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My opinion--and it is only opinion--is that your primary concern for concealed-carry personal defense should deal with scenarios at 7 yards and less. I'm certainly not saying longer range accuracy is unimportant: it certainly is important, and it helps hone trigger control and other skills. But the odds of you ever using your handgun as a CHL at 25 yards are slim to none.

Years of law enforcement statistics never waiver on the fact that the vast majority of officer-involved shootings occur at less than 21 feet. In fact, the oft-cited NYPD's SOP9 showed that 88% of all their shootings were at 21 feet or less, and 69% were at 6 feet or less. It is also almost 100% certain that one or both subjects in all shootings at these distances were moving.

This is a subject I'm sorta passionate about; it was the clinic I was going to conduct at the Texas CHL Forum Day. Hopefully next year.

To me, beyond basic safety, gunhandling, and shooting skills, most of what's practiced at the typical, commercial range doesn't do much for the set of skills you are most likely to really need in an emergency, self-defense encounter. Training to shoot very tight groups at 25 yards is like teaching your teenager to drive by spending most of her practice time on parallel parking. Will she ever need to parallel park? Sure. But that isn't a skill that's going to be involved in the vast majority of her time behind the wheel of a car.

To me, the important aspects for personal readiness would be developing a fast and repeatable combative drawstroke, understanding how to clear or close at extreme close quarters, and the ability to fire two to four shots quickly with adequate accuracy out to about 12-15 feet.

Again, I'm not saying to ignore 25-yard accuracy. But the truth is, no matter how accurate you are at the range at 25 yards, under the adrenaline pump of a real emergency all that fine motor function and breath control will be out the window, anyway.

If you're already holding 6" to 7" groups at 15 yards, my pitch would be concerned with gaining speed, not tighter accuracy. A 6" group is perfectly adequate combat accuracy. Now, that doesn't speak to your comfort with the G27. I have one, and I trust the lil' guy but I don't enjoy shooting it. The biggest difficulty I have, using my own criteria, is that it will start to shift shot-to-shot in my hand, lessening my ability to fire rapidly.