The essential skills required for the defensive use of a pistol. Those skills include:

• Safe, disciplined gun handling with constant attention to and awareness of trigger finger and muzzle direction
• Optimal, safest techniques for gun manipulation (loading, clearing malfunctions, locking action open)
• Loading the pistol with gun in firing grip in “workspace”, eyes forward, head up (NOT with gun at gut level, looking at your feet)
• Shot follow-through (reacquiring sight picture after recoil, taking slack of out trigger, keeping gun on target)
• Learning the difference between an alert defensive ready position and low ready/”my gun is heavy” position
• Learning to initiate the trigger press as the gun comes from a ready position to the target, when a shot is intended
• Understanding the difference between sight picture quality, target distance, target size, and available time (traditional aiming vs. flash sight picture vs. point shooting at close range)
• Using trigger reset or the “flip and press” method to manage the trigger during multiple shot exercises, instead of taking the finger completely off the trigger
• Learning proper use of DA/SA style pistols (guns with decocking levers), decocking the gun when coming back to a ready position, shooting double-action for all first shots (for those with DA/SA type pistols)
• Bringing the gun from ready to the target and firing accurate shots with CHL-test time limits

These skills are the essential foundation that every pistol owner should learn, whether the person is new to shooting or has a lifetime of informal recreational shooting but has never taken a formal training course. These are also the skills necessary to shoot a 90% or higher score on the Texas CHL shooting qualification course.