You may have noticed that you don’t shoot your carry gun as well as your full size gun and I’m going to show you why and how to improve on that.

I have two Smith & Wesson M&P handguns. The first is a Pro Series 9mm and the other is M&P Shield. Right off the bat, you’ll notice that the Pro Series has a much longer sight radius than the Shield. How that translates onto the target is where you can get into trouble.

Imagine this is my rear sight and this is my front sight. The longer the sight radius means I’ll see more light on either side of the front sight. The shorter the sight radius, the less light and you’re more likely to have an error in the sight picture.

In addition to the shorter sight radius with your concealed carry gun, it’s going to be a lighter than your full size carry gun. And it probably will have a heavier trigger. So when you’re shooting you may anticipate that recoil a little bit more. Now, let's take this knowledge to the range.

Bring your carry gun with you when you shoot your full size gun. You’ll want to dedicate 20 to 50 rounds to your carry gun and work on group shooting. Start with a supported position and shoot a five round group.

Remove the support and shoot another five shot group focusing on good trigger control. The goal is to shoot the same size group as your supported group. Keep shooting to see your groups get smaller.

Here are my two groups. The first is my supported group. It’s nice and tight. A little bit of vertical stringing, but that’s ok.

For my unsupported group, things begin to open up and that’s where I can really improve.

The fact is, you can shoot your carry gun just as well as your full size gun, as long as you take it to the range and practice.