She’s a girl I know from college. Very liberal, very anti-gun, etc etc. She said she’d never shot a gun before. I was (am?) a CMC in the Marine Corps so I feel pretty comfortable instructing people with guns both safety wise and accuracy-wise. I got her to head out to the range with me and we started with safety and then proceeded to dry fire a couple dozen times with a Walther P22 and an AAC Pilot 2. The first thing I noticed was that she had a very smooth trigger pull and a steady aim.
Keeping in mind the target was about 7 yards away, and she “had never shot a gun before”, check this out for her very first shot ever.
She took to the P22 like a fish to water and was quickly ready to move to the G19. She literally started blowing out the red x-ring on the target. I have it all on video, but no pics, unfortunately. I’ll have to throw it up on youtube.
After that it was time to get on the ARs, and she looks like a pro behind the trigger, shooting 2" groups from the standing at 20 yards. Much smaller from the “supported standing” in the pic you see.
She preferred the midlength more than the suppressed SBR because the BCM LW Middy is much lighter than the SBR with the suppressor attached.
I don’t normally brag because there is always someone better than you, but I’m a pretty good shot with handguns. When I would qualify with the M9 it wasn’t how many 10s I could bust out, it was how clean of a hole I could make in the X ring at 25 yards. This girl gave me a run for my money. If you look at the target pic above, we put it at 15 yards and with only two rounds each tried to hit that tiny #5. She aimed to the left one and I aimed at the right one. She missed it, but I was pretty freaking nervous!
Do you think she’s shot before or she just applied the skills I was teaching her? I’ve known her for years and she’s definitely a lefty, but her tone on the drive home was more tolerant toward gun ownership for sure. Well worth the ammunition expense! (She’ll be a lawyer next year if she passes the bar)
Keep her around, take her shooting more, and she’ll flip around over time completely. I’d call it a fixer-upper, like getting a house cheap to keep or flip. A Pygmalian project.
My Uncle has been an NRA instructor for 30 years and used to always talk about how well women shoot their first time. He has seen first shot bullseyes quite often.
No bad habits to deal with. No recoil to remember. They just do what you tell them.
My liberal wife was same way. Her first range trip she had no problem ringing the steel, so much so, it kinda made me a little nervous. I was thinking- damn I better not piss her off! Her anti gun views have drastically changed since then, she has adopted my 12.5" AR as her own. She’s still libral about everything else tho…
I’ve seen lots of girls hold rifles and as most don’t grow up with toys guns and bb guns they generally hold them awkwardly because they aren’t used to balancing the weight of something like a rifle. They end up typically with a rear lean to counter balance it and almost never lean into the rifle to control it.
My opinion is that you might be a good teacher but not that good. She looks like she has shot a rifle before and has some trigger time. I know what everyone else is talking about, with female students there typically is no threatened ego so issues with established bad habits.
But I think you got played. I also think it is probably because she is interested in you.
I think you will find if you take enough men and women to the range so you have a decent sample size of each, and give them essentially equal instruction, women are almost universally better than men. I don’t know of it’s perhaps women do a better job of simply listening to the instructions and applying them without their ego getting involved, and of differences between men and women in some eye/hand/brain differences between the sexes, but that’s been my experience consistently.
Women are usually surprised they do as well as they do first time to the range, men usually surprised they do so poorly, I suspect due to watching too many action movies and such.
Taking a couple is really interesting due to the usual couple dynamic, and when the woman is hitting the targets consistently and the man is not, both getting identical instructions and using the same guns, you get some interesting responses.
I think fire arms instructors here will back me on that one.
That pic of her with the pistol is a poorly timed screenshot of a video, as I have no pictures of her firing a handgun, just video. She had just fired a round which is why the pistol is pointed higher than it should be. Not only that, but she was adjusting her firing position and foot position.
I honestly appreciate the replies from those of you who think I don’t know what I’m doing. I have collected enough rank insignia to know my methods work, but I’m always up for constructive criticism. However, that picture was just to show her at the range, not show her in a correct position.
She was initially leaning heavily with the suppressed AR and I couldn’t break her of it because it was so front heavy. When we switched to the LW AR she was much better. I probably should have clarified that in the OP, or just taken more time to get a better shot of her firing position (As the internet is always full of experts).
Maybe she can join here and use the name “EuroRider”
Kudos for not only getting a woman to the range, getting some one who isn’t predisposed to firearms out. The shooting sports are not easy to get into by yourself. It takes interested parties to help spread the fun to new people.
I was talking about the picture of her with a rifle, not the one of the handgun. Granted she is using a bench rest, but still looks like she’s done it before. She’s right behind the rifle and that unusual for a first timer.
And I wasn’t suggesting you don’t know what you are doing (please go re read my reply with that in mind), I was just suggesting you aren’t quite “that good.”
Dude, either you’re a genius, or you got played. You tell me. She can shoot.
And I agree with some others, I thinks she might have somthing going on for you…
Most women don’t have much upper body strength and struggle with heavier firearms. You picked some good ones for the body type. My girl has issues with a 16", but she is a small one, barely 105.
Keep doing whatever your doing. The more we get the other viewpoint to see ours, the better.
