As a disclaimer to this post I would like to formerly disclose my profession as being a defensive handgun instructor for Gander Mountain Academy. While I do not possess nearly the experience level as some of the more revered instructors which often frequent this board, I would still like to comment on a subject which is a bit of a pet peeve to me. I will also say that I am typing this post 1 finger shy of all ten digits, thus I might make some spelling errors, which leads me to the two photos below, and also my main argument.
Shot at 2012-04-09
Shot at 2012-04-09
That is a broken finger. I broke it playing football with my cousins on Easter and removed the splint long enough to photograph it and quickly replaced it. Luckily my wedding band was removed prior to the game and I hopefully will be able to return it to its rightful place once the swelling goes down. Now on to what this is all about.
I tell my students quite often that any “Joe S. Handgunner” can load 5 magazines to capacity and blast off a couple hundred rounds in a 30 minute range session. There are; however, many skills which remain untouched by shooters of all ages. For now I will focus my attention on CCH license holders and anyone claiming to own a handgun in the name of home-defense.
Aside from the normal failures to train for critical incident reloads, drawing from concealment, and shooting while on the move, I’ve noticed that there is a particular field of training which often goes untouched, and that is the training of shooting one-handed. Whether that is because of an injury (such as my case) or because one hand is moving your wife/kid/girlfriend out of the way during an attack; I’ll let you determine the situation.
The grim reality is that I have yet to meet but three other people that have regularly trained for such scenarios, and they all happen to be fellow instructors at my place of work.
What I would like to discuss is how you or others that you know have convinced or at least attempted to convince other shooters that training with one hand is an important skill that is vital to situations where shit really does hit the fan.
when doing single hand and support hand manipulations, there’s obviously a compromise, especially for speed. given that there is an expectation of speed loss, what’s the best balance between traditional manual of arms and doing something that would shave off a little more time?
here’s an example.
left handed reload.
traditional manual of arms says
release mag, for a normal left hander this would involve either a middle finger or an index finger.
you put the gun somewhere, this can be in a holster backwards, in between your legs, behind your knee, etc.
then you retrieve magazine and insert.
then you rack the slide off your belt or some other catchy surface that is available.
my questions then is if i’m reloading one handed from slide lock, AFTER i have inserted the magazine, is it legitimate to do an index finger sweep of the slide stop?
there are pros and cons that i’ve found with this.
sometimes on certain guns you have to reacquire grip or adjust grip. but you’re already in a speed is low situation. i have to say that i like this method better, but i just don’t know if it’s a reasonable compromise.
I work in a portion of SHO shooting approximately every other week albeit generally not more than 15-20% of the rounds fired. Been meaning to do a little more.
WHO gets less than that. Been meaning to do a little more. :eek:
But both get some dry fire every week.
FWIW, during an Adv Tactical Pistol course in Dec, Ken Hackathorn related to the class that in shooting incidents, SHO occurs quite often for a variety of reasons ergo he suggests you train it regularly.
OTOH, he further offered that WHO is necessitated so infrequently he would put it much further down the list of priorities of skills and attributes to focus on.
A Rogers Shooting School grad should get in on this. I hope some do.
I took a one-handed gun manipulation class a few weeks ago and realized how difficult it can be. I’ve decided to start carrying a backup gun on the weak side in order to help mitigate the problem, while also continuing to practice one-handed manipulations.
You’re right, though, other family members with a CCW don’t realize how important those type of skills can be. You don’t know how much you don’t know until you attend training.
I agree 100% with you on this (not that I matter in the grand scheme of things). When I go to the range on my training days, the ones family hasn’t jumped in on, I make sure to train all 4 even if it is only one magazine worth.
This came in handy when the ACofS for my Division was complaining about qualifying with the M9. I told him it was a matter of training, as a Division HQ we just don’t do any so I bet him I could not only qualify but beat him shooting offhand, dinner was on him that night!
You never know when you are going to need to defend yourself and not be able to get in the perfect stance.
In my world teaching these skills is easy to get accomplished. Quite frankly those I teach do it because they must follow the training curriculum presented. It may not be their favorite thing to do, but if it is a topic for training on that day, it gets done. Also, those I teach have many practical applications or situations where they may find themselves one handed so it makes a great deal of sense. Now having said that, this IMO is where the problem lies for most people who may train on their own or have flexibility on what they do train. Most people tend to practice or train at what they like to do, or at what they do well. If not forced to do something that you don’t like to do, many will opt to just avoid it. These one handed skills is often tedious and not as fun so most people avoid it or don’t become proficient enough with one handed shooting and manipulations.
IME most people don’t like, and often won’t do, one hand shooting. about the only time these individuals get any reps in it is when they are forced to do so during a qualification course, match, or block of instruction in a class
I’ve seen this as well but I feel that more people aren’t inclined because they simply don’t know. Unfortunately many people will go from absolutely no experience to getting their CCW license and then back to no training at all. To put an actual quantifiable number on the amount of serious trainees I see on a weekly basis, I’d have to put it around maybe 2 or 3 out of a hundred. It’s not a pretty sight.
