Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Question for the combat shooters

Come ooooown, Man !!!

MM

One analogy occurs to me, that in golf, the grip is highly important - if not correct you are pretty much guaranteed to suck at golf. But there are different grips - for example most people use a Vardon grip - invented by a famous golfer from 100 years ago. Jack Nicklaus, however, used a so-called interlocking grip due to small hands, and he still holds many records.

I've got pretty short stubby fingers, so the conventional "correct" grip style just doesn't work for me. More practice - now that works better than anything else...

gmoats,
Those are some great pictures. As a kid I grew up reading about all those guys in the gun/shooting magazines way back in the day. They had a definite influence on me and spurred my initial love for the .45 ACP cartridge and 1911 handgun. When I got older a duty assignment saw me taking some handgun and tactical firearms classes at the Green Valley Range which is the old Chapman Academy. I was like a kid again shooting through those ranges and courses. Thanks for posting those pictures.

Good clip, JDS.

MM

Interesting. Jarret was teaching Cooper's surprise break to his student, as that is where we all must begin. He left that behind for the flip and press a LOOONG time ago.

Jarret hardly ever loses by being the slowest. If he does loose it'll be because he missed. He's always running on the ragged edge of what is doable for a human with a handgun.

I never really took into account my grip on the gun.

He is from the United States Army Marksmanship Unit.




Now I want to try the finger on the guard grip now.

If that's you in the bottom pic, personally I'd leave your grip alone and change your stance. That one limits ones ability to transition to the strong side. It also increases exposure to weak points in armor.

I sit firmly on the fence on this grip thing because no 2 people are made the same and even the same person at different times will use something different due to age and injury. All the guys above were at the top of the heap along with many others. As far as gunfighters are concerned, look at Jelly Bryce....check out the grip on his N frame S&W......very unconventional, but it allowed him a high grip on the grip frame.

Look closely at Jim Cirrillos grip....pick up a copy of modern day gunfighter dvd...it looks to me like he had pretty stubby thick fingers and he would start with his finger properly on the trigger and then wrap the rest of his hand around the butt while instructing students...so instead of the handgun sitting firmly in the v between the base of the thumb and index finger....his hand is placed a little more foreward and the thumb wraps around the butt. It didn't appear to slow him down since he had strong hands and was a competitive weight lifter in his yout.

There are principles that you can take away...high grip......shoot a bunch.....probably several more that other can chime in on.

Jelly Bryce pic

Pick up a copy of Jim Cirrillos modern day gunfighter dvd and you will get to see him shoot and tell stories. You will also get to see some of his modified revolvers.....great stuff.

That's an awful lot of muzzle flip for a heavy 9mm and a big guy, my 130# wife has better recoil management than that. Lock them arms out! I know Brian Enos shot that way, but you ain't Benos (and neither am I).

Good stuff Dave, that Bryce was larger than life, the Cirrilo of his day for sure.

I agree with you about revolvers. Jarret defined a 1911 grip perfectly but a revolver may just be a tad different. Miculek doesn't grip his like Jarret describes.

Not me...... yet

I will take into account the tip when I do my training though, thank you, sir.

Makes me wonder what my stance looks like now as well.

It more than helped, maybe the single biggest change..........

If everyone had to shoot non-comp'ed 45ACPs at major power factor load levels, the game would change again.

MM

No it wouldn't, Latham would still be shooting iso and kicking everyone else's a$$.

I will say this though, shooting a uncomped 1911 45acp with a locked out iso stance is HELL on some elbow joints.

Same guys would likely still be winning but the times & scores would definitely change.

MM

Greg, you really stirred the memories with those pictures.

Crap, I feel old!


Pete

There are still plenty of 'single-stack classic' types of matches around. It's pretty tough to compare apples-to-apples with the older shooters vs. the new, but my guess is the emphasis is more on speed than accuracy nowadays.

The other missing element in the equation is that in those days NO ONE was a professional shooter. EVERYONE had a day job and only shot on the weekends and maybe once during the week. Take Max Michel and Ross Seyfried at the same ages using the same equipment and reverse their professions---make Max run a large cattle ranch and let Ross be a full time shooter, and I'm guessing that you'd see more of a parity of Weaver and Iso. Of course, I could be wrong.

1977 US IPSC champion--Kirk Kirkham,a construction worker IIRC
1978--Ross Seyfried, cattle rancher
1979--Mickey Fowler, owned a company that made retail displays
1980--John Shaw, owned commercial real estate, IIRC
1981-- "
1982--Mike Plaxco, metal worker turned gunsmith
1983--Rob Leatham, worked for a news paper.

None of them were law enforcement or military (I think Kirk had been in Viet Nam IIRC)----they all did it on their own nickle after work and on weekends. I may be wrong, but I think that that's a major difference between today's top guns and the old guys----technique, ok, I get it-----today's may be better, but not enough to justify the differences in skill. Todays average competitor shoots more than the champions of the past did and today's professional shooters put more rounds downrange in a few days than the old guys did in a few months. JMO---YMMV

In response to Jim (the OP),

I shoot and grip the gun EXACTLY like Jarret does. The photo was from a VIP shoot where we were having some VIPs shoot some of our weapons. Simply teaching gun safety, followed with a little sight picture and trigger control was the best we could hope for in the 1/2 hour they had ateach station. TAK is correct that the shooter should choke up on the gun. I am just happy that there were no ADs.

An example of how I hold a pistol:



You can see that I bury the pistol as deep as I can. This allows me to better control the recoil. The pistol's slide tends to come straight back more so than flipping up. This gives faster shot to shot recovery times and puts my front sight back on target faster.

Right now though, since I have not been shooting much at all. I should time myself with a sun dial..

To my understanding, the lower the gun in your hands the more accurate you will be? Or is that completey wrong?

I do not know much about shooting pistols anyways.