As a retired law enforcement officer, I can vouch for three fundamental training drills that will improve your firearms proficiency—dry firing, the ball-and-dummy technique, and the ready up drill. Let's review these three in more detail.

The purpose of dry firing is to help you develop the proper sight alignment and trigger control without burning up a supply of expensive training ammunition. Dry firing an unloaded firearm can be practiced for hours and will help you develop the most basic fundamental skills that will help you to become a proficient firearms operator.

When you dry fire any handgun you should make sure the firearm is completely unloaded, and you're in a safe place to train. Once you confirm that your handgun is unloaded, insert an unloaded magazine. It also pays to buy plastic bullets called "snap caps" that allow you to safely dry fire a firearm for long periods of time. Using plastic look-alike bullets also makes it more realistic when training to execute a combat reload.

To dry fire your pistol, find a spot or a specific target on a nearby wall, line up the sights and slowly squeeze the trigger. Learning to focus on your front sight is crucial to properly developing your marksmanship skills. You must keep your sights properly aligned on your target while you squeeze the trigger with just the right amount of backwards pressure required to discharge a round of ammunition. Train yourself to cycle the trigger without pulling the pistol off target.

Learning to rely on your front sight combined with the proper cycling of the trigger is what allows you to keep all shots fired on target. Failure to achieve proper sight alignment and trigger control is the main reason why you fail to deliver the right shot placement on a target during a qualification session as well as during authorized uses of deadly force.

To exert the right amount of trigger control, it helps if you use the right part of your trigger finger to make contact with the trigger. Placing your trigger finger on the trigger of your service pistol, backup gun, or off-duty gun is model dependent in that different types of trigger systems require a different part of your finger to cycle the trigger.

Law enforcement officers who use a single-action pistol such as a 1911 should use the tip of their finger to apply backward pressure on the trigger to discharge this type of pistol. Striker-fired trigger systems such as the kind used on Glock pistols also require that you use the pad of flat skin on the tip of your trigger finger to cycle the trigger in a smooth action. The last thing you want to do is "slap" the trigger.

A double action/single action trigger such as the kind used on a Classic Series DA/SA SIG Sauer pistol requires that you use the area just behind the finger tip where the first digit or joint of your trigger finger is located. This is the same position on the trigger finger that you use to cycle the trigger on a DA revolver. The reason the positioning of the trigger finger is critical to delivering the right trigger control is because you need maximum pressure to cycle a DA revolver, a DA pistol trigger and a DAO trigger while less backward pressure is needed to cycle a striker-fired or a single-action trigger system.

If you have problems keeping your shots center mass, you're probably "pulling" your shots to the left or right by jerking the trigger to one side or the other. This doesn't mean you can't rapidly fire a striker-fired trigger or a DA/SA trigger. All it means is there's a technique involved that must be properly executed or the bullets you fire won't be delivered into the right location of your target. Moving your wrist when you pull the trigger and flinching when you react to the force of recoil are other movements that can throw your aim off and make you miss the scoring area by a few inches or more.

To avoid what is commonly called "slapping" the trigger, you should reset the trigger for each shot. The main reason for using a trigger reset is so you can apply the smoothest follow through when you cycle a trigger on a pistol.

"Too many times shooters pull the trigger and then go to a ready position in the same motion," Deputy Chris Martin, a firearms instructor with the Pinal County (Ariz.) Sheriffs Office, tells POLICE Magazine. "I tell my students they should do everything to fire another shot except pull the trigger. In other words, if the string of fire calls for three rounds, we should be ready to fire a fourth. If we as instructors can instill that mindset in our students we also avoid those shooters that focus on the target, looking to see where their bullet went."

Deputy Martin and other modern day firearms instructors are training sworn personnel to discharge their firearms with the smoothest trigger pull and ensure the shortest response time possible to facilitate the firing of follow-up shots when necessary.

When revolvers were widely used in law enforcement, firearms instructors taught sworn personnel to use a technique called "ball and dummy" to deliver accurate shot placement without flinching or reacting negatively to the force of recoil and muzzle blast. The ball-and-dummy technique requires that you load several but not all of the cylinders of your revolver before you close and lock the cylinder. When shooters anticipate recoil and flinch, their hit potential suffers. The point of this exercise is to be surprised when your revolver discharges.

Training with the ball-and-dummy technique helps you to develop the proper trigger control when shooting a revolver. When you train, it's important to use snappier .38 Special +P and .357 Magnum service ammunition.

The same concept applies to semi-autos. Every time you pull the trigger, focus on your trigger control, on your breathing, your sight alignment and even on the speed in which you cycle the trigger. It's better to be a tad slow and hit what you are aiming at, rather than be the fastest shot in town and miss the target. Many LEOs will blast away when there's plenty of time left in each stage of fire during qualification. Firing too quickly can create a bad habit and foster a conditioned response that you may take with you into the field when you're forced to discharge a firearm during an authorized use of deadly force situation.

A "ready up" drill can be one of the best exercises to help you improve your proficiency with firearms. It works with handguns, patrol rifles, sub-machine guns, select fire tactical rifles and shotguns. To conduct a ready up drill, first load your pistol. Keep it holstered while you face the same target you use when you qualify.

For the drill itself, draw your pistol and fire one round as soon as your front sight covers the scoring area of the target. You can repeat a ready up drill until your firearm is empty at which time you should execute a combat reload and return to firing one shot at a time.

A ready up drill helps you to develop faith in the use of your front sight because you pull the trigger in the split second that your front sight covers the scoring area of a man-size target. When you repeat this process over and over again, you develop confidence in relying on your front sight each and every time you go hot to engage targets.

Ready up drills can be modified to prepare you to meet different types of threats. You should have some fun when you're training, so don't be afraid to be innovative, as long as you are safe in your execution. Every time you draw your pistol, fire one more round each time before re-holstering. A modified ready up drill helps you to get away from the typical firing of one or two rounds at a time. In real-life situations, you may be required to fire multiple stings of shots that involve different numbers of bullets.

To train for this situation, draw and fire different numbers of multiple rounds. For those targets that no longer score head shots you can fire strings of different numbers of rounds of ammunition into the chest or pelvic area of a man-size target. The point of this exercise is not to develop one conditioned response every time you draw and fire a handgun. The same goes for patrol rifle and shotgun training.

The beauty of ready up drills is that you can see your progress with every shot fired because these drills should be conducted at fairly close ranges not to exceed 15 or 20 feet when engaging paper targets. Shooting at these distances enables you to see where your bullets are impacting the target so you can adjust your fire accordingly.

As a law enforcement officer, it would be irresponsible to be mediocre shot and not try to improve your firearms proficiency. The time has come for law enforcement agencies to hold sworn personnel more accountable by requiring all LEOs to do more than barely qualify with firearms they carry on and off duty.