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Natural point of aim (NPOA or NPA), also known as natural aiming area (NAA), is a shooting skill where the shooter minimizes the effects of body movement on the firearm's impact point. Along with proper stance, sight alignment, sight picture, breath control, and trigger control, it forms the basis of marksmanship.
To achieve natural point of aim, the shooter settles into position while not looking through the sights. Some shooters actually close their eyes, but this can upset the natural maintenance of balance because the brain uses visual cues to help stay in balance. The shooter looks through the sights only after ensuring the position is comfortable and the firearm is resting in the stance with minimal muscle tension. If the sights are not resting on the desired point of impact, the shooter adjusts the position by repeating the same steps until the sights rest on the target. After achieving a comfortable and natural position, if the sights are not on the target, the shooter adjusts his stance (moves his feet) until the sights are on target. The arm, head and body position do not change; when standing only the feet are moved to bring the sights onto target. [1]
Natural point of aim is not achieved if the shooter must apply pressure to the firearm so the sight picture is on target. One of the main advantages of natural point of aim is that it minimizes fatigue when shooting a long course of fire. Over time, the shooter learns to assume the correct position quickly, allowing for accurate fire immediately. [1]
The main purpose of identifying and potentially correcting natural point of aim is to make shots with both accuracy and precision, where accuracy is the ability to place rounds on the desired target, and precision is the ability to put multiple rounds in the same location. Good shooters are always precise, and this skill is more fundamental than accuracy, which can be adjusted. Typically, precision is based on natural point of aim. Fire 10 rounds downrange and they will, hopefully, all land in a similar area on the target. This is the natural point of aim. If the strike zone is not in the middle of the target, adjustments are made to the shooter's positioning and/or the firearm's sights so that the shots accurately strike the centre of the target.
Natural point of aim marksmanship is based on the idea that muscular control is insufficient to provide a stable platform for shooting, especially more than one shot. Instead, the shooter relies on non-muscular (skeleton/ligaments/tissue) support to provide the shooting platform. This eliminates changes in aim due to muscle fatigue and also minimizes the shaking associated with muscle tension. [2]
Natural point of aim is a concept that can be used in relation to any type of shooting position but is most often discussed in relation to prone, sitting, or kneeling positions, and less frequently with offhand/standing positions.
There are often many points that can be relaxed enough for the shooter to assume as a natural point of aim; in this way, the natural point of aim can be altered based on whatever the shooter finds most comfortable. However, the natural point of aim is a fixed point. It can only be moved when the shooter moves their feet, due to the point’s reliance upon a relaxed position.
Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows. The word comes from the Latin arcus, meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In modern times, it is mainly a competitive sport and recreational activity. A person who practices archery is typically called an archer, bowman, or toxophilite.
Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon. Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, surgerys, and guided missiles can be considered acts of shooting. When using a firearm, the act of shooting is often called firing as it involves initiating a combustion (deflagration) of chemical propellants.
Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms and bows/crossbows.
A sniper rifle is a high-precision, long-range rifle. Requirements include high accuracy, reliability, and mobility, concealment, and optics, for anti-personnel, anti-materiel and surveillance uses by military snipers. The modern sniper rifle is a portable shoulder-fired rifle with either a bolt action or semi-automatic action, fitted with a telescopic sight for extreme accuracy and chambered for a high-ballistic performance centerfire cartridge.
Iron sights are a system of physical alignment markers used as a sighting device to assist the accurate aiming of ranged weapons (such as a firearms, airguns, crossbows, and bows, or less commonly as a primitive finder sight for optical telescopes. Iron sights are the earliest type of sighting device, as it relies completely on the viewer's naked eye, and is distinctly different to optical sights such as telescopic sights, reflector sights, holographic sights, and laser sights, which make use of optical manipulation and/or active illumination.
Accurizing is the process of improving the accuracy and precision of a gun.
Point shooting is a practical shooting method where the shooter points a ranged weapon at a target without relying on the use of sights to aim. Emphasis is placed on fast draw and trying to score preemptive hits first. In close quarters combat, where life-threatening situations emerge very quickly, sighted marksmanship techniques become risky, so advocates of point shooting emphasize a less sighting-oriented style that prioritizes the tactical advantages of quick fire superiority and suppression.
A gunstock or often simply stock, the back portion of which is also known as a shoulder stock, a buttstock, or simply a butt, is a part of a long gun that provides structural support, to which the barrel, action, and firing mechanism are attached. The stock also provides a means for the shooter to firmly brace the gun and easily aim with stability by being held against the user's shoulder when shooting the gun, and helps to counter muzzle rise by transmitting recoil straight into the shooter's body.
Benchrest shooting is a shooting sport discipline in which high-precision rifles are rested on a table or bench – rather than being carried in the shooter's hands – while shooting at paper or steel targets, hence the name "benchrest". Both the forearm and buttstock of such a rifle are usually fully supported by bean bags, a bipod/monopod (front/rear) combination, and/or a specially designed fixture device called shooting rest, so that the gun can remain stably pointing at the target without needing to be held by someone. When shooting, the shooter simply sits/stands comfortably behind the table/bench, operates the action and pulls the trigger, without needing to worry about carrying any weight of the gun. This is in contrast to other shooting disciplines, where the shooter has to bear at least part of the gun's weight while holding it steady to aim, even when using support devices such as bipods, tripods or shooting sticks.
NRA Precision Pistol, formerly known as NRA Conventional Pistol, is a national bullseye shooting discipline organized in the United States by the National Rifle Association of America. Emphasis is on accuracy and precision, and participants shoot handguns at paper targets at fixed distances and time limits. Other organizations in the United States and Canada have established rules and keep records of similar disciplines, including the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) in the United States.
The Karabiner Modell 1931 is a magazine-fed, straight-pull bolt-action rifle. It was the standard issue rifle of the Swiss armed forces from 1933 until 1958 though examples remained in service into the 1970s. It has a 6-round removable magazine, and is chambered for the 7.5×55mm Swiss Gewehrpatrone 1911 or GP 11, a cartridge with ballistic qualities similar to the 7.62×51mm NATO/.308 Winchester cartridge. Each rifle included a 6-round detachable box magazine with matching stamped serial number. A stripper clip can be used to load the magazine from the top of the receiver.
Bobby Lamar "Lucky" McDaniel (1925–1986) was an American marksmanship instructor, who taught what he called "instinct shooting" to bird hunters and law enforcement officers off and on from 1953 until 1982, using a Daisy lever-action BB gun without sights as his basic training aid. He taught approximately 100,000 people how to shoot, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Ford II, John Wayne, Audie Murphy, and key executives of the Remington and Winchester firearms companies.
The modern technique is a method for using a handgun for self-defense, originated by firearms expert Jeff Cooper. The modern technique uses a two-handed grip on the pistol and brings the weapon to eye level so that the sights may be used to aim at the target. This method was developed by Cooper into a teachable system beginning in the 1950s, based on the techniques of shooters like Jack Weaver, Mike Rousseau and others, after experiments with older techniques such as point shooting. The method was codified in book form in 1991 in The Modern Technique of the Pistol by Gregory B. Morrison and Cooper.
The following are terms related to firearms and ammunition topics.
A globe sight is a front sight component used to assist the aiming of a gun/device, usually those intended to launch projectiles, such as firearms, airguns, and crossbows. It is found in particular as a front sight element on rifles.
A diopter sight is an aperture sight component used to assist the aiming of ranged weapons, mainly firearms, airguns, and crossbows. Diopters function to precisely align the shooter's eye with the front sight and the target, while also producing beneficial optical effects for accurate aiming. A diopter must be paired with a complementing front sight element to obtain a usable sighting line. Diopter sights used for modern target shooting allow for very fine windage and elevation adjustments, moving the impact point on the order of less than five millimeters at a range of 100 metres. High end diopters typically accept accessories to aid the shooter's ability to see the target clearly.
The Art of the Rifle is a concise book explaining the use and techniques of rifles. It was authored by Lt. Col. (R) Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) and published in 1997. In it, Cooper uses short chapters to teach about both physical and mental preparedness for successful rifle shooting, whether for defense, hunting, or competition. His goal was to help the rifle shooter be accurate at any time or place. Col. Cooper was particularly well known for his pistol shooting expertise, popularizing the widely used “Weaver stance” and establishing a large training center in Arizona for military, law enforcement and civilians interested in gaining skill with firearms and defense techniques. Col. Cooper also authored at least half a dozen other books related to shooting since the 1950s. As of 2012, The Art of the Rifle was still in print in hardcover, softcover and electronic formats.
Precision guided firearms (PGFs) are long-range rifle systems designed to improve the accuracy of shooting at targets at extended ranges through target tracking, heads-up display, and advanced fire control. Inspired by missile lock-on and fighter jet technology, the application of PGF technology to small arms mitigates multiple sources of marksman error including mis-aim, trigger jerk and shot setup miscalculation. PGFs can significantly increase first shot success probability (FSSP) out to extreme ranges of 1,100 meters or more.
In shooting sports, a shot grouping, or simply group, is the collective pattern of projectile impacts on a target from multiple consecutive shots taken in one shooting session. The tightness of the grouping is a measure of the precision of a weapon, and a measure of the shooter's consistency and skill. On the other hand, the grouping displacement is a measure of accuracy.
In ranged weapons such as firearms and artillery pieces, the act of sighting in or sight-in is a preparatory or corrective calibration of the sights with the goal of having the projectile placed on a predictable impact position in relation to the sight picture. The principle of sighting-in is to shift the line of aim until it intersects the parabolic projectile trajectory at a designated point of reference, so when the gun is fired in the future it will repeatably hit where it aims at identical distances of that designated point.