Handgun Shooting Tips for Lefties Shooting from a Vehicle

Today we're gonna take a look at what a left-handed shooter does when they're sitting in the driver's seat of a car. Now, most of the time obviously when I'm doing demonstrations, I'm doing them right-handed, that's my strong hand. And most of our guests, most of our instructors at Personal Defense Network are also right-handed, but today we brought in Stan Lee. Stan Lee is a defensive firearms coach based down here in Florida and he's also left-handed. So he's gonna be able to demonstrate the appropriate technique, which is gonna look very familiar for those of you have seen the right-handed technique because really the gross body movements are exactly the same but he's gonna demonstrate it as a left-handed shooter.

Now, a lot of people assume that because the gun is so close to the door that there's some magic trick or there's some impossible feat he has to accomplish in order to get the gun oriented properly, but the fact is that that's not the case. It's gonna be very simple. Of course, we're gonna start out assuming that he has just turned the car off. He's parked, maybe he's gotten home, he's gotten to a restaurant wherever he is, he realizes that there's a threat off to his left. So Stan if you'll recognize that threat off to your left.

I'm gonna go and put my eyes on as you reach down, get your hand on your gun, making sure that your leg is clear of the gun as it comes straight up and you start to orient your back towards me pushing backwards in the seat driving straight out, extending, touching, and pressing getting your shot. And if you'll hold right there again, the trick is we wanna make sure that gun is not going past where the window would be. We don't want the gun hitting the window and being knocked off line, nor do we want the gun extending outside of the vehicle where somebody slashing or hitting with a club or even reaching towards Stan would be able to get their hand on the gun. So either window up or window down we still want the shooter to maintain their position inside of the car. Now in an administrative training environment, Stan is gonna pull that gun back into his chest, he's gonna reach under the gun with his right hand to open the door safely.

And for administrative reasons, we don't re holster while seated. It's not worth doing. It's a high risk environment to try to re holster inside of the car like this. So you're just gonna step out and he's gonna go ahead and safely get his gun back into his holster. Then get back into the car and we're gonna put the seatbelt on and we're gonna see that nothing really changes.

Now with the seatbelt on again, same scenario. The steering wheel pops up in this vehicle automatically when you open the door, let's go ahead and reset that. We want that in a realistic position. Whenever you're doing training in your vehicle you wanna try to set it up as realistically as possible. And again, you'll recognize the threat.

You'll reach down towards the gun, not worrying about the seatbelt at all. Get your grip, making sure your leg is clear as the gun comes up. You're gonna twist your body and extend, touch, and press. Good, pull the gun back in. And now again, administratively this may be the trickiest part.

He's going to reach back with his right hand, get that seatbelt across his body without getting it tangled up on the gun or covering himself, open the door up, step out, and re holster. Gonna come back into the vehicle. We'll reset the steering wheel, reset the seatbelt one more time. And notice that Stan also has his concealment garment on. We're not changing anything.

We're trying to train as realistically as possible. Stan's an experienced shooter, he's done plenty of shooting while seated, practice this is just a little bit different 'cause he's seated while inside the car. You feel comfortable going a little smoother? Sure. I'll give you one command, you can go through the whole process.

Excellent. And again administratively, get that seatbelt off and step out of the vehicle. So again, with a left-handed shooter, we've got some very specific concerns about the way they're going to be moving the gun. But the body position, the orientation back from the window, the ability to twist in the seat under the seatbelt and leaning back, all of that's still the same as it would be for a right-handed shooter we just know that the hand is gonna be coming up close to the door. So if you have a sports car if you have something that's more confined, that may create some unique situations.

Obviously, we think you should practice seated shooting first and then your presentation from seated and then get into your vehicle, and you might even do it with a dry gun or a dummy gun when you first get started presentation, regardless of whether you're right-handed or left-handed when shooting inside of the vehicle.