Top 3 Tips for New Defensive Shooters

If you’re new to defensive shooting, welcome to the Personal Defense Network! Our Executive Director Rob Pincus offers three really important tips for beginning shooters who want to learn to protect themselves and the people they care about.

1. Get a Gun That Fits Your Hand

There is nothing more difficult to overcome than a gun that does not fit the hand properly, yet it’s one of the easiest things to fix when you first get started with your defensive shooting skill development sessions. Make the time and effort to get a gun that fits your hand now, not later.

2. Get Quality Defensive Shooting Education

Rob means high-quality handgun training that is specifically designed for defensive shooting skill development in an appropriate context. Not range skills, not competition shooting skills, and not marksmanship skills. If someone tells you that the fundamentals are all the same, they probably do not understand the difference between the fundamentals of defensive shooting skill application and combat simulations or marksmanship or qualification courses that all happen out on the range.

3. Practice the Appropriate Fundamentals for Defensive Shooting Skill Application

Once you learn the basics, spend a lot of time practicing to get them right. Numerous videos of gun shooting drills are available here on PDN. You don’t need to learn a lot of advanced techniques and you don’t need to see a lot of different ways to do the same thing.

What you need to do is learn the basics of defensive shooting and practice, practice, practice until they are automated and you can do them when you need them in a worst-case scenario, which may be for home or personal defense.

Learn More at PDN

PDN brings together the insight and training expertise of the best instructors in the industry, and has become the go-to resource for conscientious private citizens, law enforcement personnel, and military operators interested in defending every aspect of their lives. PDN contributors are a hand-picked group, representing all facets of personal defense.