 Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today I wanted to talk about accuracy or, I guess a better word for that would be marksmanship. So this is a target that I pulled from a recent Permit to Carry class here in Minnesota. We have to have a qualification shoot at the end of a Permit to Carry class. It's part of the law and each instructor gets to make up their own course of fire. This is just a target, all my targets look like this, I'm not picking on anyone, I want to be very clear about this. This is not me making fun of people. This is an observation so that we can all be better at what we do. So when we do this qualification shoot at the end of the Permit to Carry class, it's often done by people who haven't shop before or haven't been trained. So again, this is not me making fun of anyone. This is just an observation in order to help us all be better at this. When we do the qualification, what I will do is I will demonstrate. So I will pull my gun out and I will demonstrate. Now when I demonstrated this one, my group ended up being right about here, kind of this little hole here, and I dumped a hole mag in there, which is about 17 rounds. So I did a demo and then I say I would like everybody else to please shoot this and I would like your shots to look just like mine, I'd like you to put them all right through that hole please, so it's just one little hole at the end. I try to say something to that effect. And then everybody gets up and shoots and at the end of the deal, which in this case we had about 10, 11 people come through, the target ends up looking like this. And so my question is why? Why does that happen? I tell everybody, and I'm honest, we need to keep the shots within the gray outline here. We had a couple come off. We shoot this at about three to five yards, just stuff where I don't measure it or anything. I just kind of eyeball it. So somewhere in there, real close, you know, not difficult shooting necessarily. But again, the targets always end up looking like this and I'm not making fun of anybody. This is common. This is just one that I pulled. So why? Why does that happen? Why do I come up and demo and show a tight little group and then open it up to everybody else? And after all 10, 11 people go through, the target ends up looking like this. Now there's a couple reasons for that, right? There could be things like, well, they've never shot before. I mean, that's fair, right? I'd say about 30% of people who come through my permative carry classes have never shot a gun before. You know, the instructor was bad. That's an option, right? I didn't give clear directions. I didn't give clear instructions. That's an option. I don't know, those are the only other reasons I can come up with. But here's the real one that I think it is, okay? The real reason I think we end up looking like this is people get in their own way. And I say this because I'm guilty of doing this. People want to shoot faster than they can actually shoot. And so they come up and they just start shooting and this is what you get when you kind of, you know, don't really process through the fundamentals. You're not really focused on the front side. You're not doing all the stuff that you're supposed to do and this is what you get. So again, that's not me making fun of everyone. The point is I think everybody has, at the end of a permative carry class, the end of any quality training course, you should have the basic skills or at least the knowledge of the skills to be able to shoot tight groups. There is something to practicing that, yes, shooting is a practical sport, right? It's like basketball. When you learn to play basketball or whatever, you didn't stand in a classroom and have someone draw on a whiteboard how to shoot a basketball and then go out and just do it. You had to practice that. I get it. So there's certainly some room for that, but I think the major reason that targets end up looking like this is because people outrun their gun, right? They outrun their ability to shoot and they outrun their gun. And I'm guilty of doing that. I think that we have this thing as people where we can psych ourselves out or get in our own heads. And if you ask any professional sports players, this is obviously a thing that happens in sports, especially at the highest level, right? Where you start to realize that you're the main barrier to your success. You and how you process things and how you're thinking about things and what you're telling yourself, that is going to be the biggest barrier to your success. So the difference isn't necessarily practice or skill development, although those things are absolutely necessary and we need to do those. And don't hear me say those aren't important because those are very important. But once we get past that, once we start to have the requisite skills, especially we get into this place where the only difference between a tight group and a big target like this is you. And you deciding how you're going to shoot that target and you deciding how you're going to process through that information. At the end of the day, you are the biggest barrier to your success, especially with shooting, right? It's just you and a gun and if the gun works and the bullets work, it's just you. You're the only barrier there. And I think what we need to do and what we need to start to do to order to make our targets not look like this is that we have, I guess, a positive self-talk for lack of a better word. I guess I don't know how else to say that. But mainly, you need to talk yourself into success. If you get up there and say, I'm going to suck, I'm going to fail and this is going to be terrible. Well, of course, guess what's going to happen, right? But if you get up there and you say, I know what to do, I'm going to focus on my front sight, I'm going to squeeze that trigger to the rear and I'm going to picture, in my mind, I'm going to picture that bullet going exactly where I want, guess what results you're more likely to have. Again, you talk to anybody at the highest level of sports and they're going to tell you this is how they prepare, this is how they practice to be the best in the world at what they do. So because we need to be the best in the world at what we do, namely shooting bad guys who are trying to kill us, I suggest that you start thinking about that in a positive manner and practice that in a positive manner rather than a negative manner. Again, I'm not making fun of anybody. I just think this is illuminating that we can be better shooters, especially when we don't get in our own way with either negative talking or getting frustrated at ourselves that we can't perform as well as we think we should. I often do that. I'll get up and I'll shoot and then I'm mad that it didn't go exactly perfect the way I wanted it to go. And so then I'm stressed out and I psych myself out and my next run, of course, isn't very good. And that's just a thing. Again, it's a mental game. Shooting is, I don't know, the longer I do this, I'd say 90% mental, maybe in another year I'll say 98% mental. It's all in your head, especially once you get those requisite skills in line. It's just a matter of getting your mind right. So get your mind right. The difference between a target like this and the group size you want is you. Do brave deeds and endure.