Shooting and aiming a gun tips?

- Always treat the gun as if it is loaded and ready to fire
- Don't point a weapon at anything that you aren't willing to shoot
- Always have the safety ON until you are ready to fire

Aiming:
- line up the rear sight with the front sight, sights differ, so I would ask your dad how to use that particular gun's sights
- close one eye (the opposite one to your trigger hand), after practice you can shoot with both eyes open
- take normal breaths, do not hold your breath

Firing:
- place your finger on the trigger, so the trigger rests in the middle of the end digit of your index finger
- wait till the point where you have exhaled, and are about to inhale
- slowly squeeze the trigger
- do not anticipate the gun going off, let it surprise you (otherwise you'll instinctively tense up, and it will throw off your aim)

Recoil:
- stand with a wide base, slightly larger than shoulder width apart, with your non shooting side leg forward (left leg if you're right handed, etc)
- rifle/shotgun: keep the stock of the weapon resting in front of your shoulder, not sitting on top of your shoulder
- pistol: hold the weapon straight out with both hands, but do not lock your elbows
you can seriously injure your hand/lose fingers when the slide moves back when firing. Rule of thumb: dont have any fingers sitting higher than the trigger.
- put 70-80% of your weight on your front foot, so you don't go off balance

Magnified Optics on Fighting Rifles

Saw this video and found it to be interesting. As a general rule I like 1 magnification red dot type optics for CQB type stuff. They are the fastest thing out there. The downside is they are not great at long range. In fairness you can HIT at fairly long ranges with them (say 300-400m) but the issue is target identification. As Peter noted in Thoughts on Combat Weapon Sights for Civilians this is significant. I'd really like to be sure what I am shooting at since as a Civilian I do not have the type of functional immunity that cops and soldiers who act semi reasonably (or not) tend to get.

Also while folks can often engage targets, albeit with limited identification, at distances beyond 200m almost everybody shoots better with magnification. Without a doubt I shoot project AR with a magnified optic a whole lot more precision than a red dot.

I used to have an ACOG but as affordable rugged optics like the MTAC (John tried like hell to break one and all it did was damage one of the adjustments) have come onto the market I think there are better options. My personal choice for an all around fighting rifle is a low to moderate variable magnification optic with an illuminated reticle. My MTAC is a 1-4x which acts a lot like a red dot up close. I keep it set at 1x but can crank it up to 4 if needed. They also make a 1.5-6x version that John Mosby has. If/ when I end up building another AR I'll likely go this route.

For a more designated marksmen type setup I would either get a scope that starts at a slightly higher power like a 3x9 or 4-12 or pay big money for a scope with a larger magnification range like a 2-8 or something.