsJ6s

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020