My 9mm snap caps just came FedEx from CheaperThanDirt today. I will practice.

The gentleman in the lane next to me today was shooting a very tricked-out 22LR. He was shooting at 15 yards, one handed, and doing what Rick posted above. I've got a lot more respect for that than the guy shooting a .44 mag and missing the paper half the time.

Take that too heart. We've all been there. Some of us take it for granted since it happened a lot younger. Think of this as learning to drive, or learning to swim for the first time at your age.

I used to teach swimming. The young kids had no fear, but would never listen to what you said. The adults had fear. They were rational. But they would listen.

Understands this, and live it.

I have never shot anything at 15 yards, just to damn close. Add another 5 feet and make it a std 50 foot and use 50 foot slow and rapid fire pistol targets. Good shooters, and there are quite a few of them out there, can put 9/10 to 10/10 into the X ring, thats the goal to shoot for. Sounds hard or maybe impossible but with practice you can do it.

As to a gun, a cheep gun will permanently screw up your ability to shoot. A good quality gun, with clean, smooth, crisp trigger pull is absolutely necessary. Without good trigger pull you will learn nothing about your own ability. Poor repeatability is a curse. A cheep gun, even with good trigger pull will not put a bullet in the same place twice. In fact a good gun will show how bad std ammo can be. The best gun will only hold about a 9 ring with crappy ammo. Quality ammo will hold the 10 ring, target ammo, thats good target ammo will hold the x ring and the best target ammo will stay in the same hole. Take that great ammo and put it in a crap gun and you might even not hold the 8 or 9 ring. A really cheap gun can almost put bullets off paper! You cannot learn on such a gun.

I just checked current prices. In my humble opinion a good used gun will run about $500, a good new one over $1000. About $2500 for a new quality target 22 or 45. A quality non target gun about $1200. A quality 10 foot gun about $600, ie what a cop might use for a backup or if he is cheep his primary gun. Just remember, do you really want to get that close the bad guy?