What’s more important, speed or accuracy? The famous lawman Wyatt Earp once said that ‘Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.” That’s very true, but if all you have is accuracy without speed, you’ll lose in a gunfight. So where’s the line? How to you find the perfect balance between speed and accuracy? It all starts with what I call “front sight confidence”. Simply stated, front sight confidence is knowing that within 7 yards, as long as your front sight is somewhere inside the rear sight notch and your trigger manipulation is smooth and consistent, you will be able to get acceptably accurate rounds inside your target. “Acceptably accurate” is the key to that statement. Having confidence in the fact that your rounds will impact within 2 to 3 inches in any direction of center mass gives you room to speed up.
When practicing at the range, start out slowly with various deficiencies in your sight alignment. For example, purposely push your front sight to the right, left, up or down inside the rear sight notch. With that deficient sight picture, slowly press the trigger to the rear until the round breaks. You’ll see that your rounds, although not perfectly centered, will be effectively on target. Now speed that up, and keep speeding it up until your shot placement becomes unacceptable. Then slow it down slightly and train at that speed until you feel confident in your skill level, then start speeding it up again. Over time you’ll find that if you don’t get too wrapped up in “perfect” sight alignment during your training, you can attain reasonable accuracy at speeds you never thought you were capable of.