One of the most important drills you can perform with your gasmask, and one of the first you should learn, is to engage an enemy with your handgun while wearing your gasmask. Now, this drill can be performed with a rifle or other long gun as well; however, history has shown that most often people who are donning gasmasks in a non military encounter, are armed with handguns.
The first drill of course, is to practice drawing your handgun and either exchanging magazines or speedloaders without the benefit of full sight. This can often be harder than you think. Getting used to reloading by feel alone is different to say the least, and quite often you’re better off grabbing the next magazine or speedloader in your stack if you fumble and drop one, (trust me, this will happen). But you really can’t understand the feeling of trying to manipulate a weapon with one of these on until you do it. Here are some factors that you will be dealing with while trying to shoot while wearing a gasmask.
1. Limited visibility due to, field of view, fog, tunnel vision, and or paranoia from restricted breathing.
2. having to breath in a non-normative manner.
3. trying to get a sight picture with limited visibility due to one of the above listed factors.
4. moving with cover and concealment while trying to see and breath non-normatively.
The best drills then are to simply try to reload until it becomes second nature, practice solitary and team movement utilizing touch to compensate for sight and sensory loss, and finally go through dry fire drills getting acclimated to a restricted field of view.