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[Rant ON] Smith & Wesson is playing fast and loose with the Performance Center name. It means nothing anymore. Except a higher price that you expect something for and don’t get it. And that comes from a Smith & Wesson fanboy. But right is right and wrong and is wrong. If you think you are getting something for that PC logo… you better check it out. Or if the money doesn’t matter to you; go for it. I had a PC C.O.R.E. that had the worst trigger I have ever seen on an M&P; and I’ve owned several. After them having me send it back twice (the second time at the direction of the Head of the Firearms Division) and them sending it back telling me nothing was wrong; I had to buy a new Apex Trigger and install it for the gun to even be usable. I had written to both the President and head of the Firearms Division at S&W and told them if that gun was ever in the Performance Center it was just on a cart passing through. Within days of mailing the letters I got a call from a CS guy that told me had just left the Firearms Directors office and was told to fix the problem. He told me to send the gun in with his attention on it. He said I didn’t have to send a letter or anything, he had talked with the head of the Performance Center and they would fix it. I did that and he sent it back with a note saying nothing was wrong with it. He showed me who was running things. So I just bought the new trigger and did it myself. Will I still buy Smith & Wesson firearms? Sure they have treated me right all my life. The azzhat I was dealing with had something to prove; and he did. But just look at their website; most everything’s PC anymore. If I ever need to buy a PC gun again (Doubtful); I’ll buy it from a local dealer where I can check it out first. [Rant OFF]

One must accept the dangers of logging in!

Don't poke the beast... we will all be out of money soon enough...

For what it's worth I like the small of the back holster. I'm a big guy in both frame and fat. I find that a SOTB carried at 5 keeps the grips out of my tender flesh.

I thought about that too but my full time job uniform is 30 lbs and hot as heck . When I am not working I wear the least amount of clothes I have to. I may try the bicycle inner tube.

Sounds kinda cheesy, but bicycle inner tubes cut to fit the grip work. Ive done this in the past. The rubber gives a good grip too. Wont last forever but it works., and a whole lot cheaper than grip sleeves made commercially!

This^ I've also thought of having custom holsters made to include a piece of leather between the grip and my flank.

For what it's worth I've called shooting while not really aiming "instinct shooting" for a long time. As a young'n I've done it with guns and a bow, and with the latter I made a pretty incredible shot through the heart of a running rabbit at about 25 yards. I admit that I don't practice it because it goes against the grain of my training in the Marine Corps. Sight alignment; sight picture kind of gets driven into your skull, and it carried into my time as a LEO in the 90's. Training of shooters became a lot more "advanced" during that time, but in the 90's it was more about reputation than anything else. Kind of, "If you survived a shoot-out then you're qualified to teach others" type of thing. I never thought being lucky qualified you for much. I was out of shooting for a very long time. Now that I'm on acreage and have built my bullet stop I plan to do a lot more shooting. Since I have a 59 year old's eyes I figure that I need to revert back to instinct shooting and practice it.

I started wearing undershirts.

Now the flip side of that is that people often will wait to see a PERFECT sight picture instead of taking what is GOOD ENOUGH and pressing the shot off. If we are talking a human torso at 5 yards we can argue that as long as you see the gun surrounded by target then you are good to go. In fact I will argue that once you have internalized a directional drawstroke and smooth trigger press you can deliver those shots with your eyes closed and still hit them SOMEWHERE in the torso because your body will drive the gun in the manner you have trained (or not) it to do so. From there it is simply a matter of not jerking the gun off target with your trigger press. We can argue that this crude form of aiming works adequately out to the distance that the slide is still slightly thinner than the target. The only fly in that ointment is that shots we are willing to take in public with the potential for misses hitting bystanders are probably going to be delivered a bit more conservatively than we are willing to take those same type shots on a paper or steel target a range with a dirt berm backstop. If you are taking an extra momentary (maybe .25 second) pause to guarantee a smooth trigger press you really have the time to see the sights. There are many ways to aim a gun that do not require sights being seen clearly. In fact I actually wrote and teach a class called Alternative Indexing Methods that some members here have taken. But most of those started as "workarounds" for low light or shooting while moving or close proximity to the target. All things being equal a stationary traditional sight picture is going to give the best quality hits over the widest range of circumstances. But just because you are using the sights does not mean you have to be slow.

Let us define terms a little better. There is a big difference between a picture perfect sight picture that you would use for slow fire bullseye at 25 yards and merely seeing sights super imposed over the target as you look "through" the sights at a torso sized target at 10 yards. There is a big difference in hard front sight focus with a blurry target versus a hard target focus with a blurry gun versus a hard focus on the target with the gun NOT in your visual cone. I talk about this in every class. I talk about "not using the hood ornament to steer the car". You simply park the car and you will see the hood ornament in your peripheral view and if you NEED to look at the ornament to guarantee the car is centered up in an especially tight parking spot then look at the ornament. For those not following, the car is the pistol and the hood ornament is the front sight. The more you practice drawing and driving the gun (straight up and straight out) to the target the more likely you are to deliver it to where it needs to be. After doing that about 5000 times looking at the sights you will have convinced your brain that you are doing it correctly and now you can largely omit the looking for the sights part on close (inside 7 yards) shots. Just focus on the target and drive the gun there and smoothly press the trigger. Not necessarily "slowly" but smoothly. But whether you choose to look for the sights or not they are still THERE. If your presentation (drawstroke) drives the gun to where your master eye is looking then if you NEED to take a quick peek at the sights to VERIFY correct alignment then shift your focus to them for a nanosecond. You can also pre load your visual focus to the spot where the sights will be and now as soon as you see that super imposed on the target and you get the gun to the appropriate level of extension you finish the trigger press. Obviously the closer the target the less verification is needed. And the farther the target the more verification is needed to guarantee it is pointed exactly where you need it. One issue is that we don't all speak the same language and "close" means one thing to one person and "far" means something different. Also the SIZE of the target is somewhat important in the equation. If we are shooting at a 3" circle at 7 yards that requires more of a sight focus than a 9x16" rectangle at 7 yards requires. Also what is the penalty for a miss? A bad score or a bystander being hit? Those considerations are going to drive your amount of verification you are willing to forego for speed. Now lets talk about speed...your eye can actually see AT LEAST 220 images per second. So it is in fact possible to see your sights at speed and detect whether they are aligned appropriately for the shot or not. Back in the day (1920s) when Fairbairn and Sykes were codifying their point shooting methods they did so because the pistols they issued (Colt 1911A1 and Colt 1908 .380) had nubby little sights that were hard to see at all at night and it wasn't much better during the day. Fast forward to now with fiber optic sights and even night sights that are a lot more visible it is now possible to shoot at speed AND still visually monitor the sights. When Dave Spaulding did a class in Dayton TN back in 2015 we were discussing point shooting vs getting a peek at the sights and how it is not really that much slower to see the sights vs not seeing them. To demo this he asked me to step up and from 7 yards draw (from concealment) and fire 1 shot . The shot was a "d" zone peripheral hit in .72 of a second. Then he asked me to do it again looking for the sights. That was a .82 of a second hit in the aorta (we shot an anatomical target with internal organs visible) . This is obviously a sampling of 1 but the point is that the difference was 1/10th of a second and the hit was substantially better. One was a wound in fatty tissue and the other punched a hole in the pump.... So what am I saying here? If you are accepting any hit any where on the full size human target as OK then sights are largely irrelevant inside 10 yards. If you are trying to keep them within a 6" circle in the high chest then you will probably need to see something to insure the muzzle is pointed where you need it to be pointed when you discharge the shot. The sights are ALWAYS on the gun...now it is just a matter of you LOOKING for them as you press the trigger. Can it be done at speed? Absolutely. I saw a sight picture on EVERY SINGLE SHOT I took at the Rogers Shooting School. Those disappearing 8" plates at 7-20 yards require enough verification that nobody has ever passed it point shooting. I scored Advanced with a 115 score. The baseline drill that you need to be able to do to determine whether you are ready for that class is to be able to hit an 8" plate at 7 yards from the ready in .50 of a second....and it gets harder from there....yet EVERY single shot I fired I saw a sight picture because I LOOKED for it. Not only do we need to be able to shoot fast we need to be able to SEE fast. And that requires practice. https://www.rogersshootingschool.com/index.php At Gabe White's Pistol Shooting Solutions in Waverly TN last October I had a sight picture (of some type) on EVERY single shot during the standards tests. The body shots did not require quite as fine a sight picture as the head shots did so I focused harder on the sights on the head shots and just "noticed" them on the body. On the Bill Drill I saw the sights on every single shot of the 6 shot string and delivered them in the 2.08 to 2.14 second range from concealment. On the Failure to stop (2 body 1 head) I shot 1.58 and 2.00 again from concealment . On the Immediate Incapacitation (2 to head) it was 1.77 and 1.78 and on the split Bill Drill (4 body 2 head) it was 2.29 and 2.51 . All of these were at 7 yards and all drawing from the concealment of a polo shirt. Could I have shot a little faster if I were not looking at the sights? Maybe but the small increase in speed I might gain would be detrimental to the accuracy required and the lower quality hits would have outweighed the speed gained. As it stands, using the sights and shooting as fast as I could while still monitoring them got me Turbo Pin #8. http://www.gabewhitetraining.com/performance-awards/ Now let us discuss accuracy required. At Rogers they are 8" plates. In the case of the Gabe White class that was an IPSC A zone in the body and a 4" circle in the head. Pretty much the same areas that have the greatest effect at making people stop what they are doing. If we essentially doubled up the body target and allowed A and/or C zone hits to count then I might have cut a few tenths off of each string and if we had accepted the whole head instead of just the 4" circle it could have been shot faster. But the faster you are delivering the "down zero" hits the faster you will be delivering ALL hits. And whether you SEE the sights or not is largely a matter of choice. They are there if you choose to look for them. Now do I have to have a "picture perfect" -equal amounts of light and hard focus on the top of the front sight post -sight picture for a body shot at 5 yards? No I just look "through" the sights (or through the gun) or over the top of the gun and shoot about as fast as I can draw and drive it to extension...which I'd say is still pretty quick. On the other hand if it is a head shot at 10 yards with bystanders in the background then that is going to require a better quality sight picture than the 5 yard body shot with a brick wall as a backstop would require. Can we get by with a less than perfect sight picture? ABSOLUTELY....within the proper distances and assuming the size of the target does not require as much verification. Can we see the sights and still shoot at speeds nearing the maximum of human performance? YES...if we actually PRACTICE that. And if we include rifles in the discussion we can get away with a less than ideal sight picture at much farther distances than we can with a pistol due to the multiple points of contact and the longer sight radius. But it is not 1925 anymore and if you are going to drive the gun to full extension (or even 3/4) then you might as well take advantage of that bumpy thing at the end of the slide and take a quick peek at it to guarantee your hits.

Two to the body and a head shot. Look at where your body shots are. Did your head shot hit the head? Everything matters. Will the two body shots with your high velocity FMJ 9mm or your .380 make him unwilling or unable to fire his weapon? If he’s your average criminal robbing you; probably. If he’s jacked up on drugs or has a mental problem; maybe not. Will the head shot stop him; I would bet on it. Once again… Everything matters. In a shooting scenario every little detail impacts the outcome. If your carry gun fails to fire because it is a bargain basement POS, or because you have never fired it, or because you can’t make it fire in the allotted time, or if your opponent has better equipment than you, is better trained than you, and is not bothered by worrying about what is legal and justified; shot placement will have no impact on your death. Absolutely. An Austin Police Officer shot an active shooter 104 yards away one handed while holding two horses with the other hand, using a S&W M&P40. That’s not good shooting that’s a hand of God miracle. I wonder how many people read that and had no idea what a feat that was. That shot killed the shooter before he could kill anyone. (Not saying he didn't use sights, just saying some shots are amazing.)

The fundamental issue to me is defining how accurate is accurate enough at the given distance. Is hitting a paper plate good enough, or is a 3x5 card more appropriate, or are we trying to put multiple bullets in the same hole? For me, "combat accuracy" with a pistol is somewhere in the paper plate to 3x5 card range. That being the standard, point shooting with some awareness of the front sight is much faster while accurate enough. I have to use the sights to achieve acceptable accuracy around 15 yds. Point shooting with acceptable accuracy at 50 yds is darn impressive.

I stumbled into this a few years ago shooting IDPA and USPSA. For me it was purely that my eyes couldn’t keep up with my hands yet I was still getting good hits on targets, if I took the time to bring something into focus... I’d be there all day. Most people don’t realize how good they can shoot without even using the sights. With that being said, it needs to be close range and with a pistol they have shot a LOT. I’m gonna steal a line from bersa.... jmho

Have over 150 Shorts now :-) That is all Dad used, he lived on the edge of town, didn't want to draw attention when taking out the raccoon, possum and starling that came on the property. Thanks for sharing some family history and ammo info.

A lady walks into court, accused of beating her husband with his guitars. The judge asks "First offender?" She said "No, first the Gibson, then the Fender." Ah Cha Cha

Pimptastic.

Well a 4 inch barrel is a plus. At some point they all look the same....

I could not pick it out of a striker fired pistol line up. Hope it is a good one.

Never heard it refered to as "beating your rifle stock before"..lol