 This is Shepard with the Jacksonville shooting experience. Today I'm at the range a little bit early and I am going to take some shots with a canik, a 9 millimeter canik, and it has a Holson red dot on it and I am not into red dot sights yet. I say yet because I know that I'm just an old man who's stuck in my ways and red dots are the way to go. All the cool kids are using them. By the way the reason I'm tapping the magazine on my hand after I've loaded a few rounds in it, if the cartridges are forward then they won't go down into the mag as well. It's very soft and I like to give it a little tap maybe every five rounds or so just to make sure it's to the rear. When I load a handgun the first thing I do is I get my good grip on the gun, of course keeping my finger off of the trigger. Now on the other side here you'll notice my thumb is up in this ready position for my hand to come in and cradle it. I bring the gun up into my imaginary shooter's box here, my workspace so that I can keep looking at the target out there and not lose sight of it. Then I take the magazine and this comes from the old days of competition. Put my finger on the tip of the top bullet because if I was going to draw it out of my magazine pouch, same thing law enforcement. If I was going to draw it out, draw it out of the pouch I would have my tip of my finger on the tip of the bullet and then that will help me guide it into the mag well. So even if I'm not looking at it, I can kind of sort of get an idea of where it should go because I have my finger there to push it in or to point my way. So after I get it in I make sure it's seated firmly. You don't have to give it multiple taps that's kind of silly but just one to really make sure it's in there and we're good. A couple ways I rack the slide. I try to practice both because I think it's a good idea. One is reaching over the top in the horseshoe movement to pull it back. When I do that I want to make sure that my fingers aren't covering up the ejection port here because if I'm getting in this habit now sometime when I'm trying to clear it well that's not a good thing because the empty case or the full cartridge can't come out. Another thing with a red dot I see some people is putting their hand on the back here. You can do it that way. The other popular way is turning the gun to full gangster not just half gangster but full gangster and then reaching and pinching like this. You can see that and then pulling the slide back and letting go. A little tip for those of you who have hands or maybe not as strong as they once were. Instead of pulling the slide back hold the slide still and push the gun forward. Psychologically that seems to make it easier. So I rack it and what I find is that when I take aim the red dot is never in the right place. You know whose fault that is? That's mine. I haven't done this enough. It's not the fault of the red dot technology. It's just my eyes are used to. There it is. Take my slow gentle trigger press and then the gun recoils. I kept it in this up position. I'm going to step back a little bit so you can see it. See how it's kind of pointed up. My target's actually there. I have it pointed up. My finger is still pressing the trigger all the way to the rear. Now I'm going to get my sight back on the target. Now I'm going to ease my finger forward. You hear that click? That's the trigger reset. Now I'm going to take my next follow-up shot gently press in. Whoa, that surprised me. See how the gun recoiled up? Now the reason it's not recoiling more is because I have a strong support hand on it. Now I get back on target, ease my finger off the trigger, press again, get back on target. Once I'm back on target then I'm allowed to take my finger off the trigger. Like so. Now this time when I fire I kept my finger on the trigger. This is just my habit. It's not going to fire right now. I have it firmly pressed. I'm keeping it in a safe direction. Now of course if I was going to swing the gun around here I would take my finger off the trigger. Come back out. Can you catch my little movement there? That was not good. So I do an automatic tap and rack and in this case it turns out that it was in fact empty but the slide just isn't catching on the empty magazine. Not sure why that is but the mechanic is a pretty awesome gun. I haven't seen that happen before. A lot of fun to shoot trying to get used to that red dot. Thanks for watching guys.