One handed shooting

I posted something similar to this on another forum awhile back. It's just seems to be a tactic I've seen many shun. It's too important to neglect. I think it is a must in training to devote a significant amount of time learning to shoot with only one hand. Strong side and weak side. If you don't do this you should start. It is very likely that you will not have either time or the ability to use both hands at the moment that the ball drops.
I hope I'm not beating the proverbial dead horse here. It's just that SD is something I take extremely to heart. I' hate to hear about one of the GG going down because he/she couldn't control their handgun well enough to make COM hits shooting one handed.
It's good to practice everything you do with two hands with only one hand too.

Alien Nation;

Very good post on an important subject sir.

In the ITFTS pistol courses, nearly 70% of the full curriculum is shooting one handed. The first day of two in a class is all one handed skills, and when we get to the shooting on the run part of the course one handed skills are paramount to achieving the hits as the other is used a fair amount of time as a counter balance which helps stabilize the shooting arm.

One handed shooting is a very important skill to own, and some things just can not be done as well two handed to begin with. I feel a lot of people find shooting one handed more difficult to achieve where the same accuracy and followup shots suffer over their two handed skills, and consequently do not practice as much that way, but knowing they get less favorable results than two handed should mean they practice that even more until shooting one handed is as natural as their two handed skills.

Great subject, thanks for posting your thoughts on this sir.

Brownie

Brian - it is a horse - that has nearly died a few times :wink: - but is of course still totally valid.

I would suggest that no one's practice/training, can possibly be complete without very significant time given to single handed shooting. Maybe for me 70% strong hand but certainly 30% at least for weak.

I think it is often overlooked - particularly by the avid paper punchers who think that a coupla boxes of ammo from a static isosceles at 7 yards is ''enough''. It cannot be.

Pity is so many ranges cannot permit any dynamic shooting ..... but ways have to be found to expedite other than static. I am lucky to have two ranges fairly close by, where I can be hopefully on my own ... and - set up any drills I choose.

I spend about 40% of my handgun training time shooting one handed. About 25% of that 40 is weak hand.

Add some unorthodox positions like flat on your back feet to the target and it gets very interesting. The muzzle blast hitting your legs is very startling the first time you experience it.

I know if I had no access to a range that could facilitate dynamic shooting I would do it in my back yard with air soft at the very least.

Everyone should bump-up their one-handed skills, especially off/weak side. I took a fall mountain biking this weekend and can barely pick up a small hand-gun with my stong hand. Even typing is a bear.

I always practice off hand .. Lucky the off hand is the one i have had disabled twice when that shoulder was rebuilt but it easily could have been my good hand

I know i could barely do anything when i had it rebuilt there was no way if it was the Dom hand i could have drawn and shot a gun

I just started to spend about 1/3 of practice, dry or live fire, on two handed, 1/3 strong handed and 1/3 on weak handed. In just a little while I am finding that I am shooting much better with my weak hand than I used to. I started after reading something recently from Massad Ayoob that in a pretty fair percentage of gunfights, the shooting starts out and/or ends up one handed.

This thread is a good example of what I was saying in my original post. 7 responses (one my own) and over 100 veiws. Not enough people learn or train with one hand often enough or not at all.

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quote from AzQkr: I feel a lot of people find shooting one handed more difficult to achieve where the same accuracy and followup shots suffer over their two handed skills

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I truly believe this is one of the big problems. When some people try it and can't shoot as well as with two hands they just stop doing it.
Your welcome by the way Az.

*I believe it is a life saving tactic that must be learned. I will not go into the details but when my first child was born my wife and I were attacked in Tuscon Az. It happened very fast and I was holding our daughter(6mo old at the time). I was holding her in my left arm as I've always liked to keep my strong arm free. I twisted away from the three armed(one had a bat, one had a large screwdriver and one had a gun) BGs so that my body was blocking my child and drew my weapon. I had to fire my weapon on two people that night that were moving rapidly. Had I not had training with one hand prior it may have turned out very different. As it was I fired 5 rounds and made exactly 5 hits. One to a hip, two to abdomens, one to a chest and one to a face. This was 11 years ago. Please don't read this as me bragging. This was one heck of a nightmare for my family and I. I still re-live it from time to time. I got real, REAL lucky and came out of it pretty clean from the legal standpoint (the court systems, crimminal and civil). The only reason I mentioned this is to impart how important it is to have all the tools you can in your tool box.*

*this is as far as,and the only time I'm going to discuss this*

Never just learn something once and thats it. PRACTICE,PRACTICE,PRACTICE!!!
If you cannot afford proesional training then get some good reputable videos AND books and teach yourself. Most of us are intelligent enough to handle that.


Sorry for the long post but I'm passionate about SD and survival and I give a damn about my fellow american bothers and sisters welfare.

Funny you bring this up. I watched Ayoob's "Stress Shooting" DVD last night and he demonstrates this and emphasizes the importance of one handed (strong and weak) practice. I think this is a very good topic and further highlights how much more there is to self defense than just getting that permit.

Amen to that.

I started training with off-hand draws (yellow barrel installed) from my VMII. Damn it ain't easy!

I found myself trying to "cheat", racking the slide with the heel of my shoe. holding the mag inside of my knee. Then I suffered a rotator cuff injury and now can't even hold the gun off-hand for a complete mag.

Getting old is a drag!:blackeye:

For those of you with way more experience how should one progress in self defense shooting skills? How accurate should one be with a two-handed shot from standing still? What should the order of the next steps be? One-handed, moving, prone, kneeling, drawing, and changing magazines, etc.? We can't learn them all at once. Is it better to be good or great in one shooting skill or fair in all of them? I know I can only learn one thing at a time. I've only been shooting for a couple of months. and would like to progress in skills. I'm sure it takes quite a while to become even remotely proficient in any one skill much less several of them.

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Originally Posted by Pitmaster

For those of you with way more experience how should one progress in self defense shooting skills? How accurate should one be with a two-handed shot from standing still? What should the order of the next steps be? One-handed, moving, prone, kneeling, drawing, and changing magazines, etc.? We can't learn them all at once. Is it better to be good or great in one shooting skill or fair in all of them? I know I can only learn one thing at a time. I've only been shooting for a couple of months. and would like to progress in skills. I'm sure it takes quite a while to become even remotely proficient in any one skill much less several of them.

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My advice is to go take a class from a professional instructor. That is the quickest way to learn the skills you are asking about. In two or three days you will have covered all of the things you are asking about and more.

In addition to practicing one-handed shooting, we all ought to practice one handed weapon manipulation (reloads, malfunction clearance, drawing with the off hand). Being able to shoot one handed is great, but you need to be able to run the gun that way too. Transferring the weapon smoothly from one hand to the other is another good skill to develop.