when you are target shooting, you adjust the sights so that you aim at the "6 o'clock" position as shown. The objective is to punch holes in paper at a level of consistency to generate good scores in target competition. The objective is not to shoot the gun to point of aim, it's to shoot in the middle of a bulls-eye target. Traditional national-match competition is like this - untimed, 20 sec timed and 10 sec timed for 5 shots. This stuff is great fun but it isn't really self defense training.

In my experience only a few people know how to do this. I took pistol marksmanship at LSU and learned this way back when at the ROTC range. Ms. Norcrauer? Her brother owned a gun store on Florida past Cortana I think. My Navy pistol badge was done national match style, 30 rounds total I think though they let us use 2-hand grip. My Navy rifle badge was different shooting positions, most of which were damned stupid.

If you are shooting open sight combat pistols you should be shooting at man-sized silhouettes, not little circles, unless you think you will be attacked by little circles.

ETA: lots of bad advice going around here. There are different shooting methods for different shooting styles. For target shooting, front sight is the focal point.

hold control. this includes sight picture. Hell we didn't even talk about stance/grip & this is hardly decided between Weaver/isosceles. I say use both and choose, I prefer Weaver, especially shooting hot defense loads.
Breath control
trigger control
follow-through. try to call your shot - did the trigger break when your sight picture was hi/lo/side-to-side.

Combat shooting is a whole other thing. And there are multiple schools on it. I would start with target so you know you can shoot where you aim and then decide what combat style works for you.

This post was edited on 1/25/14 at 4:47 pm