Getting Familiar Before Going Live
In Part 1, we worked through what my friend already owned, talked about her philosophy of use, and eventually found a firearm that fit her well for the role she wanted it to fill. Once the new PCC finally arrived, the next step was not to head straight to the range. The first step was getting her acclimated with it; that meant set up, fit and most important, learning functions while removing as many unknowns as possible. This is all well before introducing live ammunition.
There’s a lot going on the first time someone handles a new firearm. New controls, terms, movements, and eventually range commands and live fire. Trying to learn all of that in one go is too overwhelming for someone who has zero concept of these things.
The Parts Bin
Like most shooting enthusiasts, we each have a bin or two tucked away somewhere full of extra parts, optics, mounts, lights, slings, and miscellaneous pieces left over from other projects. Keeping all of that around looks less like hoarding and more like smart business when a day like this comes along.
Before buying a pile of new accessories, we scavenged a red dot from another rifle she already owned. I donated one of my (many) spare lights, and the only thing we actually had to buy was a single-point sling. As we mounted everything, we adjusted the position of each piece so it worked for her ergonomically and functionally. We looked at the height of the optic, how the sling would carry, whether the controls were comfortable to reach, and whether anything interfered with the way she naturally held the firearm.
This is one of those areas where a few minutes of adjustment makes a huge difference. The goal wasn’t to make the firearm look cool (although, as established in Part 1, looking cool remains important). The real goal was to make everything simple, comfortable, and repeatable.
Once the optic was mounted, a laser bore sight got us reasonably close to a zero. A bore sight is no substitute for actually zeroing with live ammunition, but it gets things in the neighborhood so the first shots at the range are more useful. The real zero will happen in Part 3. For now, we just wanted everything mechanically set up and ready to go, and once it looked good and felt good, we moved on to what I considered the most important part of the session.
What Condition Is the Firearm In?
Before presentation drills, trigger presses, or anything else, she needed to become comfortable determining the condition of the firearm. Every single time. Even when you’re sure, and especially when you’re sure.
Live ammunition wasn’t part of this session at all. We used snap caps and inert training rounds, and I changed the condition of the firearm between repetitions. Sometimes there was an inert round in the magazine, sometimes there was one in the chamber, and sometimes there was nothing. Her job wasn’t to guess. Her job was to check, and then check again.
We repeated the process over and over, and I stopped counting somewhere around twenty repetitions. That might sound excessive, but repetition is exactly the point. I didn’t want her treating the process as a complicated sequence she had to remember. I wanted checking the firearm to start becoming automatic. Pick it up, verify its condition. Someone hands it to you, verify its condition. Set it down and pick it back up, verify its condition. It doesn’t matter that you checked it thirty seconds ago. Check it again.
Learning How It Works
Once she was comfortable determining the condition of the firearm, we moved into basic function, again using only inert ammunition. We covered the controls, the magazines, how the action worked, and what she should expect when manipulating the firearm. The important part here wasn’t speed. It was understanding.
When someone is excited about a new firearm, there’s a natural pull to jump straight into shooting. But if the shooter is still thinking “which button does what?”, adding recoil, noise, live ammunition, and range commands doesn’t make the learning process easier. It makes it harder. So we stayed at the house and worked through it slowly. She loaded magazines with snap caps, manipulated the firearm, checked its condition, reset, and did it again. And again. And again.
By this point we’d been working for more than an hour, and that was intentional. The goal wasn’t to cram as much material as possible into one afternoon. It was to make the important things familiar enough that they won’t feel brand new when we get to the range.
Only after all that time on setup, condition checks, and basic function did we start working on presentation drills and trigger presses. Even then, the focus stayed on slow, deliberate repetition. Nothing needed to be fast, and nothing needed to look impressive. Good habits come first, and speed can come later.
That’s probably one of the biggest mistakes people make when learning anything involving a firearm. They watch experienced shooters move quickly and assume speed is the skill. It isn’t. Speed is generally the result of familiarity, efficiency, and repetition, and trying to move fast before those exist usually just means doing something poorly at a higher rate of speed.
Knowing When to Stop
After a while, I could tell she was getting tired, and that matters. There’s a point in any training session where more repetitions stop being productive. Attention wanders, movements get sloppy, and the student isn’t really absorbing what you’re trying to teach anymore.
We’d already accomplished what we set out to do. The firearm was set up and the equipment fit her. She understood the basic controls, had repeatedly practiced verifying the condition of the firearm, had worked through basic manipulation with inert ammunition, and had started on presentation and trigger presses. That was plenty for one day, so we stopped.
Before she left, I gave her a pile of snap caps and some homework: practice, practice, practice. Nothing complicated, just continuing to build familiarity with the equipment and reinforce what we’d covered, using the same safe, unloaded practice environment we’d established during the session. A few focused repetitions on a regular basis are worth far more than one marathon session followed by three months of nothing. I want the firearm to start feeling less like a new piece of equipment and more like something she understands, because that’s exactly where I want her before we add live ammunition.
Preparation Before Performance
The entire point of Part 2 was preparation. We could have mounted the optic, tossed some ammunition in a range bag, and gone shooting. But then her first live-fire session would also have been the first time she was trying to remember the controls, the first time manipulating the firearm under pressure, the first time hearing range commands, and the first time putting it all together. Why stack all of those problems on top of each other?
Instead, we separated them. First, find the right firearm. Then learn the firearm. Then shoot the firearm. It’s a slower process, but I think it’s a much better one.
What’s Next: Part 3
Next week we head to the range, where we’ll finally zero the optic properly, introduce live fire, and start working through drills. The interesting part won’t simply be whether she can hit the target, though. I want to see how much of this session carries over once recoil, noise, live ammunition, and range commands enter the picture.
Part 1 was about finding the right firearm. Part 2 was about making it familiar. Part 3 is where we find out what all that preparation was worth.
