There are many things you can do to practice shooting from home. Even if you don’t live in a rural area where you can shoot from your back yard, or if regulations and laws where you live prevent you from doing so. In this article, we will take a look at some of the things you can do from home that will aid you in sport shooting.
Dry Firing
When it comes to firing your rifle or pistol, many professionals and avid target shooters dry fire to ensure they are using proper techniques.
To ensure that dry firing will not damage your firearm, first, check the manual of your weapon you want to train with. Typically, newer firearms are safe to dry fire, but old and rare firearms should not be, as replacement parts may be hard to find.
Rimfire firearms are also not great contenders for dry firing, as the rimfire is designed to strike the rim of a casing, when empty this can cause the firing pin to hit the wall of the chamber, damaging and breaking it.
Even though modern firearms are deemed safe to dry-fire, doing it thousands of times will wear out the firearms quicker, meaning that you should remember to have shorter maintenance intervals to take proper care of your firearm. If you intend to dry-fire your weapon to practice regularly, another option is to consider getting a cartridge specifically designed for dry firing. However, depending on your firearm type, it might not be as user friendly and reloading might take extra time.
Dry firing is great for learning exactly when the trigger breaks on your firearm and helps determine if you are flinching. Flinching and other bad habits can be difficult to observe when firing live ammunition and will become more apparent to you when there isn’t any bang or flash.
As with everything firearms-related, safety first. Check your firearms to ensure they are not loaded, then double-check, and finally, triple-check to ensure there isn’t a live round in the chamber and that the magazine is empty. Remove the magazine altogether.
The best part about dry firing as a training aid is that it’s free and considerably improves your shooting. Some basic things to keep in mind when you are ready to dry-fire your firearm:
1. Maintain solid control of your weapon, and stress perfection
2. Align your sights
3. Aim
4. Try not to finch
5. Once ready, pull the trigger
The goal of dry firing is to build muscle memory. If you are dry firing at a blank wall without any bullseye, this will help you train the pure technique. Since there is no target to focus on, you will have no temptation to make the ideal sight alignment. Instead, you will focus more on the stability of the weapon and trigger release.
The best time to dry fire is right after a live fire because your muscle memory is still fresh, and the muscle can remember the exact positions and are also more likely to remember the mistakes and try to avoid them.
As dryfiring right after a live-fire might not be possible at home for most people, we recommend dryfiring for about 15 minutes a day at a time when you feel productive and generally good. Make this a part of your routine and you will start to notice considerable improvements in your performance.
Laser Trainers
There are many laser trainers on the market today that can aid shooters in honing their skills.
Originally lasers were used to help boresight firearms to ensure proper sight alignment, but it soon became apparent that they were also great as a training aid to see what kind of movement was occurring during aiming and the trigger pull, with the laser jumping or dancing due to the slightest movements.
While these laser target setups are by no means cheap, they are an invaluable aid when it comes to marksmanship training while you are at home or don’t have the option to shoot at a range. Over time these laser systems can pay themselves off by saving on the cost of ammunition.
Pellet or Airsoft Guns
If you live in a place where you can use pellet or airsoft guns on your property, it can be a good idea to use them for target shooting practice.
In many cases, your mistakes will be amplified by shooting something like an airsoft gun due to the slower velocity, making them less forgiving if your flinch or are off-target.
If you live in a rural area and have enough space in your household, place paper targets where appropriate and start your training. But remember about safety and start shooting if you are absolutely sure that no one is around.
You will be surprised over time how much this aids in honing muscle memory and shooting skills, and you will increasingly be able to acquire targets faster, shoot smoother, and hone in your trigger skills. It will also be a good way how to work on your posture.
Reloading
If you are a practical competitive shooter, you can also practise reloading magazines. Either using real or dummy magazines. You can empty and reload a new magazine as you would on a range. This will become your muscle memory and increase your firemars reload speed. It will also ensure that you do it smoothly and get the magazine in the firearm precisely the first time with no fumbling.
Conclusion
You do not always have to go to a range to practice the fine details of the shooting. A lot of it can be practised from your home especially in these times. Without a doubt, adding additional training methods to your existing shooting training routine will aid you in the long run and will make you a better shooter.