I'm home from the second day of the two-day defensive pistol course and I'm very pleased with my performance. In retrospect, I think I was just waaaay too tight yesterday afternoon.
I resolved to be looser this morning and I was pleasantly surprised at how tight my shot groupings were and how much easier everything seemed.
We shot about 300-350 rounds yesterday afternoon and today and I am now confident that I'm a greater danger to bad guys than I am to myself.
The instructor - a captain with the local sheriff's department who is also an instructor at Jeff Cooper's top-ranked combat pistol school, Gunsite, in Arizona - is a superb teacher. I kept seeing parallels between this course and the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's RiderCourse in terms of coaching tips and range exercises.
If I were still teaching the MSF course, I'd borrow heavily from this experience, including the idea that, "In a crisis, you don't rise to the occasion. You default to your level of training."
It's an insightful corollary to the idea that self-taught is not taught at all.
Anyhow, I have a much clearer idea of my capabilities with a handgun and a better understanding of how far I have to go to be really proficient. Fortunately, one of my cop friends lives within a mile of my house and has invited me and my wife to shoot on his range anytime we like.
I ended up with about 200 rounds of .45 ACP left over, so I'll probably take him up on his offer soon.
I was also pleased to find that the custom molded earplugs that I bought for motorcycling do a splendid job on the firing range, eliminating the need for bulky headphone-style hearing protectors.
My wife spent this afternoon at a baby shower for my daughter-in-law. She just phoned me from the road to give me all the details on how badly my ex behaved. I'm glad I had a good excuse not to be there.
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