A lot of talk in the shooting community revolves around tiny differences in performance. This is natural and in some ways helpful. In most ways and for most shooters though, it is detrimental.
Our interest here is in shooting and the only way to get good at shooting is to go out and train. Training correctly, to accomplish what you want is key, but many shooters try to improve that performance by buying things. Shorter triggers, flatter triggers, heavier guns, lighter guns, compensators, mag wells, red dots, grip adapters, the list goes on and on. None of these enablers are bad in and of themselves and all have a place.
However, the improvement that any of those things will give you is generally very small. Obviously it is better if the gun fits your hand, but once it does that, the hardware is a very small part of shooting well. You and your training effort is what matters most.
I am getting ready for a class where everyone is shooting DA/SA iron sighted guns. There is nothing wrong with that combination at all, but it has been a long time since I trained much on irons. Many today would definitely consider that combination as doing it the hard way. So, I dug out an old Sig 229 and have been practicing with it. It is nice to get back to my roots and I think it will help me shoot better.
Even if it does not improve my shooting (especially since I’m only using it for a little while), it has reminded me that the performance difference from that basic gun to what we have now is actually not very great. It may seem like a lot to a competition shooter, but in reality, it is a very small difference. That is because I learned on guns like that. I didn’t add all the enablers possible from the beginning, I added them as my skill improved and as they made sense. Most of them still don’t make much difference (or sense) today.
If you can’t shoot a box stock iron sighted gun at about the same level as your space blaster, you are the issue, not your gun. Maybe dump all that for a year and go back to the basics. Your future self will thank you, even if that version of you ends up carrying a pistol in the 40 watt range. Obviously, there are medical conditions and vision issues that may preclude high performance with irons. Dots can really help in those areas. Nonetheless, most people do not fall into that category, even if they talk about vision as a reason for using dot sights. I have shot with some pretty old guys who cannot see their sights the way they once could. Yet they can still hit relatively fast and accurately.
And that is the whole point of this little post. It is you and your effort that matters, not your gizmos. I don’t talk about mindset very much, but skill with a gun is supposed to make you dangerous. That means any gun, not just your precious. The gun is less important than you are and if you want to consider yourself dangerous, you need to get over the need to have you binky exactly the way you want it. If you can shoot a gun, you should be able to shoot all guns. That’s what proper technique and practice does for you. You have to get your mind right first. Then you need to select techniques that work across a wide variety of circumstances, not just a sunny day on the range. And finally, you need to go and train hard.