Fundamentals of Marksmanship

This is not precision target shooting marksmanship, but rather, combat marksmanship. This concept is known by many various titles: Quick Kill, Close Quarters Battle/Combat (CQB/C) shooting, Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) firing, etc. Don’t get wrapped up in what it’s called. No one cares what you you know, only what you can do with what you know.

The base fundamentals of marksmanship have ALWAYS been Aiming, Breath Control, and Trigger Control. These apply to the long shots as well, but airsoft will never need a full article on long-range precision shooting. If you have some super tricked out sniper rifle, apply these same fundamentals but do it slower with more attention to perfection.

Truth be told, the only difference between combat shooting, and precision shooting, is wrapping your mind around not getting that perfect shot. In combat shooting, we compress the application of fundamentals to get the shot off quicker and end the fight faster. Especially in airsoft, it matters less where you hit the opponent, so long as you simply hit the target.

Aiming

This could be better thought of as the aiming process your mind and eyes go through, as opposed to the aiming process of your muscles discussed in another article. Two things to worry about: sight alignment, and sight picture.

Sight Alignment

As stated above, lining up the sights so that the front sight is perfectly centered, both horizontally and vertically (as seen through the rear sight), is nice, but unnecessary. At the typical ranges of urban conflict and the speed of the action, there simply isn’t time.

However, when you cause the trigger to break, the front sight should be where your eye is concentrating. It will also be between the rear sight posts or aperture (sighting hole/notch/etc), not perfectly balanced, but in there at least.

Sight Picture

Because your eye, like a camera, can only focus at one distance, the rear sight and the target will be blurry. No doubt this will be very awkward at first, but it is a tried and true fundamental. I had a very hard time doing this in a combat mindset and my hit ratio suffered because of it.

This technique, applied properly, is known as a “flash sight picture”. When you perceive the threat, and have pointed your toes at it, with both eyes open (see Combat Stance) you raise your weapon to engage. Your eyes are focused on the threat until your sights are in position. At that time, you shift your focus to the front sight. When it’s so sharp you could read a letter written there with a marker (write one!), the trigger breaks and you notch another kill on your gun belt.

Trigger Control

There are two types trigger control, interrupted and uninterrupted. For the same time constraints and perfection-less reasons we don’t worry as much about alignment, we completely do away with interrupted. We don’t squeeze the trigger any more, either. That’s for perfect shots on targets, not eliminating immediate threats. Leave that other junk to the snipers.

Improper trigger control is the majority of the reason people miss with bullets, but I haven’t conducted many experiments with airsoft in this regard. I can only assume the mistakes that professional warriors make, airsofters will double. The deciding factor is knowing whether airsoft BB’s are capable of holding a consistent enough pattern to determine whether it’s shooter error or equipment flaws.

Placement

Once your grip is established on the weapon, your hands should never move or adjust. The only things that should move are the trigger finger and safety thumb (depending on your weapon system). When you are manipulating the trigger, you’ll want the finger to touch it as naturally as possible. Much like having a natural point of aim, you need to establish and natural point of contact for your trigger finger. Having too much, or not enough, finger on the trigger will cause the shots to strike left or right of your point of aim. For my finger, the proper placement is directly in the center of the meat on the last section of my finger. Pretty much where the base of my finger is, except on the other side of my finger.

Press

Take up the slack in the trigger before you begin your press. The slack is that useless movement forward and back of the trigger that doesn’t work any internals. When taking up slack, you don’t worry about skillful manipulation. Just pull the trigger until you meet resistance. This is where the trigger press begins.

Often times, changing the way your mind relates to a process can help you better accomplish it. If you can make your self realize you aren’t pulling, but rather pressing the trigger, you’ll be well on your way. The entire finger shares the work in pressing the trigger rearward, but the majority of the effort and movement comes from the first joint (the one after the knuckle). It will take some practice, but it will be worth it. Spend some time dry firing or just working the trigger a bit. Focus your mind on perfect trigger manipulation. While you are doing it, ask yourself whether you are exerting any pressure left or right and correct if you are. You want that trigger to break crisp and clean straight to the rear only.

Follow-through

This will be a completely new concept for many airsofters who just picked up a gun to play some “cowboys and indians”. After the shot, it’s very important to have follow-through. What happens after the shot is just as important as what happens before the shot, in many cases, because you are now about to take another shot.

Do not take your finger off the trigger. Do not immediately shift your head, eyes, body, etc to see where your shot is going. If you get into the habit of immediately checking to see if they “called their hits”, you may subconsciously begin moving to do your post shot ritual before the BB actually leaves the barrel. Where does that leave you? Having to reset in order to take another shot.

Instead, once the trigger breaks, keep it held to the rear until you have recovered from the shot and would be capable of taking another well aimed shot. At this point, you release the trigger only as far as you must in order for it to reset. Now, you only need exert a fraction of the movement to send another shot downrange.

Breathing

How your breathing and firing coincide are an extremely vital part of making the perfect shot. As stated earlier, there’s not a lot of time to play about when the threat is immediate. A respiratory pause is easy to understand, you need only pay attention to how you naturally breathe in and out. Your lungs breathe in air. When they are full, your lungs begin to empty. However, after the lungs have emptied, a healthy and fit body doesn’t naturally start filling them up right away. A few seconds will tick by before you begin to breathe in again. That pause between emptying and filling is the natural respiratory pause. That’s when a perfect shot is taken.

But someone just popped out of that bush and you need to take the shot now. There isn’t time to wait for nature. Stop breathing, take the shot, continue breathing. Now, I didn’t say hold your breath. Having full lungs will make your body unstable and incapable of maintaining any sort of shooting platform for even a short time. Simply freeze your chest, nothing extra in, nothing extra out. Just stop breathing. Don’t wait too long to breathe again though. A lack of oxygen affects coordination and vision a great deal more than people realize, and faster too.

Breathe regularly and calmly. Having a strong cardiovascular system is the key to dominating the battlefield.

Putting it all together

In a seamless setting, it would look thus:

Threat perceived > weapon sights aligned with the eye / trigger slack taken up > breathing stopped / front sight focus > trigger breaks / trigger held > breathe / acquire target > allow trigger reset > breathing stopped / front sight focus > trigger breaks / held

That whole process shouldn’t take more than a second or two once you’ve established the muscle memory. Although, you needn’t rush it. Fire only as fast as you can hit. It’s ok if they shoot first, just as long as you hit first.

Note: Some weapon systems won’t allow for all aspects of this technique and you must adapt the technique and process as needed to keep it efficient. For example, an Steyr AUG uses an analog process to determine semi or full-auto firing. In the case of this weapon, you wouldn’t be able to hold the trigger to the rear because it would be firing instead of follow-through…ing…

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