2) Shooting one-handed makes it very hard to shoot accurately.
Continue to work on this skill.
Realize that your support/reaction hand could be doing a number of different things aside from helping your weapon hand hold on to the weapon: everything from pushing/pulling/controlling a loved-one at that moment to fighting off the aggressor at contact-distance to pulling out a flashlight to aid in low/no-light.
The goal for practicing is to get better at what we're already good at and to get good at what we were not-so-great at, right? :image035:
3) Drawing from an IWB holster wearing a T-shirt is hard...
Drawing from concealment adds a whole other level of complexity to the game; this is why most instructors/schools do not start novice students from the draw. Now, if you're actually training towards your reality - how you would normally dress and using your everyday gear - as you should :wink: - this will add yet another level of difficulty.
As many others have said, this is not something that you'll necessarily have to be at the range to practice. You can certainly practice this in the comfort of your own home, dry-fire. Everything from going slowly so as to burn-in "muscle memory" for the appropriate steps and to confirm safety to trying to beat your shot-timer is well possible.
The only real caveat here is that you'll need to come to an understanding of what is safe for you to "shoot through" and what kind of effectiveness on-target you can get from doing so. This is something that will require either going live-fire or the use of a training tool such as an airsoft or even a laser trainer.
Realize that not every draw - or any other manipulation or technique that involves you in your everyday concealment clothing and gear - will be perfect: on the streets, you can't say "oh no, that draw sucked" or "that reload sucked, lemmie do it over." If you snagged your shirt on the draw or reload or the base-plate of your "flush" carry magazine for your sub-compact carry gun managed to take a bite of flesh out of your emergency slide-lock reload, you need to understand that this can well happen on what's already the worst day of your life, and you need to have the mental wherewithal and physical skills necessary to understand what you can safely "fight through," and what may need a bit more to compensate for (i.e. seeing that the shirt snagged your rear sight, you'll expect to be able to get off the first shot, but that you may have to follow-up with stoppage reduction techniques so that you can effect follow-up shots).
Certainly, you can instead change what you wear and how you carry - you can alter your lifestyle. But you'll want to be honest with yourself in whether this is actually a change you can go through with as well as maintain.
Oh, and to tie back into your second observation - on single-handed shooting?
Try also using only your weapon hand to clear your T-shirt and draw.
I didn't really start in heavy on this until after my first combatives class, when I realized that there's a whole lot of things I could be doing with that other hand other than using it to clear the T-shirt from the front of my gun.
4) Drawing your gun and still having the IWB holster stuck on the gun is scary and embarrasing! :embarassed: It only happened once, but my thoughts on a new holster have reached new heights.
New holster? or a new way of fastening your existing holster to your belt? Do you just need to use a "C-clip" instead of a "J-clip?" Or is it more that the over-the-top clip you have now not have sufficient tension to hold on to the belt when you draw?
Or is it actually the interaction of the holster/belt that's the problem? Does the lip of the clip not reach over the belt, and is therefore just riding on top via friction instead of being able to positively grab the other end of the belt? I've got some top-dollar holsters that just don't mate well with particular other top-dollar belts? It's not really the fault of either piece of gear, just how they interact - for example, my Garrette Silent Thunder Slim II's "standard clip" is just not big enough to accommodate the thickness of my Zlogonje Gunleather dual-layer belt, but yet it fits great over my Beltman belt.
But in all reality, unless you've got some kind of mounting setup that virtually guarantees that your holster won't come off the belt with your gun (i.e. a solid belt loop that's attached to the holster via reinforced or multiple hardware), you've still gotta plan for potential failures - however unlikely they may be. How do you get that holster off the drawn gun safely and efficiently? Where should you grab it? Can you effect a first-shot from within the holster, even if it didn't completely come off as you executed that "failure drill?"
As with changing the way you dress, the impetus to address your current problems via hardware revisions will be strong. Certainly, that's not wrong, but you also need to take a moment to look at the further realizations of what your practice session revealed to you. :smile:
Oh, and speaking of scary things associated with drawing from concealment....
It's also quite possible for you to snag so hard on your concealment cover-garment that you literally torque/spin the gun right out of your hand.
Should this happen, resist the urge to reach out and grab it as it's falling. Just let it fall.
A good modern defensive pistol is drop-safe.
But a finger that accidentally finds its way into the trigger guard as the gun's falling through the air? That's no good!
5) Reloading a magazine from a Velcro belt pouch is slow.
to which
StormRhyder responded:
No offense, but I think Id toss the velcro mag pouch, and buy some better suited for a fighting pistol. If you like dressy looking ones, Galcos are beauts. If you like more utilitarian looking, bladetechs offer some nice features.
IMO, one needs to be be able to draw from a mag, knowing which way the bullets are ALWAYS facing, and do so without velcro, or whatever, keeping focus on the target, and not looking at the mag on the way to the weapon.
[
Aside @
StormRhydr - Just because a magazine holder has a cover flap over it does not mean that the magazine within cannot be indexed properly and consistently. Look at the magazine holders that many professional gunmen wear - the overlying flap is simply to further secure the magazine, that's all.]
Yes, it's slower than reloading from an open-top carrier. The same idea goes for drawing from concealment versus without.
So if that's the case, then why do you bother with concealment? :wink:
Is that VELCRO overflap keeping your magazine securely on your person? and would you be less likely to tote a spare mag if not for that security? If that's the case, then I'd trade speed for knowing that you'll have a spare mag to work with. For as unlikely as the average law-abiding civilian is to get into a gunfight, how much less likely is it that you'll need to resort to your spare magazine? But as the late Paul Gomez once said, when you do find that you need your gun, you'll need it in the most absolute manner - and it is with that in-mind that I frame my preference for carrying a spare mag.
But if you are comfortable going with an open-top carrier, either IWB or OWB, then there's really no need for the extra VELCRO.
And again, realize that speed is a function of being well-practiced. Yes, it's going to be slow at first and it's going to be "hard," but with practice, you'll get better and faster.
Sounds good, its been below zero around here for so long, I have not been shooting with the wind chill.
I don't think that any of us need to risk hypothermia, frostbite, or even really discomfort - but I do believe that it is very important for us all to be honest about the realities of our surroundings. :smile:
Many of us are now still in the midst of a rather cold and snowy winter.
One anecdote that I like to cite comes from Jack Leubba (aka
Failure2Stop on M4C.net) of F2S Consulting (
*F2S Consulting). In a training session where he was teaching some of our nation's super-ninja-killers, it was noted that their gloved hands were inducing malfunctions on their handguns - that the glove was snagging portions of the slide, causing various stoppages as these men were executing what is arguably a "more robust" technique. The fix? He had them start using a technique which was technically "less robust" - but that technique resulted in the guns getting back up and running, without stoppage.
Gloves will change your interaction with the gun. If you wear gloves, practice with them so you understand what to expect.
There are also anecdotes of shooters whose gloves become trapped by the route of the trigger (typically most commonly between the tip of the trigger and the gap to the trigger guard below it) or those who like to shoot with various specialty "shooting gloves" but then find themselves unable to rack the slide or accomplish other basic manipulations without gloves (especially if their hands are sweaty or wet at that time) because of the differences in traction/friction/contact. At the most basic level, you'll want to make sure that your gloved finger can get inside that trigger guard without touching off a round too early, and that your gloved hands can properly work all control surfaces.
Don't forget the reload, too. Indexing the magazine may be harder with gloves. It's also possible for the glove material to become trapped in the magwell/base-plate gap as you insert the mag and drive it home.
On the flip side, look at what one of our -
adric22, posted a while back:
adrick22 said:
My wife and I went to the range today and I decided to shoot my little Taurus TCP 738. I actually rarely shoot that gun, because it is not fun to shoot. But with the hot weather lately, I've been carrying it more and more because it is much easier to conceal when wearing shorts and a t-shirt. So I figured if I carry this thing, I should put some rounds through it. Well, as many know it has been quite hot around here lately. It was 102 degrees outside today. When I first got into the range, I was still sweating from being outside. I was unable to chamber a round in that TCP because the slide is so small, has such a strong spring, and my hands were sweaty. My hand would literally just slide right off the slide like it was coated in vaseline or something. My wife tried and also was unable to do it. After I rubbed my hands on my shorts to dry them off a bit, I was finally able to do it. I could just see myself trying to chamber a round with sweaty hands while the BG is trying to kill me.
But remember also that the weather can affect our weapon, too.
If you live in a colder area, be sure that the lube you've chosen for your gun doesn't gum-up and render the gun either un-usable or prone to stoppage as the temperature drops.
For example, a buddy of mine and his fellow classmates saw freezing rain at a one-day pistol class a few years ago. At the time, his and a couple others' were running the "Lite" formula of Slide Glide - their guns eventually slowed to a halt and started experiencing stoppages. A quick switch to a liquid lubricant immediately solved the problem.
Train hard, but train with *YOUR* reality in-mind. :smile: