If you have a gun with a particularly horrendous trigger action, especially one which has a sudden increase in weight followed by a sudden decrease just before the sear releases, staging the trigger may be the only method to get acceptable accuracy from the gun. This, however, is just a band-aid on the problem, with the real solution being to either get the revolver fixed or sell it.
Learning double action helps all shooting
You may have heard the old saw that becoming a good revolver shot will make you a better shooter in general. I believe that to be true, but no one has ever explained to me why it’s so.
Learning to manage the heavy, long double action really doesn’t seem to have much in common with the light, short actions of autoloaders, yet alone rifles and shotguns. It could be argued that the need to hold the revolver steady against a significant amount of trigger manipulation force teaches us to hold all guns steady. It might be said that learning to keep the sights aligned on target is the key to all shooting, and it is, but I still don’t think it’s the reason.
After watching students in various classes shooting revolvers, autoloaders, and even rifles, I’ve come to the conclusion that the key skill that all good revolver shooters learn is trigger return. It’s the skill that translates to other guns and shooting and is incredibly important to all of them.
Take rifle shooting, for instance. Most rifle shooters, at least from my observations, release the trigger immediately as the sear breaks and the shot is ignited. As I mentioned above, it’s possible to release the trigger and slightly disturb the sight alignment while the bullet is still in the barrel. This results in the round being thrown off target – the amount being dependent on just how much the gun was moved. Teaching the rifle shooter to hold the trigger back for a half second or so after the round fires almost invariably improves their precision. That’s because by not allowing the trigger finger to move until after the bullet clears the muzzle, the gun stays in alignment with their target. I’ve seen this happen with several shooters in every rifle class I’ve ever taught.
A revolver shooter who wants to shoot his wheelgun efficiently has to, by necessity, master the art of trigger return without sight movement. If practiced as I’ve described, the trigger return doesn’t result in the sights being moved off target even though the return is started almost instantaneously. If this same shooter takes that behavior and applies it to his rifle (or single action autoloading pistol), he’ll find that his sights aren’t disturbed during bullet travel. The result is just like holding the trigger back.
My contention is that it’s the mastery of the trigger return, unconscious though it may be, which enables a good revolver shooter to shoot any gun well. It’s also the basis for the statement that good trigger reset is at least half of the task of shooting a revolver well.
As the hammer starts to move, restrain it with your shooting hand thumb. Take your finger off the trigger, as that will re-engage the passive trigger safety built into all modern revolvers. Allow the hammer to continue to move slowly. As it starts to pinch your support thumb, move it up and out of the way of the hammer.
Decocking the revolver
While this book is aimed at double action revolver shooting, it is conceivable that sooner or later you’ll cock your revolver to use it in single action. While I rarely find a need to do so, I’ll admit that it makes shooting beyond a hundred yards or so a bit more consistent.
What if you cock the gun but don’t shoot it? It’s then necessary to decock the gun, and you should be at least passingly familiar with the proper way to do it.
By decocking in this manner you’ll dramatically reduce the chance of a negligent discharge. Go slowly, pay attention to what you’re doing, and keep the gun pointed in a safe direction!
Strong, mechanically efficient grasp is key to good double action shooting.
Shooting Accurately in Double Action
Shooting a double action revolver accurately really isn’t all that difficult, once you know how to do it and give it some directed practice. In this chapter we’re going to put together what we’ve learned about sight picture/alignment and trigger control to make accurate double action shooting easier.
Start with a good foundation
By now you should understand that trigger control is the most important part of shooting the revolver. Sight alignment and picture are relatively easy and don’t really require much practice; once you know what a proper sight picture is, you have it. It requires no physical practice to remember.
Poor trigger control, on the other hand, will destroy even the most precise sight picture. If the gun wanders off target during either compression or reset, the deviation of your bullets will increase. (That’s a polite way of saying that you won’t hit what you’re aiming at!) It’s trigger control that makes the difference between hoping you hit your target and knowing that you can hit it.
Before proceeding, make sure that you’ve read and understand the preceding chapter on mastering the double action trigger. It’s important that you be able to manipulate the heavy, long trigger without moving the gun around. If you can’t, do some targeted dry fire. As I’ve mentioned, it shouldn’t take a lot of dry fire to cement these skills, as long as you’re paying attention to what you’re doing.
(Dry fire isn’t an activity that can be done while you watch television. To do it right, to get any real lasting benefit, you have to concentrate on the act and pay attention to what you’re doing. Done this way, it takes very few dry fire repetitions to cement the skill. Done with watching the distraction of Spongebob Squarepants, it might take years. It’s your choice.)
Start from the top: a solid grasp is essential to double action shooting. Remember that you have a trigger that is at minimum four times what the gun weighs, and the only way to keep the force applied to the trigger from moving the gun is a strong grasp. How strong? I coach my students to grasp the gun as tightly as they possibly can, until the gun starts to shake from muscle tremors, then back off the pressure just enough to stop the trembling. The resulting grasp should feel extremely solid, as if the gun and your hands were carved out of a single piece of granite.
I suggest applying equal pressure with both hands. There are those who suggest that the support hand apply more pressure than the shooting hand, but this leads to an inconsistency when shooting one-handed. If you’re accustomed to the shooting hand having less pressure, you’ll have to dramatically increase the pressure to shoot one-handed effectively. In essence, you’re learning two different grasps. Keep things consistent, apply the same pressure with both hands, and whether you’re shooting with both or only one you’ll have a predictable hold on the gun.
Compress and release the trigger without steering the gun in any direction. Pay attention particularly to the smooth, predictable release. You should be able to do several dry fired trigger strokes without moving the sights off alignment with the target.
Once those things have been accomplished, it’s time for live fire. But there is still a psychological barrier to be crossed, one which trips up a lot of people (your author included): attempting to get just the perfect sight alignment before hurriedly stroking the trigger. It’s an accuracy killer, it’s common, and there is a way to banish it forever.
