1H Shooting

Falling squarely into the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” category, the most recent NYPD firearms discharge report (hat tip to Mitchell) informs us that NYPD officers in 2010 were equally as likely to shoot 1-handed as they were 2-handed when confronted by a human adversary (p9, slide 37). This is consistent with the report from previous years and has been one of the most quoted justifications for shooters and trainers who put a tremendous amount of focus on SHO (strong hand only) and WHO (weak hand only) shooting.

Unfortunately, that conclusion is not supported by the facts or even the report itself.

We definitely see people shooting one-handed under stress all the time. Watch enough dashcam or stop ‘n rob videos and it becomes obvious. But if the analysis stops there, we don’t get the full picture. Who is defaulting to a one-handed shooting position? Most often, it’s untrained or undertrained shooters. The bad guys shoot one-handed all the time. When I’ve talked to LE instructors about their departments’ OIS (officer involved shootings) most of them see a direct correlation on this subject. Their officers who are “gun guys” or at least take their firearms training seriously tend to get a two-handed grip on the gun when possible. As qual scores drop, so too does the likelihood of establishing a two-handed grip under stress. That shouldn’t surprise us. Getting a proper grip on a pistol is a matter of habit. Until you’ve established that habit adequately to call upon it under stress without conscious thought, it probably won’t happen.

Note that the rate of incidence for one-handed shooting remains the same even when officers fired at animals instead of people. The number was almost identical, 46% against animals versus 50% against people (p26, slide 54). The data set was extremely small with only thirty animal incidents, making the difference between the two numbers statistically insignificant.

The biggest hole in the NYPD report, however, is a discussion of why officers may have shot one-handed. There is no mention of flashlights, for example. The vast majority of NYPD officers use handheld lights. How many of those one-handed shootings were dictated by the use of a handheld flashlight in low-light conditions? Couldn’t tell you. There is no mention whatsoever in the NYPD report about lighting conditions. We do know that at least some of the incidents involved being in very close contact with the adversary. A quarter of the incidents took place within five feet and another 39% occurred between six and ten feet (p9, slide 37). There is no discussion about whether the officers’ other hand or arm was contacting or even immobilized by a suspect, etc.

But possibly the most noteworthy part of the whole report: there are zero incidents in which it appears the officer fired one-handed due to injury. That great justification of one-handed shooting, the persistent warning about a hand or arm becoming incapacitated in a fight, is simply far less common than some would have us believe. Does it happen? Certainly. Many of you can probably name incidents off the top of your head where an officer or military combatant had to shoot one-handed. But it’s important to keep those stories in perspective. We hear about those events specifically because they’re the outliers. They’re the worst case. They’re “man bites dog” rather than “dog bites man” stories.

Of course, those things do happen. To borrow a phrase from Tom Givens, “no one ever describes a gunfight he was in as average.” I’m a firm believer that competent shooters should know how to:

* draw
* get good hits at speed
* reload
* clear malfunctions

… both SHO and WHO. But I try to look at it in perspective and tailor my training efforts appropriately.

For example, unless there is an injury to the strong hand or arm so severe that weapon manipulation becomes impossible, it’s almost unheard of for someone to switch to WHO pistol shooting on purpose except when playing gun games. Should you work on those skills? Yes. It would suck to have your last thought on Earth be, “Damn, I wish I’d learned how to reload weak hand only!” But just keep in mind that the time you put into polishing your WHO double feed malfunction clearance technique is time you’re taking away from improving the skills you’re far more likely to need, like drawing and hitting at speed with two hands.

While I don’t do it nearly as much as some advocate, I do still put a fair bit of effort into my strong hand only shooting technique. First, my favored low-light technique is a variation of the neck (or temple) index which means that I’m essentially shooting strong hand only whenever I’ve holding my flashlight. One nice part about this approach is that all of my SHO training is helping my low-light shooting and all of my low-light training is helping my  SHO shooting.

Second, if for some reason I absolutely had to keep hold of something (wife, dog leash, etc.) while shooting I’d naturally hold it with my left hand… forcing me to handle the gun SHO. Third, at very close/retention distances where my left hand or arm might either be in use or somehow constrained by a bad guy, I’m going to favor using my strong hand whenever possible. Every good retention shooting position I’ve ever seen or used has been SHO.

When I add it all up, I’d say I put about 10-15% of my overall shooting practice into SHO skills and 5-10% into WHO. For someone who hasn’t yet learned the proper way to draw, reload, and clear malfunctions both SHO and WHO I’d recommend fixing that flaw, but in terms of sustaining those skills you need to look at your actual needs. For example, competition-oriented shooters will probably never have to perform WHO draws or one-handed reloads but SHO and WHO shooting is extremely common in both USPSA and IDPA. A K9 officer, on the other hand, is extremely likely to need strong hand only skills. Evaluate your own needs. Just be sure to do it based on an honest assessment and facts rather than ghost stories, dramatic one-time events, and misinterpreted data.

Train hard & stay safe! ToddG