There are a million and one techniques that you can apply in a 3 Gun Competition to speed up your time and increase your performance. Everyone must choose which strategies they will apply and which they won't.

One strategy that most people don't apply - and yet can actually be very effective - is to strategically time the dropping and replacing a magazine in their AR-15 while on the run from one location to another while making their way through the shooting stage.

Most people simply wait until they run out of ammo during a 3 gun stage before they drop and replace a mag. There is nothing wrong with this strategy. It is very practical and reflects a tendency to minimize waste.

However, let me present another perspective on minimizing waste: 

• ​Dropping and replacing a mag takes time away from shooting
• Running between cover locations to the next target takes time away from shooting

Consequently, wouldn't it be wise to perform both of these activities simultaneously so as to minimize the amount of time wasted? Wouldn't it be better to be able to focus on shooting when you are standing in a location in which you can shoot, rather than having to reload and unnecessarily add extra seconds to your time?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating dropping a mag that has 20 rounds in it. However, lets say you:

• Have 6 rounds in your mag
  
• You are about to reach a location in a stage in which you are expecting to make roughly 20 fairly rapid shots without much down time
  
• You are going to have to run 10 yards to get to that location from the location you are in now

In such a case, why not drop and replace your mag during the 10 yard run so that when you arrive and the next location, you can make all 20 shots in rapid succession without having to stop and waste time reloading?

Obviously, this is not a decision that should be made in the moment while you are in the middle of shooting the 3 Gun stage. It is a decision that should be made before even beginning the shooting stage in the first place.

When you are first hearing the course of fire presented to you before the stage, mentally count each of the shots that are going to be required and look for "wasted time" sections of the course in which you will not be able to shoot, but will simply be on the move. If you calculate that your mag will be fairly low on ammo and unable to make it through the next section of shooting on this course, then this may be a good place to drop and replace your nearly empty mag.

Find a 3 Gun Competition in your area and get started in 3 Gun today.

Getting fast reloading your rifle and your pistol for 3 gun competitions is relatively easy because they have magazines that can simply be ejected and rapidly replaced with another pre-loaded magazine full of ammunition. Not so with the shotgun. There are some people that shoot the AK-47 style shotguns with a pre-loaded magazine but we have seen these jam far too many times to consider them to be the "fool-proof" option that they are often presented to be.

The reality is that if you want to get really fast reloading your shotgun then you need to practice. Practice, practice, practice.

Watching TV with your wife? Practice reloading your shotgun with dummy rounds while you sit there on the couch.

Sitting in front of your computer waiting on it to finish performing its new update? Practice reloading your shotgun with dummy rounds while you wait.

You have to practice so much that reloading your shotgun just becomes automatic and natural. 

As you know, in a 3 gun competition, you are always going to be a lot more shaky than you would normally be because your adrenaline is flowing. There is nothing you can do about that besides simply entering more 3 gun competitions or engaging in some other form of practicing shooting under duress.

What you can do though is automate your shooting and reloading habits. When it comes to the shotgun, shooting fast and accurate it fairly easy. Its the reloading that's hard. And the good news is that you don't even have to go to the range to practice. You can practice at home any time with dummy rounds and it won't cost you a range fee or ammunition expenses.

Find a 3 Gun Competition in your area and get started in 3 Gun today.

There no time like the present.

If you're thinking of getting started into something, then you may as well start now. the sooner you get started, the sooner you can improve.

3 Gun competitions are extremely practical and useful for developing and honing shooting skills for practically all ability levels...

An expert can focus on moving faster between targets, decreasing the amount of time between his double taps, speeding up his reloading process or mastering the art of reloading while on the move in order to save more time.

A beginner can focus on making accurate shots, building proper neural patterns regarding the reloading process, building proper habits regarding engaging and disengaging the safety on their weapons, keeping their weapons pointed in a safe direction at all times even when stressed and rushed, building a habit of keeping their finger off of the trigger except when shooting, etc.

No matter who you are, 3 Gun competitions are a great place to have fun, get better, and challenge yourself in your current ability. Everyone can always get better and even the highest quality knives eventually get dull if they are not sharpened regularly. 

Sharpen your skills, enjoy an exciting day at a 3 Gun competition.

Find a 3 Gun Competition in your area.

So you've decided to shoot 3 Gun. You've got an AR-15, a semi-automatic pistol that you are pleased with, and a shotgun that will hold 8 rounds.

Now what?

How do you find a competition? 

And what else do you need to be ready?

Well, the good news is that almost every state in the country has 3 gun competitions in it and our list of 3 Gun Competitions has a database of all of the existing 3 gun competitions that we know of in the U.S. (if you are aware of one that is not on the list, please notify us by email at [email protected] so that we can add it to our list).

Once you've found a competition in your area, call them up find out when their next competition is, and let them know that you're new to 3 Gun and ask if there's anything particular you need to bring or anything you need to do in particular to be prepared before you come out to your first competition. They are likely to be extremely friendly and helpful and probably the primary preparation they will recommend is simply to make sure that your rifle is sighted in and that you bring plenty of ammunition.

Our experience has been that the 3 Gun community is a very friendly group that is extremely welcoming to newcomers. We have not personally found there to be any of the aloof superiority attitude that we have unfortunately encountered in some gun stores around the country.

At 3 Gun competitions, most of the other competitors will be very excited to find out that this is your first competition and they will be eager to share ideas and lessons they have learned with you to help you improve faster and master the game better.

The only thing that will put everyone in a very bad mood very very quickly is irresponsible, unsafe gun handling behavior. Simply treat all of your firearms as if they are loaded and all times and follow all instructions from the range officer to the letter. If you are fairly new to handling firearms then some of this will be new but it is important to learn good safe gun handling practices right away.

You will probably find that your performance the first time at a 3 Gun competitions is rather bad, but it will rapidly improve within a few competitions and the difference will be very noticeable. As you get better, obviously the competitions will become more fun as well. (We all enjoy doing things that we're good at better than things that we're not good at of course).

Good luck and have fun!

Today is September 11. Like many of you, I remember exactly where I was the moment I heard a plane had been flown into the World Trade Center. Many good people died that day and the general feeling of safety that had become common in the United States began to weaken as well.

It has been weakening ever since. 

Search the word "prepper" online and you will get a multitude of results. Hundreds of websites, dozens of books, countless articles. All dedicated to the subject of "prepping". 

What has happened that has caused so many people in our relatively safe, stable society to suddenly feel that society might collapse at any time and that they need to prep for such an event?

It is precisely things like the fact that the September 11th attack occurred on American soil, the general ineptitude of our federal government, the massive (and growing) national debt, the fact that there are literally millions of people worldwide who hate the United States and would like to see us fall, the fact that other countries are increasing the size and strength of their militaries while ours is shrinking, the fact that city dwellers all live on an electric grid that is not within their personal control. This list could go on and on, but you get the point...

Things like this make it increasingly obvious to a growing portion of our population that our society could collapse into chaos (or at least a much less stable version of itself) at any time in the near or distant future.

This should not be surprising. All societies eventually crumble and are slowly replaced by the next phase of history, so to speak. 

A quick glance through the annals of history will show dozens of powerful empires that rose to great heights, massive sizes, had their day of glory, and then faded out of existence. This destruction happened through a variety of ways including war, government bankruptcy, social degeneration, etc, etc.

In the end, it doesn't matter how it happens. It only matters that is does happen.

So, what's my point?

Well, my point is this: many preppers who are genuinely good well intentioned  people are focusing largely on accumulating supplies. Very few are focusing on developing skills, especially defense skills.

If you merely have supplies and the stability of our society has crumbled, then the well armed bad guy that lives down the street is simply going to come over to your house, rob you of all of your supplies, and probably kill you and your family. 

As a result, effectively all you have done then is stock up to provide supplies for the bad guy. This is obviously not good.

If we seek to honor those who have fallen in preserving our freedom throughout our country's history then we must do so as those men did....By staying armed and consistently training ourselves for whatever is required of us in order to protect the helpless, stand up for what is right, and preserve our free society.

Keep in mind that the U.S. has not had a full scale military attack on its mainland since the war of 1812. That is a long long time ago.

Europe and most of the rest of the world have had full scale war take place in their cities and neighborhoods much more recently than that.

We must remember that all wars are fought in someone's home town. 

When an army invades a country, they don't just attack the enlisted soldiers of that country. EVERYONE is under attack. At that moment, it will be way too late to start preparing.

Well, what if it's not war that destabilizes our society?

It could be caused by widespread economic disaster, disease outbreak, small scale frequent terrorist attacks scattered throughout the country, a breakdown of the infrastructure that people have come to rely on for electricity/clean water/food, anything....The possible causes are really countless, 

However, in the end, it really doesn't matter what causes the destabilization, the result is ultimately the same. If our stable society collapses for some reason other than war, the relative safety that we previously possessed as a result of the stability of our society will go out the window as well.

Remember how many police and military forces were sent to qualm the LA riots in the early 1990's? And that was just for one city. If the entire country underwent a similar event at one time, it would truly be impossible for any central authority to effectively control it. 

For this reason, it is important to stay armed and stay trained so that if that day ever comes, you are prepared to protect your family, to protect the weak, the protect the helpless, and to stand up against evil regardless of whether it is in the form of an invading military or simply in the form of thugs who are taking advantage of the loss of stability in society by preying on the weak.

The heroes who have fallen fighting for our freedom have passed the torch to us. It is up to us to carry it. 

That means training and preparing ourselves both mentally and physically. A complacent people is a weak people.

• Spend a couple days a month at the gun range practicing with both long and short range weapons.
• Leave your email alone for a while on Saturday and go enter a 3 gun competition so that you can practice rapidly shooting on the move with an adrenaline rush, etc. 
• Leave the office early in the afternoon and go workout to train your physical conditioning and your capacity to handle physical challenges should the need arise..
• Turn off the TV for an evening and read The Federalist Papers or The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or The Declaration of Independence or the Magna Carta or the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or anything else that will feed your mind the thoughts that every free person needs to eat.
  

If we don't know what principles our free society was founded upon how will we be able to uphold it and protect it?

If we don't know what we need to defend against, how will we recognize it when it shows up?

Freedom brings responsibility. The tyrant preys upon the inclination of mankind to avoid responsibility. It is what gives the tyrant his choke-hold on the people. When you turn your responsibility over to someone else, you have lost your freedom.

The cost of freedom is responsibility. Responsibility for oneself. Responsibility for one's family. Responsibility for one's community. Responsibility cannot be delegated. Each and every one of us is responsible for maintaining the freedom that our countrymen died in order to preserve. 

Do not squander it in complacency.

I guarantee you America's enemies are not sitting on the couch getting fat. They are training every single day with one primary thought in their minds: the goal of toppling America. 

Honor our forefathers. Honor the fallen.

Say a prayer for the families of those who lost loved ones on September  11, 2001 today. Every year, this day is a reminder to them of the horrible day that they found out that they would never see their husband, brother, wife, mother, father, or friend again. 

Be vigilant. Be strong. Be free. And as always, shoot 3 Gun.

It teaches you weapon preferences through first hand experience...

By that I mean that it reveals to you REAL quickly which of your weapons is easiest to shoot fastest, load fastest, and be most accurate with...

That's right, you guessed it...its the rifle

...every single time. 

The movies may often make pistols out to be sexy, cool, etc, etc but heck, the movies can't get anything about guns right at all. Half the time, the pistol goes DOWN rather than UP when a shot is fired from it. How ridiculous. It is hard for me to even fathom how that has gotten by all these years in Hollywood. There's always so much talk about Hollywood trying to make movies more and more realistic, etc, etc. Well if you want to make things realistic, how about starting out with something super simple and easy? Like just making a muzzle rise rather than fall when a shot is fired. 

Anyway, back to the subject, pistols are nice to have for one very simple, practical reason: they are small and easy to carry. 

Plain and simple, if rifles were as easy to carry as pistols, there wouldn't be much reason to have pistols. But the reality is that its simply inconvenient to carry a rifle around all the time wherever you go. They're heavy, they're awkward, and they would get in the way of nearly everything you have to do during your day to day activities and work.

But aside from the convenience for carrying aspect, if you had a choice between a pistol and a rifle when choosing a weapon for maximum effectiveness, there is absolutely no question that the rifle is the superior choice many, many times over. Its not even a close call. It is as obvious as the fact that a glass of water is better at quenching your thirst than a glass of milk would be.

However, oddly enough, this obvious reality somehow doesn't actually seem to be widely known.

I once read a story about a cop who usually kept his AR-15 in the trunk of his car and merely had his pistol and 2 or 3 extra magazines in the cab with him. (you can see where this story is going already can't you?)

Anyway, all in all, if I remember correctly, he had somewhere around 55 rounds available on him at all times. So here he was driving down the highway with nothing but his pistol and 55 rounds within reach. 

He hears the description of a vehicle for a fugitive, looks up and sees the guy driving two cars ahead in lane next to him. The fugitive sees him and cuts across traffic to make and exit. Finally, after chasing him through a neighborhood, the guy pulls over, jumps out and start firing at the cop. The cop fires back of course and hits him multiple times but the guy doesn't go down. I can't remember if the cop ended up diving under the car or what, but in the course of events the cop reloaded his pistol multiple times and hit the fugitive multiple times and he still never went down.

Finally the fugitive ran out of ammo too and sprinted back to the cab of his car grabbed another pistol and turned and continued to shoot at the cop. Finally, the guy went down at this point. 

After it was all over the cop goes and looks in the cab of the fugitive's car and there is a loaded SKS rifle laying on the front seat. He was absolutely dumbfounded (and also obviously eternally grateful) that the fugitive grabbed another pistol instead of the rifle when he went back to the car. And for that matter, why he chose the pistol over the rifle the first time he got out of the car. He could have ended that cop's life in one easy shot instead of dying in a shootout if he had simply picked up the rifle instead of a pistol. 

I have often thought about this story and what it means. 

Obviously, the cop learned a strong lesson and he always carries his AR-15 in the cab with him now and also carries over 150 rounds of ammo with him now instead of only 55.

However, aside from that, the fact that the fugitive grabbed a pistol instead of a rifle as his choice of a weapon TWO separate times.is absolutely inexplicable....UNLESS, UNLESS he literally just did not know that a rifle was a much better choice, many many times over. 

This made me think, I wonder how many other people don't realize how obvious of a choice this is? How many people have acquired the majority of their gun knowledge from movies and, as a result, literally have no idea that a pistol should be the last weapon on the list of preferred firearms.

Only a few first hand experiences will teach you this without a doubt. However, if it happens to be a life or death situation, you may not get the chance for another first hand experience if you don't get extremely lucky during the first one.

Think through just a few of the factors:

• How many rounds are in a magazine of an AR-15? 30-60 rounds depending on the magazine
• How many rounds are in a magazine of a pistol? Anywhere from 9-23 rounds depending on the pistol
• How far out will an AR-15 maintain accuracy? Anywhere from 200-600 yards depending on the shooter and the quality of the rifle
• How far will a pistol be accurate? Well, if you practice a ton (and I mean for hours every single day) 30 yards. If you practice once a month or less (like most people do), then 5 maybe 10 yards...or 15 if you're the exception.
• How many rounds can you load into an AR-15 with one swipe of the hand? 30-60 rounds depending on the size of the magazine
• How many rounds can you load into a shotgun with one swipe of the hand? 1 round
• How far is a shotgun accurate and deadly? Obviously this depends on what kind of shell you're putting in it (shot or slug, etc). But even with a slug, your looking at 50 yards for any real level of accuracy, and you are certainly not going to get this level of accuracy if you're having to shoot multiple shots at that distance and do it while on the move. With an AR-15 with good optics on the other hand, making multiple rapid, accurate shots at 50 yards while on the move would be super easy for anyone who practices semi-regularly.
• Need I go on?

Again, back to 3 gun...

If you shoot 3 Gun regularly, no one needs to tell you these things. No one needs to tell you that, hands down, the rifle is nearly always the ideal small arms weapon of choice.

You simply know this because you've shot and reloaded each type of weapon as rapidly as possible in a pressured situation dozens of times and you know that no matter how fast you can load a shotgun, its still super duper slow. So slow, its ridiculous. Makes you feel like you're living in the 1850's or something. 

No matter how accurate you are with a pistol, every single super challenging pistol target would be an absolute piece of cake shot with a rifle.

Shoot 3 Gun, enjoy yourself, learn your preferences first hand. Beyond the absolutes such as the rifle being the ideal small arms weapon, each person will have a multitude of individual personal preferences about the way they like to shoot, hold their weapon, load their ammo, move between targets, etc. Practice makes perfect. Get involved and start learning your own personal preferences through high pressure shooting.

Summer is finally here and that means warmer weather. no more frigid days at the gun range feeling like your fingers are going to fall off!

3 Gun competitions tend to take at least half a day. And if you're shooting and the weather's nice, there's no better way to spend half of your Saturday. 

On the other hand, if its bitter cold and windy...its torture out there!

Take the opportunity to get in one or two 3 gun competitions per month during the summer to make up for not doing enough of them in the winter...its time to brush up those skills that got rusty while you were holed up inside cuddled up to the wood stove with a hot drink in your hand.

Take your guns out, go get in a couple genereal practice days at the range on your own; and then mosey on over to your local 3 gun competition ASAP and get back into the swing of things!

If you've never entered a 3 Gun competition then there's no better time than summer to get started. The people in 3 Gun are notoriously friendly and helpful with people who are new to the sport and you wlll most likley be welcomed into the crew like a long lost friend who's finally come home.

If you're not sure where the nearest local competition is for you, check out our 3 Gun competition database to find one near you.

Enjoy your summer and shoot some 3 Gun while you're at it!