Carry gun evaluation drills?

General Firearms Handguns - Semi Auto
1

I’d like to do a series of drills, same day, to evaluate performance of myself & several pistols.

Something I can put down some numbers. I have a timer of course. Each has already proven reliable so that is not in question. I want numbers for time and accuracy.

I was thinking of this:

  1. 6 rds 25 yds no time limit. Using the most accurate ammo I have or 3 types or brands of ammo. For precision and point of impact. X3.

  2. Bill Drill drawn from concealed holster. Time & accuracy test. X3.

  3. Draw & fire one shot from 7, 15, and 25 yds. For time & accuracy. Will use most accurate ammo in each gun from previous 25 yd test. X6.

Fire 10 rds from each gun before it is tested just to get used to it. I have hundreds of rounds (actually 1k plus) through each gun already.

Any other ideas or additional drills I should do?

The goal is partly to separate what I like to what actually performs best with me. And knowledge and fun. I suspect there won’t be much difference except for the small guns not doing as well at 25 yds.

2

The draw and first shot at from 3 to 7 yds. for “Carry Gun” drill is prudent, if not vital.
Starting from different positions (seated, back to target, bent over, etc) is helpful.
The old “Mozambique”, I guess “failure to stop” now is good, practiced at speed, 3-7 yds.
While I totally agree 25 yd. hits at speed are desirable, that’s likely statistically irrelevant.
There are any number of good Drills to be found online, or Utube.

3

Thanks.

Trying to focus on the major differences in performance between each gun. One has an optic.

Going to do a small number of important drills in one day with several guns.

I was thinking of excluding drills under 7 yds because although I do train those, I don’t recall ever seeing much difference in performance results between guns. (I.e. Draw, have good grip and form, slap trigger as quickly as I can, get good hits) So I think for the purpose of these drills I can start from where sights begin to have high importance.

I’ll consider the Mozambique drill heavily.

4

I’ve never been much of a “failure drill” fan.

I prefer techniques that don’t have a “stop” built in. When I learned of this drill a long time ago I practiced it with four shots. Two upper center torso, two to head. The idea being that if I really thought I got one or both of those body hits and nothing good for me has happened I should just target the head after that.

Later I dropped that and just starting doing a “zipper”. Start upper center chest and then walk it up to the head in 5 or 6 shots. So that’s what i train as far as that goes.

Perhaps I could alter my bill drill into the “zipper”? Or I may do the “2 chest 2 head” thing.

5

Sure.
And if you’re effort is to quantify results per handgun, keep track of times/hits for each.
It may be revealing.

6

Yup. That’s the plan. Same range visit, record data for later review.

When I shoot drills w/a timer or measure groups I rarely write it down. I’ve done similar comparisons where I recorded the numbers using 2 guns. And kept some targets to remind me of a pistol / ammo / me combo’s accuracy potential and POI. One of them was an LCR .357 with various ammo. There was essentially no difference in my performance between wadcutter loads and 158 gr +p loads. Mild .357 mag loads were only slightly slower time-wise but possibly worth it depending on the bullet, etc. Full-power .357 loads were much slower and my accuracy dropped. Not worth it. Duh, right?

But I wanted to do something more comprehensive. There are other factors related to performance such as carry comfort, capacity, etc., but it will be good to have real shooting data to factor into the decisions about which gun to carry when.

And it will be fun and good practice.

7

This has been a heck of an endeavor!

I end up firing alot more rounds than I thought I would because I can’t just run say, the 3 Bill Drills. Because the first three or five get incrementally better until I throw one off the A-zone. So I do them until they get into a repeatable range and record the fastest three.

I have one more gun to do this with before my little study is done. It takes alot of time to shoot, record time, measure groups, change targets, etc. I need a hot range bunny for this.

I’ll post up some numbers when I’m done.

One surprising thing has been the Beretta M92X. It works 100%, but accuracy-wise there is ammo it loves (Underwood 68 gr) and hates (Fiocchi 147 gr FMJ).

8

Posted elsewhere, but thought I’d put the numbers here, too.

All first shots DA as carried unless stated otherwise.

1 shot, from concealment. (A fitting T-shirt. Not tight, not lose). All from IWB holsters at 2-2:230. Average of the 5 best times on that range visit. A-Zone hits only, 6x11 in.

7 yds:

S&W M&P 2.0 full size .45 with Leopold Micro Dot: 1.9s.

Beretta M92X Centurion, factory sights: 1.8s

Colt King Cobra, factory sights: 1.7s

The Colt over-acheived. I think because the grip-shape (finger grooved Hogue) is more consistent, the gun lighter, and the brighter color of the gun gives feedback about the draw while it’s in progress.

25 yds.

S&W: 3 misses, best 5 avg: 2.7s (the misses surprised me. Just going too fast I guess)

M92X: 2 misses, best 5 avg: 2.5s (DA)

Colt King Cobra: No misses, 3.0s (yes, 5 draws from concealment & 5 A-zone double-action hits does feel good! The Colt over-achives again.

Bill Drill. From concealment, same A zone, 7 yds, 6 shots. About 8 attempts each. Average of the best 5, any misses are a failure.

S&W: 2.7s (1 fail) I think this was about the best I could do.

M92X: 3.0 (2 fail) I feel like I could do better with this gun.

Colt King Cobra: 2.9s. (No failures) I feel like this was the best I could do. (Faster than the 92?! It is what it is!)

Best group I could manage at 25 yds, all slow, single-action shooting free-hand:

S&W: 2.6 inches. Groups were consistently good. 3.6 in was the worst. (I need to double check this, worst may have been 3.2)

Beretta M92X: 2.5 inches. But averaged 4 to 5 with most ammo.

King Cobra: 4.0 in. The average was worse because I had no decent ammo. (Reloads and PPU LRN) I need to shoot & measure groups again with my carry ammo but I didn’t have enough.

I still have another gun or two to record numbers with.

It would be interesting to see data from other people doing a similar thing; tthat is run two or more guns through a battery of drills to compare & contrast with some numbers included.

Especially ammo. Much of my regular 25 yd shooting is on steel, and against paper, I assume not doing well is on me. Well, not always! As I said the M92X, for example, shot 2.5 in & 3.2 5 shot groups with Underwood 68 gr +p (with a perfect POI, too) while new Fiocchi 147 gr FMJ shot 7 in and 8 in. But that same Fiocchi did just fine from another gun.

Also, Freedom Munitions steel case plated bullets were getting shredded by the over-bored M92. Could see it on the paper targets. It actually didn’t group badly, somehow, but the groups were way low and right. Weird.

I maintain plated bullets are best at 15 yds and in. I haven’t had good luck with them and not going to reload with them, either.

9

The drills I run every time I shoot pistol are:

Bill Drill
FAST Drill
Defoor Hat Drill (B8, 25 yds, 10 rds, 20 seconds)

Some drills I run occasionally are:
P1T Cold Standard
CO POST Qual from Concealment
Presscheck No Fail Drill

10

Many years ago, I did something loosely similar. Time based drills with transitions between multiple targets.
I found out that I shoot a P226 better than the Beretta 92 FS, an M&P 9 (stock trigger), Glock17 (stock trigger), or a Browning High Power (magazine disconnector removed). A CZ-75 came in a very close second. These were not all tested at once, so each session I had a Ruger GP-100 that I used as a comparison ‘standard’ since the set-ups varied some during the testing.

Runs with misses were not accepted.
Guns were swapped after each run to avoid familiarity biasing the times.

I think that depends on the gun and the plated bullets. Not sure I would be using Freedom Munitions for accuracy testing.
I certainly would expect jacketed bullets to do better than plated but it again depends on who made the bullets.

11

I certainly confirmed what I already believed about plated bullets.

One thing I wanted to learn from my tests:

  • Heavier guns will be slower to draw and settle down than lighter guns

  • Smaller guns are harder to get a good grip during the first step than larger guns

Which wins out? Well, from my tests, four guns from 27 oz to 40 oz varied from 1.6 sec to 1.9 sec from holstered under concealment, to one A-zone hit at 7 yds.

Is that .3 seconds significant? It is 20% faster. But with everything else that could slow down a draw it’s probably not significant.

A surprise was Bill Drills. Holstered, concealed, 7 yds, 6 shots, A zone. 2.65 seconds to 3.0. The Cheetah with a .32 barrel was the fastest, duh. But the S&W M&P 2.0 .45 acp full size with Leopold Micro averaged 2.7 sec! I wasn’t really “using” the dot at that range. Sometimes I’d see a red streak while firing, but I was really just using the silhouette of the gun, fight recoil, and slap the trigger. I wasn’t able to do that when using a larger, higher optic like the Holosun 507C I had (and since removed) on a Beretta 92X RDO Centurion, because the optic obscured the barrel /slide. In the Bill Drills that M92X with irons was slowest at 3.0 sec average, but that was before I tried the method I did with the S&W so I think I can shave some time still off the M92X score.

Again, does that 2.65 vs 3.0 second spread between the guns for a Bill Drill matter much?

Where the smaller guns ran into trouble was the 25 yd accuracy test. (no timer, single action) Groups tended to open up an inch or two on average with the small guns. (Beretta Cheetah, Colt King Cobra 3 inch)

When I did the 25 yard test with timer (From concealment, draw and fire one shot for time) The times were not significantly different! Hits were, though. Lots of misses with the Cheetah no matter .32 or .380. (only hits scored, I just had to slow down) But the Colt was fastest with the hits! How the heck was it faster than the red-dot S&W? 1.8 sec vs 1.7 sec. average. Mind you the S&W had the best 25 yd slow-fire group by a large margin but that didn’t translate into a faster one-shot hit at 25 yds for me that day.

What was a neat thing to learn is that I can do pretty well with any of these guns if I train with them.

Except the Cheetah doesn’t inspire much confidence for getting good hits beyond about 20 yds. Short sight radius, small sights, small grip. But it’s certainly the most comfortable to carry.

12

My take-aways were that finding a natural pointing gun contributed to better speed and accuracy combined.
Good, visible sights helped; though all the guns I used had reasonable sights. (slide mounted red dots were not considered serious kit at the time, they are better now) The RMRs depend on a repeatable index which is not conducive to switching from one gun to another but it offers some advantages.

A good trigger helped too. The High Power is superbly accurate and the 92FS also shot very well but the P226 provided accuracy similar to the 92F -and- had a better trigger.

The revolver served as a good baseline. The grip didn’t match any of the pistols being tested and, being double action for all rounds, if the pistol couldn’t do the job faster than the revolver, it wasn’t going to make the cut.

13

I need to check my numbers against what I typed last night because my draw and one good hit times at 7 yds are very close to the times at 25 yds.

I’ll check those again tonight to confirm or clarify.

14

Yes that all makes sense.

I’m wondering if, when using the revolver and other DA triggers, I was putting my finger on the trigger and possibly starting the pull before the gun was on target but not doing so with the striker-fired gun. Might explain why the striker gun wasn’t always the fastest.

This is where having video would be nice.

15

For my purposes, I like to incorporate an El Prez. I also run it as a multiple badguy drill while moving. For a carry gun vetting for me, I run it weak hand and strong hand and practice reloads. I also believe in shooting multiple rounds on the move. I check splits and hits. This is all done after vetting the gun for reliability and accuracy with my carry load.

Cheers, Steve

16

heh… tell that to Jack Wilson.

17

Honestly, I just do this…

6/6/6 drill
El Prez.

I do them all from concealment on a pact timer. Only very rarely do I find an “inaccurate” handgun. Usually it is just what gun is faster on the timer.

18

This one?

https://pistol-training.com/shooting-drills/triple-six/

Never done this selection. But I like it! Will try it out.

19

Statistically irrelevant (highly improbable)? Yes.

A skill set to have in your “bag of tricks”? Invaluable.

Best to own and not need it, than not have it and need it.

20

A little follow-up.

Drawing from concealment and firing one shot into the A-zone at 7 yds VS 25 yds. Average time:

M&p .45 w/microRDS: 1.9 and 2.72

M92X Centurion: 1.8 and 2.5

Colt KC 3 in.: 1.7 and 3.0

Cheetah .380: 1.78 and 2.95

Cheetah .32: I didn’t take full notes because it’s the same gun firing a single shot so there wasn’t going to be a real difference.

My takeaways from this are:

A big gun has a nice big grip & that makes it easier to get a fast, consistent grip. A small grip / gun has the opposite effect. DUH!

Heavier guns draw more slowly than light guns. Again, Duh!

Put the two together and time it. It may be a wash or it may not. The lighter King Cobra with it’s excellent grip gives me the faster time to a hit out of these guns. But really, the big .45 was only 12% slower.

The .45 S&W with micro optic time from concealment draw to an A-zone hit was .22s slower than the iron-sight Beretta M92x with its DA trigger at 25 yds.

S&W. 45 Bill Drill vs Beretta .32 2.7s Vs 2.65s. The same!

I have noticed over many draws to first shot / hit that a DA first shot adds at least .25s vs a striker-type trigger.

I used to have the common belief that lighter recoil equals faster follow-up shots. I don’t think this is entirely accurate.

There is a point at which recoil will slow down a Bill Drill but i found it insignificant between a Beretta 92, Beretta Cheetah. 32, & an M&P .45.

I also no longer think a RDS is slower at very close range. (Under 7 yds) It reminds me of what I learned about Big Dot sights that I used to use.

Inside of 7 yds, the sights don’t really matter. Past 15 yds, they really matter and the further back you go the more important having a precise sight is. (Which Big Dots stink at) (Point RDS)

Something else that became obvious was I was able to shoot in some low-light conditions while doing these tests.

Bright front sights become tough to see. The Beretta 92x and Cheetah black rear sights dissapeared. The S&W microdot? Obviously was the winner in low-light!