Rob looked a little puzzled. After all, the goal in defensive shooting is to make the bad guy go away using the least amount of time and energy necessary. Was spending time and energy to achieve smaller groups really a mark of good defensive shooting -- or simply a display of meaningless athletic prowess?
“I don’t think,” he said, “that shooting more precisely than the target needs is good shooting.” He looked at me and said, “Grant, is there such a thing as too much precision?”
The part in bold above I believe is the important part. Being able to shoot good groups is important---you have to have good fundamentals to do it. Being able to shoot fast is important--you may be in a situation in which getting the shot off first is necessary.
And in the end, shooting as fast as you
can be effective for that situation is what is important. Lorimor said:
Maintaining absolutely perfect focus on the front sight isn't needed up close and personal.
--in my opinion, rarely in anything outside of bullseye shooting is
absolute perfect focus on the front sight needed. Which is good, since you can't move, track a moving target, AND shoot while keeping absolute perfect focus on the front sight. But you can keep _enough_ focus on the front sight to get good, effective shots on target.
Different levels/difficulties of targets require differing levels of front sight focus. People's main problem is that they often don't know how much is needed, and either over-focus (and shoot extremely accurately but very slowly) or under-focus (and look at the target and don't use the front sight at all when it is too far away or require too tight of a shot and thus either miss or hit things they would rather have not hit).
There are grades of attention in between the two extremes. One of the useful things about competition shooting (USPSA, I mean), in my opinion, is that because you are exposed to so many different types of targets from so many situations, you get plenty of practice AND feedback as to the types of focus that work for you at different distances and in different situations.
Doing pistol competitions (of any type, and I do mean
any) will not teach you effective tactics for anything other than competition. (Because if you are competing, then you are trying to beat someone else, which means your focus is on improving your score, not doing things focused on keeping you alive.) However, from a
shooting perspective, most action-type competitions require you to shoot as quickly as you can--judging for yourself what level of accuracy is "effective enough".
Any many people find that what they
think is "effective enough"
isn't. Further competitions allow them some practice at finding that balance between the extremes of perfect accuracy and ultimate speed. (Because that balance changes depending on what the target looks like, whether or not you are moving, whether the target is moving, and a whole host of other things.) Without exposure to many different types of target circumstances, how will you know?
I know that other people on this forum have differing opinions on the usefulness of competition shooting, and that's fine. Again, remember that we aren't talking about defensive tactics---we are talking about the mechanics of effective shooting. You can make up your own minds about this--but really, here's how I think about it: Where else do you get experience (under some slight stress) shooting at different target presentations under different circumstances, under time pressure, with required accuracy levels? Practicing it on your own is one thing (assuming you have the necessary target equipment to do so)---but then also adding that small level of stress in the competition? Where else are you going to get that?
Going away from competition comments and back to the main point: Some targets REQUIRE small groups. Some don't. And how much attention and focus you need to place on your sight picture for an effective shot
depends on the target situation. If you
always shoot small groups---then your shooting must never be under any sort of time pressure.
