a few years ago, a japanse guy who had never fired a gun, but had lots of airsoft practice, came to US, trained for ONE month, and WON the Steel Challenge. could YOU do that, even with all of your previous live fire experience? You're not going to be able to (productively) fire more than 20,000 rds in a month and probably not half that much, yet it made him one of the world's proven top hands with a handgun. you dont need anything like as much live fire as you think you do, in order to master even stuff that doesn't have a damned thing to do with realistic civiliian self defense (ie, beyond 10 yds, more than 2 attackers in any one string of fire, and similar crap.