Self-Defense Accuracy

Most handguns shooters spend countless hours trying to get the smallest possible group in the 10-ring on a target. Many of us are practically obsessed with accuracy, but accuracy and self-defense accuracy are quite different.


In most self-defense situations, an attacker is anywhere from point-blank range out to about 30 feet away. If attacked in your home, you’ll never shoot at a longer distance than the length of your largest room.


In that type of situation, you will not have time to line up your sights, take a deep breath, let half of it out and squeeze the trigger. In many ways, self-defense shooting is similar to shotgunning in that it is “flash shooting.” You lock your eyes on the target as you line up the gun and pull the trigger until you stop the attack.


This type of shooting does not lend itself to pretty groups on paper, but that’s not the point. The point of self-defense shooting is protecting life and limb. All you have to be able to do is consistently hit a 1-foot square representing center-of-mass on a target at a variety of ranges out to about 30 feet. That is self-defense accuracy.


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2 Responses to Self-Defense Accuracy

Rich Carpenter wrote:
February 01, 2011

Practice makes perfect! Why carry, if you think otherwise.

yarco wrote:
January 26, 2011

1/ I'll be not surprised if my accuracy in real self-defence situation shows 2-3 times worse than the usual one. Reasons? Stress, movement, injury, light conditions etc., all together. Considering this, I think the "1-foot square" training accuracy multiplied by 2 or 3 will be not enough - for partially covered/shielded target, for head-shot, for 15y target, for ... 2/ Nobody knows what type of self-defence horror is planned in his/her personal fate. What if just one aimed shot at 15y will be 'offered' to YOU? No time to say "Sorry I didn't train this" in such situation. That's why I prefer to train with different targets on different distances to learn to balance accuracy with speed. (Let's say targets sized from 3in to 1ft and distances from 3 to 25 yards.)