Self-Defense Trigger Control Training

One of the biggest things we have to deal within a class of defensive shooters. Once they've established the fundamentals of kinesthetic alignment and they're intuitive defensive shooting, is the refinement of their trigger control. Now, a lot has been written and a lot has been said about the mechanics of trigger control. And I think it's important to understand that I look at trigger control for defensive shooting very differently than I would for something like extreme precision at distance or a bulls-eye shooting type competition. When we look at defensive firearms, we have to understand that these triggers are not set up for extreme precision most of the time. Now, while you as an individual firearms owner may choose to have a firearm that is set up that way. Most of the off the shelf, typical defensive firearms and certainly the ones that I recommend, and most of our instructors recommend personal offense network, aren't gonna be set up for extreme precision. So we have to learn how to consistently control the trigger from shot to shot. And we wanna have as much consistency in the mechanics of the shooting as we do in the philosophy and the theory of the training and practice. Now, certainly working with training guns like these can be a great way to develop a consistent trigger press. And that's really the key. When it comes to self-defense shooting. We want you to have as consistent a trigger press as possible. And what that means is that we don't want you staging the trigger. Now, mechanically, it's also important to remember that we're going to want a trigger that only is pulled in one way on our defensive firearm. In other words, having something like a double action, single action trigger, or having one of these modern striker fired guns that we try to turn into a double action single action type trigger press is going to work against the concept of consistency. And let me explain why. I've got these two guns set up very differently. This one is set up with just one very smooth consistent trigger press. And if you watch my trigger finger, as I touch the trigger I'm not gonna take up any slack. And then when I start to press the trigger, I am gonna continually move until we hear the click signifying that the gun has gone off. And reset the trigger, reset the trigger and reset the trigger. Now, if we look at the way I've got this SIRT pistol set up and one of the nice things about a SIRT pistol is that, the trigger can be adjusted in many different ways to suit your training needs. Well, this one is set up with a very strong break between taking up the slack. In other words, staging the trigger and then actually firing the shot and breaking that shot off. And what we don't wanna get into the habit of is taking up the slack, waiting, and then snapping the shot. We want one smooth trigger press and it's very hard to get a smooth trigger press with this trigger unless I pull very fast. So if I were trying to get an extremely precise shot with this type of trigger, it would be harder unless I learned the very refined, very mechanical and I think sometimes very contrived technique of staging the trigger, waiting until everything is perfect and then snapping the shot off. So I wanna train with a gun. That's going to allow me to practice the smooth trigger press. And of course more often than not. I wanna be training live fire. Now, if we take a look at this revolver. Obviously all these guns have been unloaded here in this videotaping environment. We take a look at the trigger on this revolver. It's gonna be very much like that laser light training pistol in that it's long and consistent. I can start to pull and pull straight through start to pull and pull straight through. Now I could stage this trigger by taking up the slack, holding and then snapping. But again, that's a bulls-eye type, high-level precision target shooting technique not a defensive shooting technique. Now, if I take a look at this modern striker fired type gun, we'll see that there is a mechanical safety that has to be disengaged when I touch the trigger. But taking that mechanical safety off when I touch the trigger is very different from taking up some of the slack, when I touch the trigger. Again, I don't wanna have two different types of trigger presses. We don't wanna have one trigger press for when we quickly come out of the holster, drive out to full extension, touch and press and then a separate type of trigger pull when we have a higher level of precision shot where we would touch, take up the slack, hold, wait and then press at some point. And more often than not. When I see people doing this on the rain it's when we're simulating our headshots or maybe we're shooting at a more extreme distance. And what they end up doing is getting everything locked out and just about perfect they take up the slack they try to make everything super perfect. And we have to remember that in the defensive shooting posture and our lowered center of gravity, weight forward, probably elevated heart rate, probably elevated respiratory rate situation. We're never gonna have that perfect sight alignment sight picture, everything's still, let two thirds of your breath out and weight kind of thing that we might get in an upright target shooting posture or even in a kind of traditional offhanded one-handed kind of shooting position like this. Well, if we think about that position, we're in here with our weight forward, heavy breathing, trying to wait for that perfect sight alignment sight picture moment is probably something that's gonna be really hard to do. Especially if we start holding our breath and we start holding our breath while we're stage. Inevitably, we see people snap even under the pressure of simple things like competition or the training environment. So we don't wanna rely on that staging and snapping. We wanna be able to press after touching, very smoothly, straight through. Touch, press. And that doesn't matter if I'm pressing very quickly in a rapid fire situation, close range, high center chest shots, or if I'm pressing very slowly, maybe a higher percentage type shot where I'm gonna have to drive out get my sight alignment site picture, I've got an eye closed. Maybe there's a hostage situation. Maybe there's bystanders. Maybe I'm shooting at someone who's partially hidden behind cover. Whatever it is that I need to do to control deviation at a higher level, I am still gonna have exactly the same procedure of touching and then slowly pressing, but not stopping. Touching, slowly pressing straight through, not stopping. And again, we can look at one more type of different trigger here we have with another modern striker fired gun. This one doesn't have the obvious lever but there is a bend here that happens that's part of actually disengaging that mechanical safety. You can see that if I only touch the bottom of the trigger I can disengage that mechanical safety without the top of the trigger, moving against the spring. And that's what I wanna do. I wanna touch and then smoothly press straight through. So that's touch, smoothly press straight through. When the trigger resets again, press straight through back. I don't wanna be in a situation where I'm touching taking up the slack, holding against that wall and then slowly, smoothly pressing from there. As soon as I touch, I start my trigger press. Sometimes it'll be fast. Sometimes it will be slow. Self-defense trigger control is about consistency. It's about doing one thing at a varying speed depending on how much deviation control I need. If I'm doing rapid close range shots to the high center chest as most defensive shootings are likely to be, it's going to be a smooth press that's repeated very, very quickly. If I'm going to be doing that higher level deviation control shooting, it's gonna be a smooth press that is exactly the same. It isn't interrupted. It's at a consistent pace. But it's going to be as slow as I need it to be to maintain the amount of precision required by the shot.