If your range is anything like the ones I belong to it has likely been shut down to help with social distancing or because it isn’t considered essential (we beg to differ though). Here are five at-home firearms training tools that you can use to keep your shooting skills up — or just kill the boredom.
MantisX Training Module
The MantisX Dry and Live Fire Training System is like a personal trainer on your firearm.
If you want to keep up on your pistol shooting skills you are in luck. There are numerous tools to help keep you on your toes while perhaps making you suck less in the process. The first of those training tools is the MantisX training module. Attach it to the rail or use one of their specialty mounts and be immersed in a pile of metrics you never really thought a ton about, or you thought about them but couldn’t quantify them. Several of us have put the time in on the original version of the MantisX trainer and found the info it gave to be pretty damn consistent. It will tell you if you suck at pulling the trigger, or if you’re anticipating recoil and a ton of other stuff. The phone app it pairs with has many modes for dry fire practice as well as live-fire when things start to open up. It’s like a tiny electronic coach that doesn’t sugar coat anything. They have a couple of models out now so depending on your price point and what you want to see, look at the chart on the MantisX page. These also have settings for rifles if you want to perfect the trigger press on your AR or other guns.
DryFireMag
Racking the slide on a Glock or M&P is no longer a requirement when dry-firing with a DryFireMag.
You might grow tired of racking your slide after each shot because you own a single action pistol while using the MantisX. Or you might just want to practice normal dry fire training at home with your Glock or S&W M&P. If so, you are in luck because DryFireMag makes a magazine that automatically resets the trigger so you can pull it thousands of times in a row without a need to grab the slide and get what could be considered training scars. This will not lock the slide back for you after you finish a magazine though, so you’ll still need to practice magazine-change drills.
The company is currently running a Covid-19 sale right now to help you stay indoors so head to the DryFireMag website and have a look.
CoolFire CO2 Dry Fire Trainer
The CoolFire CO2 Laser Trainer provides recoil and lasers. What more could you want?
Perhaps you want a bit of recoil on your favorite pistol to help with recoil control. CoolFire Trainer makes a really interesting recoil system for pistols that we got to play with at SHOT a year or so ago. The barrel and recoil spring are replaced with the trainer system and charged with CO2 allowing you to get that sweet custom slide you bought flying back and forth. They offer the trainer for a staggering amount of firearms so you will likely be covered unless for some reason you want to daily carry a Borchardt C–93 then uhh… you are on your own. The trainer system from CoolFire also has the ability to put visible or IR lasers on it so you can marry it up with the next product we are going to talk about. Build your CO2 trainer system by clicking this link to the CoolFireTrainer website.
Laser Ammo LaserPET II Target
The Laser Ammo LaserPET II is something you can get the whole family in on.
Now that you have sharks with laser beams attached to their heads — a pistol that shoots lasers — it would seem a good idea to get a target to use indoors to help with the aforementioned suckage that we spoke about above. Laser Ammo has quite a few laser training systems but a few years ago we got a couple of minutes to play with the LaserPET II. We thought it was a pretty fun little package for at-home training. The laser receiver unit has interchangeable target cards so you can change the shape and size of your target to make things harder. It has a shot timer and multiple shooting modes to up the stress and improve your shooting skills.
Indoor Dryfire Training System Scope Trainer
The Indoor Dryfire Training System: firearms training tools that turn everything at home into a stage prop.
Don’t worry we didn’t forget about you long-range shooting types either. Indoor Dryfire Training Systems makes a kit you can use on your scoped guns to get some practice indoors. The kit consists of a target stand with a pretty cool printed range with targets at all sorts of distances, and a special cover you put in your flip cap. The special cover is used to make your scope focus at a shorter distance than what your parallax setting will allow you to. The actual distance you will need is dependent on the scope, but it’s usually around 12 feet, which most people should be able to find in the house. You can practice shooting from the prone and dialing elevation, or even shoot off random objects in your house — like a step ladder or chair — to practice your positional shooting skills. These firearms training tools are currently back-ordered but who knows how long this whole Corona mess will last, since people cant stay the fuck inside.
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The software could use updating but the LASR program with the SIRT trainers is what I prefer.
The Smokeless Range falls in 2nd to me. Its a system I like but @ 3X$+ the price of LASR and another 2X$ for a projector and screen..? its just not 5X$+ appealing to me.