Current Location: Home : Firearms : Juuhoukata Chap. 4-2
"Grip" is simply how your hands hold the gun. With the exception
of some flashlight and wounded-arm techniques we'll cover in a later chapter,
you should always have a two-handed grip on your weapon. Using two hands
gives you much more control of the gun and reduces fatigue. I'll use the
terms "strong hand" to denote your right hand if you're right
handed, left if left handed; and "support hand" for the other.
A proper grip always starts in the holster, before you've even drawn the
weapon. Place your strong hand on the butt of the gun, as high up on the
backstrap as is possible. Your fingers should be on the forward edge of
the grip; the backstrap should be in the meaty part of your palm and the
web of your thumb. Place your strong hand index finger alongside the frame
of the gun; it should be in line with the trigger but not inside the trigger
guard. Remember, you're never to place your finger on the trigger until you're actually ready to fire.
Now, take your support hand and grip the strong hand. Resist the temptation
to try and wrap your support hand thumb around the back of the gun - this
puts it in the path of the slide on semi-autos. Forget this and you'll
be rewarded with a set of painful "railroad track" cuts on your
thumb. The palm of the support hand should rest in the space between the
palm and fingers of the strong hand, against the grip. The thumb should
rest under the strong hand thumb, out of the way of the slide or cylinder
but able to engage any levers on that side of the weapon. The support hand
fingers should wrap around the strong hand fingers.
A lot of semi-autos on the market today checker the front of the trigger
guard; and this tempts you to place one or more fingers on your support
hand on the trigger guard. Don't. You will end up applying pressure on
the trigger guard and pulling the gun to one side. In my opinion, this
is bad design; the same as putting checkers or serrations at the front
of the slide of a semi-auto (for reasons I'll explain later).
Try this grip out and see how it feels. The gun should point naturally
towards your target like this. Now, take a second and feel how tightly
you are gripping the gun with each hand. You shouldn't be "white-knuckling"
it with either hand. In fact, the total grip on the gun should be provided
40% with the strong hand and 60% with the weak hand; with neither hand
gripping very tightly. The reason for this is simple.
Shooting is not a fine-muscle skill, like threading a needle or writing.
It's a gross-muscle skill, in that it doesn't take fine muscle movements
to operate the weapon accurately. This is fortunate for us, because in
a stressful situation, your fine motor control goes out the window. If
you are gripping like you were trying to crush a steel can with the thumb
and three fingers of your strong hand, you won't be able to make smaller
movements with the index finger of that hand. Rough, aggressive movements
with the index finger will translate as excessive movement of the gun,
and your accuracy will suffer. Therefore, by only gripping 40% with the
strong hand, you'll have more control over your trigger finger.
A lot of folks don't know what to do with their thumbs. They leave them
sticking out in the air, where they tend to get in the way of things. Just
leave them resting against the side of the gun. One thing to watch is that
neither pushes up under the slide release on semi-autos; this could push
it up and lock the slide to the rear even though there's still ammo in
the gun.
Practice this grip for a while. Try to get it so that you get the proper
grip the first time, rather than having to shift your hands around on the
gun constantly.