Dude, I didn’t touch your girlfriend.
What the #&%$! man!
Aaagh!
Awe, your carrying!
I’m gonna kill you with your own gun.
Nooo!
Looking today at the fundamentals of one-handed or off-hand shooting.
That is a foundation of good pistol combatives.
That’s a foundation for defensive handgun shooting.
And that’s a foundational skill, even for just combat sports where you’re just doing
this competitively.
A lot of dynamics change when you take the gun from two hands to one hand.
What doesn’t change is you still need a solid grip.
You still need a good smooth trigger press.
You still need good sight alignment dependent on target distance and desired accuracy level.
So what we are going to look at today, are those fundamentals.
We are going to look at some of those needs from a defensive scenario and why you may
need to fire one-handed.
So we are going to cover the gambit from how you shoot one-handed all the way up to why.
And if you haven’t checked it out, we have another video, out about reloading one-handed,
as if you had an injury.
That’s a good one too.
These two dovetail together.
We are also going to be bringing in our friend Aaron Cooper today.
He’s our combatives instructor, former Army Ranger.
How do you hold the gun.
How do you work the trigger.
Well you still need that good firm grip like we’ve talked about, and you still need a
good straight trigger press.
We’ve got our sirt gun, totally inert.
When you drive out, we’ve got a lot of instructors that talk about canting the gun inboard.
There are some reasons for that.
I want you to try bringing your gun straight back out into your normal line of sight.
The sights are still going to register the same on target, as if you were two-hand shooting
vs. canting it inboard.
At real close distances this isn’t going to change anything, but if you’re at 10,
15, 20 yards, your point of impact is going to begin to change.
Good strong solid grip.
Get your body forward.
Lean out over the gun.
Because you’ve taken one of your hands away, the gun is going to want to recoil where you’ve
lost support.
Which is going to be toward the missing hand.
So you really need to be locked in.
You’ll get a different recoil impulse than normal.
You’ll still going to have that straight smooth trigger press whether you’ve got
two-hands, or one-hand.
Let’s see what it looks like.
So we have a lefty here, which is perfect.
We can demo from both sides.
He’ll start off with his strong hand, which for Aaron is his left.
He’ll press out and put a few shots in.
You’ll see how his body engages forward, behind the gun.
Because that gun is going to recoil and the more mass we can put behind it, the more we
can control it.
Go ahead Aaron, throw a few shots at the target.
Beautiful.
So what didn’t you see there.
You didn’t see the gun flailing about.
You didn’t see it fall out of his hand.
He had a good, firm solid grip.
So now, we want to talk about how we transition.
So for Aaron, to get from this hand to this hand, how do you do that safely?
There are a couple ways to do it.
You want to be able to expose some of that grip, and get the gun over to the other side.
So lets see… take the gun, pass it over.
Very safe, right?
He didn’t have any fingers going where they don’t belong.
So now for Aaron as a lefty, he’s shooting with his weak hand.
You’ll see his body position change up a bit.
He’ll throw some weight behind the gun.
He’s going to do the same thing with his weak-hand.
Let’s see what it looks like.
Awesome.
Main thing we want to take away from this.
You’re still putting a lot of strength into the gun, just like we taught you with the
two-hand grip.
Still having an awesome trigger press.
Your going to notice accuracy may diminish a little at first, but there’s no reason
you’re not going to get super solid hits.
So this, what Aaron just showed us, not only could that be indicative of a scenario where
one arm was taken out of the fight, but to use the barrel as cover, had he used his other
hand to come out with both arms, he would have exposed his entire chest from diaphragm
up.
Just using one arm he was able to conceal much more of his vital organs.
So you need to think about that stuff too.
When you’re thinking cover and concealment, always having that two hand grip, you may
not be able to get, keep as much of you behind cover as possible, which is always key.
Alright, so why is this one-handed stuff important.
Beyond sporting events like USPSA or IDPA, you could actually get shot and injured, and
not be able use one of your arms.
What also happens if you have to defend somebody.
If you have a loved one with you…
I’m probably not going to be defending Aaron, I’d be the guy climbing behind him.
But in reality, … Let’s just imagine this is my beautiful
bride.
And we’re in a movie theater or whatever, I’m not going to put her out in front of
me.
Your beautiful.
I’m going to get in front of her.
Maybe this is my child.
So from that perspective, I may have to engage, while keeping that person behind me.
You could also have a situation where my arm is trapped.
If I’m in a position where I’m in a really tight quarters, or tight hallway, I again
might not have the ability to use that arm.
So you need to be able to think outside the box.
We’ve also got one more, very good reason you want to learn to shoot left handed…
And we’ve got the perfect guy, former Army Combatives Instructor, to show us why we may
need one hand.
We’ll show you that next.
Dude man, I didn’t touch your girlfriend.
I told you!
No, man!
It’s just a fender bender!
You know what you did!
Aargh!
Ahhh!
Don’t touch my gun!
What do you got, whoa!
Some of that was a little over the top, but I’m not playing with this dude with a freakin
screwdriver.
So there you go, that’s the long and the short of it.
These scenarios could easily happen.
You saw Aaron go for my gun.
He showed up with an improvised weapon.
A screwdriver man, that’s more than deep enough to get down to your heart, aortal,
lungs… and other vital organs.
So, you have to practice the one arm stuff.
Hey, we hope you learned something today.
This one-hand shooting stuff is serious business.
This one-hand shooting stuff is actually real life.
It happens very often, in many police involved shootings you see the officer coming out and
engaging with one hand, because it’s a natural response to turn and run from a target.
Think about that stuff.
Train often.
Train safe.
Want to thank Aaron for coming out.
Absolutely.
Mike Tyson once said, everybody has a plan till they get punch in the face.”
That’s just a metaphor for any kind of conflict you might find yourself in.
Train for when things go wrong, then you won’t be found wanting when something does.
Right on.
Like don’t carry a screw driver into a gun fight.
Exactly… or a barrel.
Thanks for watching.
Check us out on CarryTrainer dot com, YouTube, and Instagram.
Also, check out Aaron at Strong.Ranger on Instagram.
Stay safe, train hard.