Good points there, Belly.
Your strengths and weaknesses might not be exactly as you are envisioning them, either. I'm closing on 30 years of service, and after I traded my stripes and crossed-rifles for a bar and wings, I pretty much dealt exclusively with sidearms as my issued weapon thereafter. Never once failed to fire expert in the qualification courses that followed over the next couple of decades, so I was fairly confident that my short gun skills were solid. I wasn't so sure about carbine, since I hadn't carried one in earnest in quite some time.
Then I started hitting the training circuit a bit. A simple VSM weekend revealed that I was actually pretty decent with a carbine (and who isn't, really?), but my sidearms skills were actually pretty pathetic. I was so accustomed to the Army's slow-fire and generous accuracy standards that I had no effective means of evaluating my true progress. The lights came on quickly, but I would probably still be in the starting blocks if it hadn't been for an instructor or two getting into my personal space and asking me what I was really trying to do. Didn't it look like I was Mr. High Speed? I'm already pretty good at this stuff, no? Apparently not.
I found more value in being correctly-assessed on a private range than in any marksmanship training I had received in service trim -- to include some rather-focused opportunities with SF-types in various places at various times. Didn't know what I didn't know.
And you're right. Handguns are cool, convenient and fun to buy; that said, most of us suck with them, compared to where we ought to be ... and yet, what are you most likely to have in your hand if/when evil crosses your path? A carbine or a precision rig? Not so much.
Handgun training still frustrates me from time to time, because I want to be far better than I am -- or, at least, to think that I'm better than I am. lol It's certainly true that I can self-correct much better today than I ever could before, but that comes from formal training, and not from the collection of support materials I've amassed in my bookcase.
Make the investment in real-live training. Like I said, I don't always like it, but I always think it is time and money well-spent.
AC
Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here. -- Captain John Parker, Lexington, 1775.
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