If you carry a concealed handgun, you need training. Not a state-mandated permit course —\u00a0actual training<\/i> from a qualified instructor who can teach you the skills necessary to not simply shoot, but fight<\/i> with a handgun. Sure, gun owners with the most rudimentary of shooting skills somehow manage to survive life-threatening attacks all the time, but it\u2019s not because using a gun effectively under extreme stress is easy.<\/p> \u201cWe don’t rise to the level of our expectations \u2013 we fall to the level of our training.\u201d\u00a0– Archilochus<\/p><\/blockquote> If you want to carry a gun for self-defense, you\u2019ll need to expand your skillset past casually blasting away at a bullseye on a square range. A big part of that skillset is learning how to shoot faster with some semblance of accuracy. The best way to learn that is to… get some training.<\/p> Sorry, there\u2019s no way around it.<\/p> But until you can arrange for that to happen, here are a few tips that will help get you pointed in the right direction.<\/p> You can’t go fast until you have a solid grip, stance, and a good grasp of the other fundamentals of handgun shooting. These will look slightly different from one instructor to the next, but the core principles are the same. I don’t claim to be any kind of speed shooting expert\u00a0myself, but I have had the benefit of learning a variety of handgun skills\u00a0from some excellent teachers. In this video, I demonstrate\u00a0the way\u00a0I\u00a0was taught the basic building blocks of handgun shooting for self-defense, which are crucial for building up speed:<\/p> Applying the Fundamentals to Shoot Faster<\/h3>