Breathe,
Relax,
Aim,
Slack,
Squeeze (or B.R.A.S.S. for short) is an
acronym taught in the
United States Marine Corps during Primary Marksmanship instruction. The same acronym is used by many other shooting
schools to teach proper
sniping technique.
Generally this technique is used for slow-fire excersizes, such as sniper shooting. The same technique can be used for rapid-fire situations, but it is recommended that you follow the routine for each shot. Obviously this technique leads to better accuracy but lower frequency.
- Breathe Take a normal breath and let it out. Do not force air out of the lungs, simply exhale to the point you normally would. Then close your throat and stop breathing for the shot. The idea here is to achieve a consistent lung pressure for all shots.
- Relax Relax all the muscles in your body.
- Aim Align the sights on your target and focus the eye at the top of the front sight.
- Slack Take up the trigger slack. A normal trigger has some "slack" in it that you need to take up before firing. Pull the trigger back until the tension increases and then stop.
- Squeeze Squeeze the trigger by steadily increasing pressure without disturbing sight alignment until the weapon fires.
One of the major goals of this technique is to achieve the proper mindset for taking a shot at a target. Practicing these steps repetitively leads to consistency in performance. If you follow all the steps all of the time but you tend to hit the upper left corner of your target, a small correction to the lower right will solve the problem. On the other hand, if you have no standard way of preparing for a shot, discovering and correcting inconsistencies is much more difficult.