Silhouette Torture
#22Tuesday
Decades ago, David Blinder created a 50 round drill for focused practice loosely based on Dot Drill 101 from the Brian Enos Forum. The late Todd Louis Green, who founded pistol-training.com, expanded on it, and codified it into a practice session containing most relevant defensive pistol marksmanship skills. He called it Dot Torture and put it up on the pistol-training forum.
ETA comment from Simon Golub of Pistol-Training
Dot Torture came to us as is. We simply photocopied the target and Todd liked it a lot, giving Blinder the correct credit on the target. –Simon
ETA 2 from the source, David Blinder, himself
I got shooting dots from John Shaw at Mid-South which I believe he got from IPSC. I am also the one who named it dot torture. Todd did some modifications and definitely popularized it.
I’ve made my own version of it using the target employed for the Swiss Concealed Carry License live fire test. Today was an opportunity to shoot it with my LCP II .22. It was fun. A .22 understudy for your carry pistol is a concept that can be very useful. Shooting .22s is inexpensive and has some benefits that centerfires don’t have, minimal recoil and Over Pressure Event being the principal ones.
The demanding nature of the target requires the shooter to know the zero of their pistol very well at whatever distance is being used. In the case of the LCP .22, at three yards the hold was about halfway up on the white circle in the chest of the silhouette.
I recently mounted a Ruger ReadyDot on my Taurus TX22 Compact. https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2026/08/03/readydot-on-tx22-compact/ It zeroes quite well at both 10 and 20 yards.
Although I started to shoot Silhouette Torture with it today, rain set in and I wasn’t able to finish. I was able to shoot it enough to learn that the hold at five yards was on the head. The 15 MOA dot completely covers the head at that distance but it’s not hard to hold. Knowing your pistol’s zero at different ranges, whether using iron or Dot sights is useful.
The Silhouette Torture target is attached. Its instructions are on the 2nd page of the 2 page PDF.
My Red Dot Adventure series is available on my Patreon page for those who are interested in exploring what Dot Sights can and cannot do.
ReadyDot on TX22 Compact
#mousegunmonday
As an experiment, I installed a Ruger ReadyDot on a Taurus TX22 Compact. The efficacy of this combination was surprising. Although the ReadyDot’s zero cannot be adjusted, Point of Impact was really close to Point of Aim at both 20 and 10 yards.
Body shots at 20 yards from a benchrest and headshots at 10 yards offhand were the test for zero used. No complaints whatsoever.
At 20 yards, the dot perfectly covers the four inch circle on the body of the target. For me, this made it very easy to aim without over-aiming. At 10 yards, it is slightly smaller than the head circle. Once again, I found this advantageous. This intrigued me so I shot the IDPA 5X5 Classifier. I didn’t time it but still shot at my normal cadence. Two Points Down.
I’ve created a drill I call the McGee, Shootist, Big Iron Challenge. It is a combination of the McGee Paradigm (3/3/3), Wild Bill Hickok’s shootist test from the American Mercury article about him, and Marty Robbins’ song Big Iron. The Challenge tests marksmanship at three separate distances; 3 yards, 8 yards Primary Hand Only, and 13 yards. It is 18 rounds total, six shots at each distance. In terms of proxemics https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2014/10/16/situational-awareness-and-positioning-part-iii/, marksmanship in the far phase of Social Space, and the near and far phases of Public Space are assessed.
McGee’s Challenge consists of three strings at three yards. One shot from the holster, two shots from the MidPoint, and three shots from Low Ready. The time limit for each string is three seconds. The standard is all six shots in the USPSA Metric target A zone in the head (2 inches x 4 inches).
The Shootist’s Challenge https://thetacticalprofessor.net/2024/08/02/gunfighter-challenge/ comes from the standard Wild Bill Hickok used in the Old West to see if a shooter was ‘good.’
The Big Iron Challenge was inspired by Marty Robbins’ song Big Iron.
“There was 40 feet between them when they stopped to make their play.”
The Big Iron Challenge consists of six shots at 40 feet/13 yards. It’s shot with Two Hands, Untimed. The standard is all six shots must hit in an eight circle, the IDPA -0 body zone.
The TX22/ReadyDot performed well on the Challenge. I’m very pleased with this combination of gun and dot.
Last Thursday, I shot an IDPA match that had a Pick Up Gun theme. I provided the TX22 Compact with the iron sights for one stage. Fifteen shooters fired six rounds each without any malfunctions. The match combined with the ReadyDot test totaled 143 rounds with no malfunctions. MiniMag solids were the ammunition used. This confirms my experience that the TX22 is a very reliable gun when fed decent ammo.
FTC Note and author disclosure: I purchased everything used in these experiments; gun, holster, ammunition, sight, and targets, with my own money. I receive no compensation whatsoever for anything mentioned.
More of my Red Dot Adventures are chronicled on my Patreon page. For those who are considering putting a Red Dot Sight on their pistols, I’m exploring my testing criteria and outcomes, both yea and nay.
Underestimating Your Opponent
A picture is circulating on Facebook that many people are mocking because the only AR platform rifles they know are in caliber 5.56mm. The picture is of two youths in Minneapolis sitting on a car. One of them is holding a rifle. He’s muzzling his friend but that’s for another time.
“What do you notice about his magazine?”
What I noticed about his magazine is that it’s an M&P 15-22 .22 rifle with a partially loaded magazine. This fact seems to escape some ‘cognoscenti’ who aren’t as cognizant as they think. The follower isn’t all the way down but it’s not obscured by the magazine well either. There are definitely some ammos in it. It might be a magazine blocked to 10 rounds.
Within their performance envelope, which covers many urban situations, .22 rifles are incredibly lethal. One of my colleagues calls them ‘three step guns.’ After being shot with one, the shootee takes three steps and falls down dead as a hammer. Underestimating their lethality is a grave mistake. I have many incidents in my database of people killed by a single round to the chest from a .22 rifle.
“There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.”
― Lao Tzu
If you would like to read more in-depth information about shooting and personal protection, including making good decisions, consider subscribing to my Patreon page.
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