round when you unloaded the gun. The end of a full bookshelf works well for this; another good tactic is to go to your local office supply and by a case of cheap copier paper. Open the case and reorient the reams so that they’re standing on their long edge instead of their face. Put the lid back on the box, and now you have a perfect dry fire target that will safely contain any handgun round!)
Now you can do the dry fire work. The key is to let the trigger finger do what geometry is forcing it to do: slide across the trigger face. As the trigger moves backward in compression, the finger wants to slide down the trigger face. Let it! It will want to slide sideways, across the trigger face, as the arc of the finger comes toward the palm. Again, let it do so.
We’re not talking about large amounts of finger movement, but if you pay attention to the feel of the finger on the trigger you’ll notice the phenomenon. You’ll also notice that you’re probably trying to grab the trigger, hanging on to it so that it doesn’t escape your grasp.
Many students report that the first few times they do this it feels as though the trigger is going to slip out from under their finger. Of course it’s not going to do so, and it’s necessary to get past that feeling through successful repetition. Pay attention to how this sliding movement feels and consciously replicate that feeling with each repetition.
It won’t be long before you discover the tip of your finger is no longer curling in and touching the frame. Since the finger isn’t able to steer the gun, you’ll also notice that your sights are staying in alignment on the target more consistently. You should also find that increasing the pace of the trigger stroke no longer results in the gun being thrown wildly off target, which commonly happens when the trigger finger touches the frame.
Another benefit: if you’ve got long fingers and you’re shooting a small gun like a J-frame, you’ll find that your trigger finger no longer hits the knuckles of your support thumb, or at least does so with significantly less effect on the sight alignment.
Remember what I said about the importance of the trigger return? Pay attention to the trigger return as you do this; the return should be a mirror image of the compression, with the trigger finger sliding on the trigger face in the opposite direction. Watch the sight alignment as you do this, and practice until the trigger resets with no sight movement. Remember that the return should be at the same speed as the compression.
You’ll know you’ve ‘got it’ when you can do multiple trigger strokes, with smooth consistent compression and return, and your sights never wander from the target.
How much dry fire is necessary? I don’t recommend long dry fire sessions. I find that most people pick this up in just a minute or two, some in just a few strokes. Once you’ve gotten to the point that the trigger is moving back and forth without disturbing the sight alignment, any further dry fire is of little use. It’s time to go to the range and do it for real.
Considering the trigger face
This method works with the kinds of triggers that have been standard on revolvers for the last few decades: medium width and with smooth faces.
In earlier days, before double action shooting was taken as seriously as it is today, most revolvers were manufactured with wide and/or serrated triggers. These were ideal for single action work where the finger doesn’t move much, but greatly hampered good double action work. (The reason for the prevalence of the use of the finger pad to manipulate the trigger was to make the best of those triggers.)
Thankfully, revolver manufacturers have seen fit to give us proper trigger faces. Most of today’s revolvers come with smooth faced triggers, but if you have an older gun with a wide or serrated trigger face a gunsmith can easily rectify the situation. See the chapter on revolver modifications for more information.
Allowing the trigger finger to curl or grab trigger results in steering the gun.
Finger is in same position, but allowed to slide across trigger face. Result is less muzzle movement from the trigger finger.
Staging the trigger?
For many years it was fashionable to teach the technique of ‘staging’ the trigger, and some instructors still believe in the technique.
In staging, the trigger is compressed most of the way to ignition but is paused at the last bit of travel so that muzzle alignment can be acquired or verified. Once that’s done the trigger compression is restarted and the gun fires. In practice the sequence is start-stop-align sights-restart-discharge.
The thinking behind this technique is that it’s not possible to maintain precise muzzle alignment over the entire distance that the trigger moves. With one caveat (which I’ll get to in a moment) I don’t agree with this premise. Experience, not just mine but that of my students and of award-winning shooters, suggests that staging is a crutch. If you’ve practiced a smooth, continuous trigger stroke without the sights veering off target, then staging will afford you no advantage in accuracy.
One of the issues in allowing yourself to stage the trigger is that it requires precise timing. You have to stop the trigger at a point where most of the trigger travel has been used, with the smallest amount of travel remaining to take advantage of a shorter and relatively lighter trigger action. Stopping too soon leaves more of the travel remaining, and if that happens it’s not much different than just stroking the trigger straight through.
At the same time you need to stop before the sear releases and the gun fires. If your revolver is to be used as a defensive tool, imagine the liability of trying to stage the trigger for a critical, precise shot and having the gun fire before you were ready. Way back when, when my instructors and many others espoused trigger staging, I found that on occasion I’d miss the stopping point and the gun would fire. If that happens the shot will certainly not be terribly accurate, which more or less defeats the purpose of staging the trigger in the first place.
It’s a delicate balancing act, and most shooters who espouse this system use their trigger finger to push on the frame to stop in time. Doing that steers the gun, and the shooter is obligated to stop and realign the sights because they’ve now veered off target. In my never-to-be-humble opinion, staging has very little use on a target range and less than no use in a defensive situation.
I neither advocate nor teach trigger staging, but there is one exception where it is sometimes useful. If you have a gun with a particularly horrendous trigger action, especially one which has a sudden increase in weight followed by a sudden decrease just before the sear releases, staging the trigger may be the only method to get acceptable accuracy from the gun. This, however, is just a band-aid on the problem, with the real solution being to either get the revolver fixed or sell it.
Learning double action helps all shooting
You may have heard the old saw that becoming a good revolver shot will make you a better shooter in general. I believe that to be true, but no one has ever explained to me why it’s so.
Learning to manage the heavy, long double action really doesn’t seem to have much in common with the light, short actions of autoloaders, yet alone rifles and shotguns. It could be argued that the need to hold the revolver steady against a significant amount of trigger manipulation force teaches us to hold all guns steady. It might be said that learning to keep the sights aligned on target is the key to all shooting, and it is, but I still don’t think it’s the reason.
After watching students in various classes shooting revolvers, autoloaders, and even rifles, I’ve come to the conclusion that the key skill that all good revolver shooters learn is trigger return. It’s the skill that translates to other guns and shooting and is incredibly important to all of them.
Take rifle shooting, for instance. Most rifle shooters, at least from my observations, release the trigger immediately as the sear breaks and the shot is ignited.