Pistol Grip

Pistol Grip

Basic Sidearm skills

In this day and age of Police Officers achieving “competence” in skills, the ability of those Officers to be “trained” in practical skills has been severely diminished.

 

Especially in the area of firearms.

 

Police shootings in Australia are not exactly rare, but for some reason the standard taught to Police is to achieve the absolute bare minimum when shooting a few rounds at a stationary paper target. Indeed, it is almost taboo to seek further training, or to even voice the opinion that more training would be preferable, out of fear of being seen to be too “gung-ho”.

 

After 18 years of using firearms in some capacity, and having been trained by both the worst and best, I have picked up a little knowledge. I do not claim to be an expert, but merely someone who has learnt a thing or two.

 

But with that knowledge comes the awareness that the current practice of having a “qualification” shoot once every six or twelve months is not sufficient to maintain proficiency in a skill, much less a skill that is proven to erode due to the stress associated with being involved in a lethal incident.

 

Here are a few tips for those of you who care enough about your training to be willing to learn how to do things correctly. The skills outlined below can be practiced in the comfort of your lounge room, or on the firing range. They are not skills to make you a more accurate shooter on a comfortable shooting range, but to assist you in surviving the fight when someone is trying to kill you.

 

I practice all these skills at least once a day. 60 seconds a day, practicing these skills is enough for you to increase and maintain your handgun shooting skills far beyond what you are taught to achieve “competence” on the shooting range. These skills can even be maintained with 60 seconds of dry-fire practice. Is that too much to ask?

 

If you think you don’t need these skills, think about this: “Competency” is achieving the bare minimum amount of skills required to absolve your organisation from legal liability if you are injured or killed.

 

Do you think that is a sufficient amount of training for you to survive when someone is trying to kill you?

 

Breathing

 

Breathing, believe it or not, is under-rated. You do not merely breathe to live, but correct breathing is a technique that can be used to control your body during periods of stress. Slow and deep breaths will help slow your heart-rate and make your movements smoother and closer to perfection. Correct breathing is the foundation of effective combat shooting, and should be practiced at every opportunity. The easiest way to “learn” how to control your breathing is as outlined by Lt Col Dave Grossman when talking about “tactical breathing”. The four-count breathing is used to calm yourself and regain control of your body during times of stress. The “four-count” is simply saying to yourself, “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand.”

 

Now do this: Breathe in for a four-count. Hold it for a four-count. Breathe out for a four-count, and then hold it for a four-count.

 

Do that four times, and your heart-rate will have slowed, and your concentration will be focused. Once you have practiced this, your breathing skills will become much better when shooting. Practice your breathing when practicing ANY shooting technique, so that it becomes an unconscious skill.

 

Wrist / forearm strength

 

Like it or not, if your organisation has not yet moved to semi-automatic sidearms, it soon will. The most common cause for a pistol jamming is through weak wrists. You need to have the strength to hold the weapon firmly as it is cycling to allow the slide to come back far enough to eject the spent case and load a new round from the magazine. I have seen people with weak forearms get stoppage after stoppage after stoppage through this one error.

 

If you do not exercise your wrists and forearms, then now is the time to start. When someone is trying to kill you, do you really want your sidearm to jam after the first shot?

 

Having said that, you should now realise that keeping your wrists locked and using your forearms when shooting is important. Practice it. A lot of people recoil from a shot when they are firing which only causes their weapon to jam. It is YOUR weapon. Control the damn thing!

 

Mindset?

 

This goes to mindset. When I was about 17 years old and fresh to the Army, I was tasked to load a mass of twisted barbed wire onto the back of a truck. Some crusty old Corporal told us the secret. If we tried not to get hurt by the barbed wire, we would get cut.

 

If we focused on grabbing the barbed wire and making it do what we wanted to, we might get cut, but we wouldn’t get hurt.

 

And it worked.

 

The same goes with handgun shooting. Do not worry about the noise or the recoil of the handgun. Focus on getting that one round to go exactly where you want it to go. I refuse to let my handgun control me. I make it do what I want. So should you.

 

Every time you practice your shooting, every time you are “forced” to spend time in the sun sweating on the firing line, remember why you are there. You are there to practice skills which will save your life. If you think you will never be shot at, if you think you will never have to use your firearm, then think about this: Do you only wear your seatbelt when you are going to have a vehicle accident?

 

Startle Response

 

“Startle Response”. Look it up. When faced with an unexpected physical threat, the body reacts before the mind has time to understand the threat. You will face the threat, your knees will bend, your torso will curl, and your arms will come up in front of your body to protect your vital organs.

 

The startle response position should be the start position for any shooting drill you perform. Not the silly “field interview stance” that looks like something out of a B-grade karate movie, but the real reactionary stance that you are likely to be in when someone tries to kill you. This provides you with the muscle memory to be able to rapidly draw your weapon and fire when someone is trying to kill you. That saved half a second could literally mean the difference between life and death.

 

Front-on versus side-on

 

There is a lot of debate out there over whether the isosceles stance or the weaver stance is more accurate when shooting.

 

We’re not talking about the firing range here, but in a life or death fight, so I will only talk about that.

 

Part of the “startle response” described above is that your body will face the threat. That’s a fact, so let’s deal with it. Another consideration is that if you are wearing body armour, the armour is more effective if hit in the front. So with those two considerations in mind, you should practice your shooting when facing the target, as that is the position you will already be in. Remember half a second might be the difference between life and death.

 

An additional consideration is that it is easier to move whilst keeping your weapon on the threat when facing the threat than it is if you are side on to the threat.

 

So, your shooting drills should result in you facing the threat when shooting.

 

Stance

 

A simple concept here. When shooting you want the most stable platform you can achieve. You don’t want your shots to put you off balance.

 

Your feet should be shoulder-width apart.

 

Your knees bent.

 

Your back should be slightly bent forward.

 

Your shoulders “rolled” forward.

 

When I practice my drills, I still say to myself, “Feet, knees, back, shoulders.” I recommend you get into this habit at least once a day, to allow yourself to get used to not only being in the best position when shooting, but allow yourself to become used to shooting from the “startle response” position.

 

Grip – one hand (in holster)

 

Without getting into the which-holster-is-better debate, it is important to realise that your grip on your sidearm before you draw your sidearm from the holster is important.

 

There is a saying that my American friends love, and it is apt for handgun practice. “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”

 

When practicing your handgun draws, do it SLOWLY. Make sure you grip that sidearm perfectly every single time.

 

Push the web of your thumb and index finger down firmly and as high on the pistol grip as you can. There should not be the slightest gap between your hand and the backstrap of the weapon. This is important to control the recoil when shooting.

 

Wrap your hand around the pistol grip with your index finger resting along the pistol outside the trigger guard.

 

Now, when you have the correct grip, you should draw your weapon to a four-count.

 

One – With your weak-hand on your chest, draw your sidearm straight up until it is just clear of the holster. (Breathing in)

 

Two – Rotate your sidearm on the horizontal plane 45 degrees so it is now pointing towards the threat, but still at your hip. If necessary, you can start shooting at this point. (Breathing in)

 

Three – From the hip, bring your sidearm up, still pointing at the threat, to your chest, to meet your weak-hand. (Breathing in)

 

Four – With a firm two-handed grip, punch your sidearm straight out towards the threat at arm’s length. Your breath should be forcibly pushed out of your lungs to the point where someone standing 10 meters away can hear it.

 

Grip: Two-handed

 

One thing that needs to be explained further is the two-handed grip. It is amazing how many Police Firearms instructors are not able to teach this correctly. The reason for a firm two-handed grip is to assist in the recoil control. If there is a gap in your grip, the weapon will twist to that gap, making your shots off-target. So the goal in a correct two-handed grip is to have no gaps in your grip.

 

Your master-hand should already be firmly and correctly gripping the sidearm. Your weak-hand should now come up to match that. Your weak-hand does not “cup” the pistol to take the weight, a common error, as that does nothing for recoil control.

 

When you look at your master-hand on your sidearm, you will see a curved gap from the bottom of the heel of your palm, running up past the tip of your fingers, and underneath your thumb.

 

Your weak-hand heel sits in the gap on the pistol grip between your master-hand heel and fingertips.

 

Your weak-hand thumb slides into the gap underneath your master-hand thumb. Common mistake – Do NOT cross your master-hand thumb over your weak-hand thumb. This creates a gap in your grip. Your two thumbs should be lying horizontally along the side of the sidearm, with your weak-thumb on bottom and master-thumb on top.

 

The four fingers of your weak-hand should fold around the three fingers of your master-hand that are holding the pistol grip. The grip should be firm, but not too tight to cause fatigue quickly.

 

Practice this grip a few times, ensuring that you do it slowly and get used to the correct grip.

 

Another common teaching flaw, especially in this day and age of range-safety mentality is to have shooters holding their firearm at arm’s length constantly, even when not shooting. This is an error.

 

In combat, and that is what Police face when they are being placed in lethal encounters, you should not be tiring your arms out by holding your sidearm at arm’s-length all the time.

 

When moving, assessing threats, scanning your surroundings etc, there is nothing wrong with holding your sidearm in close to your chest. You can still have it pointed it at the threat, without tiring your arms needlessly. I refer to this as the “close grip”. This position is preferred to the “low-ready” where your sidearm is held at arm’s length pointed at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

 

The reason? The close grip position allows you to get your sidearm on target immediately without tiring your arms out.

 

Now to the actual shooting.

 

As you are punching your sidearm towards the threat, you are forcing the breath out of your lungs. A common misconception is that you should hold on to ¼ of your breath, but here’s another secret. Your body’s muscles are at their most relaxed when you have released all your breath.

 

Common sense dictates that you can’t hold onto empty lungs indefinitely, so you will need to shoot within a reasonable amount of time.

 

So, you are punching your sidearm, with a two-handed grip, towards your target. As you do so, you focus on the target, and where you want your round to land. You then focus on your front sight to make sure it is on target. Your focus then moves back to the rear sight to make sure it is lined up with your front sight. Back to the target for a final check, then front sight is focused only as you squeeze the trigger as far back as you can, focusing only on squeezing that trigger.

 

It helps to talk yourself through it, “Target - Front sight - Rear sight – Target - Front sight - Squeeze.”

 

Another common error when shooting is finger placement on the trigger. The tip of the index finger should be placed on the trigger, as opposed to shoving as much of your finger as possible inside the trigger guard. When you do not use your fingertip, the angle of your finger squeezing is not directly backwards, creating a “twisting” pressure on the sidearm, which results in round placement to the side of your point of aim.

 

The preferred area to be placed on the trigger is ¾ of the distance from the end of your index finger to the first joint, (being closer to your first joint). 

 

Once you have fired that shot, you need to remain focused on what you are doing. Keep the trigger depressed, and slowly release the pressure on the trigger whilst keeping your sidearm on target. Assess your threat, and re-engage if necessary.

 

If your threat is neutralised, you should then scan the area. This serves two purposes. Firstly it breaks the perfectly natural physiological response of “tunnel vision”, a form of perceptual distortion caused by stress in a lethal encounter, and secondly it allows you to assess for any other threats in your vicinity.

 

Whilst you scan the area, you may bring your sidearm back to the close grip. Another option is to keep your weapon on the threat when you scan to your left and right, and only bring the weapon back to the close grip when scanning behind you. I’ll leave that up to you, but whichever option you decide, practice it every time you conduct your drills.

 

All the basic drills I have outlined in this article are to be practiced and perfected prior to even considering more advanced drills. With the severe lack of practical firearms training in Australia for our members of Law Enforcement, the only way to increase your chance of survivability in a lethal encounter is to take responsibility for your own skill maintenance.

 

The best time to start is right now. Stand up, find some privacy and practice these skills now!

About the Author

Doug Nicholson served for over 9 years with the Northern Territory Police Force, during which time he worked in remote Aboriginal Communities, was a General Duties Shift Supervisor at the busiest Station in the jurisdiction and became a qualified Workplace Assessor and Trainer. He has travelled to the US for advanced training, as well as worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq as a Security contractor, and is now studying for a degree in Security, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism. He is the editor for Response Australia eMagazine, an online publication for Policing in Australia.

Doug can be contacted at editor@responseaustralia.net

Todd Jarrett on pistol shooting.

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