I have a confession to make. And to
be honest this a little bit embarrassing.
You see,
I am not all that great with pistols.
I have to say I'm a bad pistol
shooter,
but it definitely lags behind my other skills,
and as much as I enjoy a
and shooting overall. My focus always hands back
towards rifles.
This was never more apparent to me than
my first review assignment writing for a print
magazine.
But before I get to that, welcome to
the everyday Marks that podcast podcasts where it's
all about tactical skills for living a more,
adventurous life I'm your host, Matt Robertson,
Website is everybody marks dot c, they're verified
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I look forward to talking to you there.
Back to the story. So several years ago,
I was approached
by American Rifle magazine to become me a
regular writer. And I still do it today.
So if you're a subscriber to that magazine
via, your Nra membership, then you might see
my articles in there from time to time.
My very first assignment was a review of
a 19 11 pistol.
In particular, it was an Iv Johnson Eagle
L r special. Now what are the writing
guidelines for the magazine was it a 5
inch pistol had to be shot 4 groups
at 25 yards.
Without going into details, let's just say that
I had 1 hell of a time,
we're trying to group
and pistol sites at 25 yards. It was
such a challenge for me that I tended
to client reviews for pistols unless I come
out and dots to them. And even then,
it's just... I'm just not that stable of
the pistol. Nobody has pistols are more more
difficult.
And I felt really bad about this because,
you know, there's this reputation everybody who writes
for gun magazines.
You know, they can put put these amazing
groups on paper, and I felt a lot
of pressure to to execute this perfectly,
and it's always bothering me ever since that
that I had such a hard time with
that. And I've gotten slightly better and technique
but Still not where I feel like, It
could be.
Fast forward a little bit. In January 20
22,
I thought I was gonna start addressing this.
I had a great interview with Josh, who
is a
Usps Grand master and then instructor over at
Green Ops training who's local for me.
And I don't think I made a podcast
out of that interview by the way, but
it is on the Youtube channel. She's check
it out.
And I had in my mind that this
was my time to become a pistol, a
pistol gun fighter. While that ended up not
happening. Life and interest just kind of went
elsewhere.
Well, I wanna address it again, and this
comes back to the conversation we've recently had
about the Marks training zones. Now, if you
remember, I'd dubbed the space between 0 and
50 yards as the critical zone.
And the grand scheme of capability, it is
this space. That a marks must be absolutely
capable. It is by far the zone where
we are most likely to engage a threat
in the real world, especially as a civilian
and that can include home defense, concealed carry
or even scenario acts.
Now you can use
a lot of tools for this 0 to
50 zone. Rifles and carb beans are an
obvious choice. A fantastic choice.
And probably my preference.
Shotgun guns also stand out is particularly good
in the front half of that 0 to
50.
And this whole training zone was a big
driver in me going down the Pcc in
submachine gun format.
The humble handgun just kind of seemed
mundane in comparison.
But I have to be honest with myself,
that this line of thinking that pistols are
mundane is my own bias
because I'm not that great with them.
In fact,
When I think about it and dig into
it, pistols might even be more interesting than
rifles.
So let's make the case for handgun Now
realize this is every bit a justification to
myself as it might be for you. So
bear with me. You may very well already
be all in on the handgun train. And
you are a pistol expert for that. Congratulations.
But I'm not, and I need to justify
why I have to do it. So for
at least a year,
or more,
I've been planning and piling over a semi
custom
precision bolt action chamber in 223.
Now the goal of this project is a
rifle that works well enough out to 600
yards that I could use it for both
competition, as well as a trainer for my
larger caliber. 223 is a lot cheaper to
shoot than 30 caliber or 6 5.
And the 2 through 223 bolt gun
just has a huge fun factor to it,
a lot light shooting in 22 through through
lighter or heavy rifles.
However,
1 of the things that held me back
from doing this aside from just the investment
and the cost to do it.
Is kind of my current range circumstances.
The reality is all of my local ranges
only go out to about 50 yards. They're
all indoors with a single lane for paper
targets.
If I want to do anything longer than
that, say 300 yards with steel
then it's a trip out to West Virginia,
and it's about a 90 minute drive in
each direction, which means I have to plan
for an entire day to. Half day of
driving and shooting to make it worth it.
Now doing that with any kind of regular
is a difficult ask for my family.
So I have to be honest. And a
bit as much as I would love to
enjoy
a 3000 dollar bolt action semi custom rifle,
it's mostly just gonna eat up space in
my safe and not get a lot of
use.
So my circumstances, though,
is difficult as they may be for shooting
long range these days are just about perfect
for regular pistol and rim by training and
close range car training.
Pistols take up a lot less space in
a safe. They're cheaper to practice with, and
they have a lot of practical considerations. The
chief 1 of those.
Is that pistols are the civilian primary weapon.
I know.
I know
given the choice of a going into a
confrontation just about everyone, including me is gonna
choose the long gun.
I think was Clint Smith who famously qui
The only purpose for a pistol is to
fight your way back to the rifle you
should have never laid down. I'm am not
denying that.
However,
I also can't discount that you and I
are probably not active serving military. Law enforcement
or any profession where we're making a full
time job out of getting into conflicts and
are probably gonna have a rifle with us
all the time.
For the everyday remarks who's going about life,
the thing we are most likely to have
at hand to respond to a threat is
a.
During the early stages of something like scenario
x, the whole point of the game is
to be prepared while not drawing attention to
yourself.
Once you break out the long gun and
load bearing gear, you are now signaling
intent.
That might be okay later on when you
actually happen need
to actively build a shield of deterrent to
run your community with you and your team,
by the way, not just you. But early
on,
Signaling intent to fight makes you come across
as bell
and draws all sorts of attention to you,
both good and bad, and you don't necessarily
want that attention. A pistol is the perfect
tool here because you can conceal it. It's
inc,
And then if you really want to, you
could put something like a collapsed Pcc
tucked into a non script backpack
as a useful next step, which
also useful it shares ammo mo with your
handgun.
Now if the pistol is gonna be your
primary for 99 percent of life,
than you and I
should become proficient with it.
And that's a challenge because pistols take more
skill
to master. Like, more time they're more difficult.
And the everybody marks from discord server, which,
by the way, become a subscriber on the
email to click a link at the link
and then join server.
1 person put it this way.
Having people consider you a pistol arrow is
harder than a rifle man, and even more
perishable. And now this individual we said this
was a Usps master, and
knows a lot about competitive shooting with rifles
and pistols.
And the idea here is that
being good with pistols are earns you more
respect in the competition world. It just does,
and the skill fades faster. Josh saw
Josh. Shaw, And I'm not even gonna edit
this 1 by the way. So you're just
gonna deal with my little verbal typo.
Josh says something similar when I interviewed him.
To be blunt, it is far more difficult
to be excellent with a pistol than it
is a rifle.
Pistols involve all of the same
fundamentals as rifles, but they are far less
forgiving of mistakes. Even more,
pistol proficiency has the added complexity
2 manual arms. Like like, not to mention
just, like, manipulating and reloading and racking the
sign and all that, but the draw itself
is a huge component of being good with
the pistol.
That's is not something you worry about with
the rifle.
So in general,
excellence with a pistol
carries over far better to rifle shooting than
the other way around. Think about it this
way. If you're able to perfectly execute a
trigger pull, and maintain side alignment when the
trigger weight is more than the gun itself.
Sometimes a lot more like a double action
pistol.
Then it's a trivial matter to have amazing
trigger control with a 3 pound trigger on
a 9 pound rifle.
Okay. That's just 1 example of how it
carries over.
Then there's a whole cost factor.
I'm I'm primarily gonna focus on ammo cost
here. Because while, I could argue that pistols
are cheaper to get into than Rifles. That's
just not always the case anymore. You now,
shout out Palm Metals state Armor here, not
sponsored, but I'd like to throw, plug at
them because they're they're great company.
They brought down the price of a good
serviceable Ar 15 to nearly half a cost
of many pistols I'm interested in. So it's
like a wash. And then not to mention
when it comes to polymer pistol to have
the whole dagger line which you're like,
insanely cheap to get into like a gl
style pistol.
So the cost to get started is not
really issue here, but ammo is a different
story.
Now, of course, dry fire is important. But
let's do the quick math and say that
you want to expand 200 rounds per month
in live fire at the range. This is
do this back of the napkin and with
me.
That's 04:50 round boxes, 9 mil or say
10:20 round at 223.
Back in the day, I could blow through
that in a single hour. So we're being
generous here and saying like this is a
month worth of practice.
Looking at prices, right? When I wrote this,
I can get a reasonable practice 9 mil
ammo for about 15 cents a shot.
Or 30 dollars a month and 360 dollars
a year. For 223, that doubles to 32
cents per shot,
62 month per year or 60 dollars per
month and 768
dollars a year. And that's double. I can
get a lot more practice, a lot more
bang from my buck So to speak with
that I can with 2 3. And this
only gets worse as you scale up the
caliber something like 03:08.
Basic 03:08
Winchester.
Again, doubles to 70 cents per shot. It's
basic.
That adds up to 1617
dollars a year to practice with basic 3
or away. Not even talking Mash section, it
cost you, like, a buck 60 ish shot.
So somebody
From a pure cost standpoint, pistols
are gonna help you build those fundamentals,
much cheaper. Because remember pistol fundamentals carry over
to rifles.
Now, of course, Elephant in the room is
Rim fire, which costs the same whether you're
shooting it through a pistol or rifle. Rim
fire is a fantastic tool. I took my
22
bolt action rifle out of the range as
past weekend begin. It's it's a great time.
I'm a huge applicant advocate a big fan.
But keep in mind
that the very low recoil of Rim fire,
especially in a rifle,
can also teach some bad habits. So I
still think there's a lot of room for
keeping a,
quote unquote, normal
recoil round in your practice rotation, so you
learn how to deal with that.
Now let's talk about the cool factor.
This 1 is just kind of a point
for fun.
But the more I thought about it, resourced
and consider what kinds of projects I wanna
tackle in the future
potentially the near future, The more I how
to admit there's a certain level of artist
tree and cool factor that goes into pistols.
I don't necessarily mean like the polymer wonder
nines here. You know, once you go up
market a bit into the all metal pistols,
the options for customization become
enormous.
There's a reason that the so called barbecue
gun is a pistol,
riding on the hip. Not a rifle. It's
uno unproductive, but its presence makes a statement.
Much like a gentleman's watch or a pair
of expert shine shoes,
pistol on the hip sends a certain kind
of signal, whether it's a c in 19
11 of,
high power or something else.
There's an entire industry of guns myths committed
to the cause of helping you make it
yours and something to be proud of.
There's something to be said about enjoying
carrying a gun that took a real human
to personally fit and finish just so.
Such a gun stands out in a market
full of utilitarian black plastic and mel united
striker fires.
Let the difference between a man who wears
a piece of mass produced consumer electronics on
his wrist, like an apple watch or ubiquitous
around here, Virginia.
And a man who wears something analog,
mechanical,
assembled by a craftsman.
Sn,
perhaps.
But I don't think it's wrong.
Through where am I going with this.
All of this is to say my personal
focus for the rest of this year and
likely into next year is on pistols and
handgun proficiency.
Now, it's not say there won't be rifle
content. I actually have a few incoming rifles
for review as I'm putting this podcast together.
But my personal goals are gonna center her
on the pistol.
That might mean
learning how to tune and modify a bit,
So so we'll see. But for me, in
my current circumstances this makes the most sense
to pursue. So what about you? Are you
all in on the pistol train? Have I
convinced you. Come by the website everyday marshall
dot c and comment on this episode or
join this discord server or comment on it
Youtube I know. That's actually pretty apt to
spot these he's he's these audio episodes and
going to Youtube as well. Anyway, let me
know what you think. Thanks for listening, and
I'll catch you next time. Take care yourself.