Most of us firearms types are gear heads. We have a problem called Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). We buy stuff for our guns just because some YouTuber claims it will make us shoot better, faster, stronger. Like the 1970’s show The Six Million Dollar man, with a bit of high tech, we will be better, faster, stronger.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you are only going to be a better shooter if you invest in one specific thing.
What’s that thing?
yeah, you want to be better than a Stormtrooper? You gotta do a lot of Pew Pew. I’ve been shooting since 1985. Pistols, Rifles, Submachineguns, Machineguns, Tank Main Guns … yeah, I’ve shot a lot of stuff.
Yep, that’s me, it’s 1987, and that’s a big ass bullet … like I said, I’ve shot a lot of stuff.
The thing is, do you want to be better every day? Cause the gear isn’t actually going to make you better. In spite of the laser range finder, gun stabilization, thermal sights, etc … the gunner on that tank still had to get a good sight picture, a steady grip, and a good trigger squeeze.
After all those years of shooting, I discovered that I could still improve without feeding my Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
Everyone has been told they need to dry fire. But dry fire is, to be honest, fucking boring. Well, it used to be.
My wife got me a MantisX X10 Elite system for Christmas. This thing works on pistols, rifles, shotguns, and my daughter’s pink bow! I mean, it’s that awesome. It has a sensor that you connect to any of the above, then you connect it an app on your phone. Then you do training sessions in the app. Like draw from holster, primary hand only shooting, open training, hostage training, and much more.
You can do dry fire and live fire training. Most of my training is dry fire so far over the last 4 weeks. I have done one round of live fire to bench mark, and then we will see how 4 weeks of dry fire training have changed things.
Here’s what I’ve seen so far. First, dry fire is fun again. Second, I am improving my dry fire. Third, I want to train every day.
Data Is The Bomb
Here’s a couple of the data outputs I get from Mantis.
This image shows my pistol movement … blue is before the shot, yellow is during the trigger press, and red is the recoil
This shows holster draw analysis
This shows an analysis of trigger press problems
Gear Acquistion
well, it turns out that a bit of new gear can make a big difference. Get yourself something like Mantis rather than an expensive red dot or laser.
Why? Simple. You want to shoot better, the key to it is grip, sight picture, and most crucially, trigger press. And a fancy red dot won’t fix that at all.