Defensive Shooting Fundamentals Session 1: Handgun Grip

When it comes to the fundamentals of defensive shooting, the one that I see students having the biggest problems with and the most inconsistency with is definitely the grip. The grip on the defensive firearm is how you integrate with the tool and that integration needs to be as consistent as possible and help us achieve our goals of controlling the gun, getting the gun initially aligned with our threat and then obviously maintaining recoil, managing recoil managing the entire process of resetting the gun between each shot so that we can stay on target and get our follow up shots as quickly as possible. We also need a good grip to maintain control again in the event that someone's going to try to wrestle it from us and ultimately a good fundamental grip is also gonna help us with our safety not only because it will help us control the gun but also because it'll keep us from having the gun discharge inadvertently when we don't want it to. So let's look at the fundamental points of the grip with a defensive firearm. The first thing we're going to do is hold the gun as high as possible without interfering with the operation of the gun. Now, what that means primarily is that when I look at the gun I wanna make sure that there aren't any gaps above my hand at the back of the grip area. I wanna make sure that there's no light coming through here between that web of the thumb and the forefinger and the top of the grip or the bottom of the beaver tail as it's called it extends back out. So I don't want any gaps there that's gonna help me to manage recoil better and of course that contact is going to be a point of consistency. Now we're gonna talk a lot about points of consistency anywhere that the hand is touching the gun or that our hands are touching one another gives us the opportunity to recognize when it feels right or when it feels wrong. If I were to be holding the gun and not feel the top of the grip pressing down against my hand I don't need to look at the gun to know this is wrong it just doesn't feel right. The other issue I have when it comes to holding the gun as high as possible is keeping my thumb high on the gun up near the seam of the slide in the frame creating a gap on the weak side of the gun between my thumb and middle finger. This is gonna get more mass of my hand up by the top of the gun for management of recoil. It's also gonna give me equal control on either side of the gun so that I'm not creating a weakness here that the gun can get pushed into during recoil, during cycling. So I'm gonna create that space. The other thing it'll do is allow me to control a safety lever. If the gun happens to have a frame mounted safety lever, it'll allow me to control that keeping it in the off position while shooting and this gap provides a space for my weak hand to fill in and get maximum contact with the grip of the gun also, when I'm doing two handed shooting. On the strong side of the gun keeping my finger as high as possible when I'm not in a shooting position, obviously is a safety issue. We worry about something called grasp reflex. I wanna keep my finger up above the trigger area above the trigger guard, above the trigger itself so that if I'm startled when I'm holding the gun in a non shooting position, when I grasp down on the gun reflexively as part of that startle reaction, I'm not gonna have this finger coming down here and setting the gun off, firing a shot. So keeping that finger as high as possible is a safety issue, as much as anything else. That's high on the gun. The second thing I wanna do is make sure that in fact that trigger finger is placed somewhere consistently on the gun, away from the trigger and above the trigger guard. I generally recommend the seam of the frame and the slide as the best place to start. Now, you may have a pin, you may have a button, you may have a bulge, you may have some other indicator of where you can put that finger and that's fine but for everybody, regardless of finger size or gun size you should be able to reach that seam somewhere and use that as your index point you may see some people recommend taking your finger and hooking it up at the ejection port or up on the extractor of a semiautomatic gun. I don't agree with that process because that is not a place I can keep my finger when I'm doing things other than shooting that I may need to do with the gun. So in other words, if I'm reloading or if I'm clearing a malfunction, I obviously don't want my finger up here blocking the ejection port or getting caught between the chamber of the barrel and the breach face. I don't wanna get caught in the actual extractor itself, so I wanna make sure that finger is somewhere else. What that means is if this is my normal index point I actually need three places to keep my finger on the trigger when I'm shooting at that point when I'm not doing any manipulations with the gun and somewhere else, probably just floating around in space when I am doing manipulations I'd much rather keep the finger somewhere down here anytime that I'm not actively shooting and on the trigger. So that's what I wanna look for. The idea of getting that finger up here on that seam also works very well with getting the grip as high as possible. I talked a little bit about the middle finger being under the trigger guard coming around underneath of that thumb. What I wanna make sure of with these three fingers is that they are wrapped together in parallel they're not spread out. I don't wanna have those fingers spread out around the grip, I don't wanna have them in odd places. I certainly don't want that middle finger anywhere up by the trigger guard. I wanna make sure that these fingers are parallel with each other wrapped around the front of the grip and that the middle finger keeps in contact with the base of the trigger guard. That's gonna give me again that high on the gun. I don't wanna be down here anywhere with that gap there. That's gonna give me less control and less points of contact to know that I'm actually in my proper training grip. This thumb being high creates the gap above the middle finger and now we're gonna get into what we do with our weak hand. The weak hand is going to come into this area and get as much contact with the meaty base of the palm or the base of the thumb, some people call that the drum stick if you think of the thumb coming in here that's the drum stick area. We wanna make sure that we put that up against the gun. The next thing we're doing here is we're trying to get as much 360 degree coverage on the grip as possible. So we're talking about having the grip high and complete around the gun, placing the meaty part of our support hand into the gap formed by the thumb and the middle finger on the weak side of the gun is the first way we do that. The next thing we're gonna do is take the fingers of our support hand and make sure again that they are parallel they're to not spread out and together that they're not interlaced with the fingers of the strong hand, fingers of the strong hand are on the grip. Our support hand fingers are wrapped parallel around the front of those fingers that are already on the grip and our index finger now is going to be in contact with the trigger guard. At this point, next thing we wanna make sure of is that our thumbs are not crossed in any way but in fact are layered. Let's take a look at what that means. If my thumbs are crossed, that means that I am pushing one of the thumbs or both in some cases away from the gun. So that's less contact with the gun. If my strong hand thumb is out over the thumb of the weak hand or the base of the hand on the weak hand, that's obviously going to mean this thumb is not in contact with the gun. I want that thumb in contact with the gun, I don't want it out here away from the gun. If my support hand, weak hand is out over top of the strong thumb, then that creates a gap. You'll see a large gap right in here. If I'm doing that, I wanna be able to have as much contact with the gun as possible, I don't want to be out here not taking advantage of this part of my palm or the thumb in terms of managing recoil and again, in terms of just consistent contact with the frame of the gun itself. So I wanna make sure that there's no crossing of the thumbs in any way, my thumbs are layered. The last point is that we wanna make sure there's no gap back here at the back of the grip between the thumbs. So I could achieve all the other goals making sure these fingers are parallel, making sure the base of the palm is up against the side of the gun. Making sure that my index finger is on the trigger guard and making sure that my thumbs aren't crossed, but still be wrong if I have a large gap back here I wanna make sure that there's as much contact between the hands as possible. And many times I'll see people holding the gun like this, worrying very much about these fingers being straight up and down and canting the thumb back so that there's a large gap right here, and there's really no need to do that. I can rotate this weak hand, in this case, the left hand for me up and forward and put this part of the base of my palm into the gap underneath of the strong hand thumb and that gets rid of that gap now I have as much contact as possible. Now remember that I said we wanna hold the gun as high as possible without interfering with the operation of the gun. Some of the ways we could do that would be to block the slide that could be very dangerous, block a hammer if this were a hammer fired gun and the other thing that some people will do is ride the slide stop if there were a slide stop. Obviously this is an inner training gun just for the purposes of a lot of contrast here so you can see what I'm doing, but if there were a slide stop or a slide release here I wanna be careful that with this high thumb position I'm not getting my thumbs up on top of that button and keeping it from being able to lock the gun open. If that lever or button is pressed down that means that the slide will keep moving forward even when there's no ammunition in it and I'll lose that tactile stimulus that tells me the gun is empty and I need to reload I wanna make sure I'm not doing that. Another thing we might wanna be careful of is if there's an oversize or just very large magazine release we wanna make sure that our middle finger of our strong hand or the palm of our weak hand isn't actuating that when we have our grip, we wouldn't wanna be hitting the magazine release and dropping the magazine out at the beginning of or in the middle of our fight obviously we only want that to happen when we purposefully push in on that button with probably our strong hand thumb to eject it. So high and as much as possible, 360 degree coverage something that we can have consistency between our weak hand and our strong hand in terms of the interaction. And remember that our strong hand grip should look exactly the same whether we're doing one handed shooting or two handed shooting, that way If I have to push someone out of the way and then get this hand back on there it can go right back into the same spot. Or when I pull this hand off for a reload or for malfunction clearing it still goes right back into the same spot. I'm not changing, especially the position of this thumb when I'm going from one handed to two handed shooting. Those are the fundamental important concepts. When it comes to understanding the grip with a defensive pistol.