There is all sorts of research out there talking about trusting your gut. When it comes to self defense, it is usually a good idea to trust your instincts when dealing with people who give you a bad “vibe”. There are times though, when you should not trust yourself.
We’ve all had this experience at one point or another. You pick up a friend’s gun and it just feels right. You might even shoot it better than your gun. So you buy the gun and you really like it but you can’t actually shoot it measurably better than your old one. Or you do shoot it slightly better than your old one and a month later, when you try your old one out, you realize you can shoot it just as well as the new one!
Aside from the well know “different gun syndrome”, what I’m getting at here is that as a relatively new or lower skilled shooter, you cannot trust your own opinion or experiences yet. This is not an insult, just a fact of life. I recently learned this lesson again with motorcycles. I was convinced one bike was too tall and too tippy for me (center of gravity was pretty high, doncha know), so I got another bike and rode it for a month. It was much heavier, but the weight was low. When I went back to the original bike, I didn’t notice any of the previous “tall tippyness”.
Did it go away? Was it not there to begin with? Of course not. What happened was that I became a better rider in that month. Maybe not much more technically skilled, and certainly not much more experienced (it was only a month, after all), but after getting acclimated to the heavier second bike, the first bike just didn’t seem very problematic any more. When I discussed this with a riding mentor of mine, he was not surprised to hear about it. After thinking about it for a minute, I was not surprised either. I just needed to relearn the truth that people with limited skill and experience, cannot trust their judgement yet.
With guns, the solution has always been simple to prescribe. Just stick with one gun and learn to shoot it very well. Once you get there, you can transfer that skill to any other gun. With bikes, I’m having a hard time following my own advice, but I’d probably be better off if I did.
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