Firearms Training

This series of articles gives you a glimpse at the handgun techniques we teach at Front Sight. Unfortunately, these articles cannot impart any actual skills. The life-saving skills of gun-handling, marksmanship, and tactics can only be gained from attending a course at Front Sight.

In this chapter, I am going to cover a method of holding your weapon and a body position which will help you deliver good, fight-stopping hits downrange. We call this “Grip and Stance.” The goal of proper grip and stance is to control recoil and muzzle flip when the weapon fires. Recoil is the rearward push of the weapon, and muzzle flip is the upward rotation of the muzzle. Of course, these occur simultaneously each time you fire the weapon.

A proper grip begins with the placement of your firing hand as high as possible on the frame. If you let your hand slide down on the frame, you will have less control of muzzle flip. The result of proper hand placement will be a bulge of flesh behind the tang, or grip safety, of the weapon. The trigger finger is straight alongside the frame. The remaining three fingers of the firing hand are simply wrapped around the front of the frame. The thumb is high and relaxed. For 1911 shooters, the thumb is on top of the thumb safety. The weapon should extend in a straight line from your forearm. If there is a significant angle between your forearm and the weapon, you will have great difficulty controlling recoil and muzzle flip. That takes care of the firing hand.

The easiest way to describe placement of the support hand is “fingers on fingers, thumb on thumb.” The support hand fingers simply overlap the firing hand fingers underneath the trigger guard. The support hand index finger should hit the bottom of the trigger guard at about the second knuckle. The support hand thumb stacks comfortably on top of the firing hand thumb. The backs of the hands will touch just slightly. That is a proper two-handed grip.

There are two common mistakes you need to avoid in your grip. First, if you let your support hand index finger drift up onto the front of the trigger guard, it will actually be more difficult to control muzzle flip. Second, if you let your thumbs curl down into a “crushing grip,” you may cause two problems. One, the thumbs will likely hit one of the controls of the weapon at just the wrong time. Two, by crushing your thumbs down, you may degrade your trigger control. When your entire hand is flexed, it is very difficult to move the trigger finger with any degree of dexterity.

Now let’s talk about stance. There are several shooting stances commonly used in defensive handgun training. The one we favor is the Weaver stance because it allows excellent control of recoil and muzzle flip, it is easy to learn, and it transitions well to other weapons like shotguns and rifles.

The Weaver stance is a bladed, aggressive stance. Your feet should be shoulder width apart and pointed at about 30º to your firing side. Your hips and shoulders are also at 30º. In other words, there should be no twisting of the spine. The only things facing your adversary are your head and obviously your weapon. Your body and head stay relatively erect. Your knees should be very slightly bent. You should also have a slight amount of forward lean; just enough to get your weight onto the balls of your feet.

Now, if I extend my arms toward the adversary, clearly my support hand extends much further than my firing hand. This is the result of being in a bladed stance. To obtain the two-handed grip I just described, you simply bend your support side elbow down toward the ground and bring the hands together. Don’t point the support side elbow out to the side, but rather, directly down to the ground. Keep the firing side arm relatively straight. This is the Weaver stance.

One thing you cannot see in the Weaver stance is the “isometric tension” in the arms. This isometric tension is created by pushing the weapon toward the adversary with the firing arm, while simultaneously pulling rearward toward your body with your support arm. This isometric tension essentially locks the frame of the weapon in a vice. The isometric tension you create with a proper Weaver stance helps control recoil and muzzle flip.

In the next chapter of the Handgun Training Series, we will explore the Ready position.