Handgun Shooting Positions: Bad Stances - 4

We've looked at some of the most common bad stances with handguns in the last few posts. In this post, we will look at some miscellaneous bad stances and grips.

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The first image we have here features actress Ann Margret. Note how she uses her weaker arm as a support for the stronger hand. However, note that the weaker arm isn't really resting on anything. So, in effect, she is really firing one handed, because the weak hand is not doing anything to really support the strong hand. This position shows up in some cowboy movies.

The next bad habit we will look at is a bad grip technique. Notice where the thumb of the weak hand is placed. That's right, it is placed behind the slide. Why is this a bad way to hold a pistol? Because when the user pulls the trigger, the cartridge will fire and then the slide will move backwards at a very high speed to eject the spent cartridge. If the thumb is placed in the path of the slide, it will cause a painful cut or a broken thumb. Both thumbs should be placed so that they do not interfere with the backward movement of the slide.

Another bad habit is to lean backwards when firing. This is especially seen when the person cannot really handle the recoil of the handgun.

As you see here, the young woman is leaning backwards instead of forwards.

Finally, there is this infamous video floating around, of a young woman trying to shoot a .50 caliber Desert Eagle:

Her biggest mistake here is attempting to fire a weapon that is much too powerful for her to handle. The bigger idiot here is her boyfriend though, for talking her into firing something that she's clearly not used to. She's lucky that she or someone else wasn't seriously hurt.

Handgun Shooting Positions: Bad Stances - 3

Continuing our series on bad shooting positions, we will now study a bad method of holding a handgun, which has become very popular due to Hollywood gangster films and numerous rap videos. Yes, it is none other than the infamous "sideways grip", otherwise known as the "gangsta grip" or the "sideways gangsta grip".

A couple of examples of the "gangsta grip". Click on images to enlarge.

In the above two images, we see two people demonstrating the infamous sideways gangsta grip style. Some people think that this style of holding a handgun originated in the 1990s, but it has actually been seen in movies made in the 1960s as well. For example:

Marlon Brando as "Rio" in the movie One-Eyed Jacks released in 1961

Eli Wallach as "Tuco", the ugly guy in the 1966 classic cowboy movie, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood

While these movies did briefly show characters using the sideways grip, it was the Hughes brothers 1993 movie "Menace II Society", that really popularized it. It was after Menace II Society was released to theaters that it started to appear in a lot of other Hollywood movies, TV shows and rap music videos.

Russell Crowe demonstrating the sideways grip, from the movie No Way Back.

One theory on why this shows up a lot on film and videos is because it allows the director to show a dramatic view of the actor's face as well as the firearm, all in the same scene, as can be seen in the picture of the movie poster above. If the actor was holding the pistol vertically, a larger portion of his face would be blocked by his hand and the firearm. Another theory is that movie actors and stuntmen don't wear protective eye-wear during shooting scenes and many got tired of getting hit in the face by a hot cartridge and so they started shooting sideways, so that the empty cartridges would drop to the ground.

So why is this grip such a bad idea. Well, if a user holds his handgun like this, then he cannot use the sights of the weapon. There is a very good reason that firearms have sights and they are there to help the user aim the firearm properly. Accuracy suffers a lot, as demonstrated by the Mythbusters TV show here:



As you can see, it may look cool in the movies, but in real life, the sideways gangsta grip is pretty darn useless unless the user is very close to the target.

Handgun Shooting Positions: Bad Stances - 2

In our last post, we studied a bad shooting stance, namely the cup-and-saucer or teacup grip. In this post, we will study another bad shooting stance, the wrist brace grip.

This one is famously seen in the Dirty Harry series of movies starring Clint Eastwood playing the role of "Dirty" Harry Callahan, a police inspector working in the San Francisco Police Department.

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The Dirty Harry series of movies are famous for phrases such as "Go ahead, make my day" as well as usage of the Smith and Wesson Model 29 revolver firing .44 magnum cartridges, which we discussed many months ago in an earlier post. In fact, Dirty Harry extols the virtues of the model 29 with the following speech:

I know what you're thinking: 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?

The speech was not completely true because by the time the first movie in the series was filmed in 1971, the model 29 was no longer the most powerful handgun in the world. However, sales of the model 29 went up drastically after this movie was released, because of this speech.

Surprisingly, Clint Eastwood uses a grip that consists of holding the revolver in one hand and gripping the wrist of that hand with his other hand. This means that the weak hand is offering almost no support to the strong hand. If this was real life and not a Hollywood movie, it would be very hard for him to support the recoil of such a big revolver.

Dirty Harry isn't the only movie character to use the wrist brace grip technique. In the above picture, we see the famous English spy, James Bond (played by actor Roger Moore), using the same technique with his comparatively smaller Walther PPK pistol.

In the next post, we will study some more bad stances.

Handgun Shooting Positions: Bad Stances - 1

In many of our previous posts, we have looked at various good stances to use when shooting firearms. In the next few posts, we will look at some of the bad shooting stances. Most of these bad stances are because of the influence of the movie industry and music videos.

The first bad shooting stance we will look at is the infamous "cup-and-saucer grip", also known as the "teacup grip". This one shows up in a lot of movies and TV shows. In this, the shooter holds (cups) the pistol in his dominant hand and then rests the bottom of his handgun magazine in the off hand (the saucer).

Click on image to enlarge.

Here, we have the character Jack Bauer, played by actor Kiefer Sutherland, from the popular TV show "24". As you can see, he is attempting to use something like a weaver stance. However, pay attention to his hands, especially his off-hand, and you can clearly see him placing his dominant hand and the magazine butt into his off-hand.

The above is another picture of Jack Bauer clearly using a cup-and-saucer grip.

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Jack Bauer isn't the only character around who uses questionable methods to hold handguns. In the above picture, we have James Bond (played by actor Daniel Craig) using a cup-and-saucer grip as well.

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And finally, the Alice character (played by actress Milla Jovovich) from the Resident Evil series of movies, also using the cup-and-saucer grip, this time with a revolver. You may see this grip used in a lot of other movies as well.

This technique was once actually taught to revolver shooters in the Wild West (and sometimes called the "palm supported grip"). The main reason it is bad with modern firearms is that the off hand provides almost no support against the recoil, which forces the user to aim the target again for each of the subsequent shots. Also, no matter how strong the user is, the recoil will make the user's hands separate and the off-hand needs to be reapplied after every shot. Additionally, if a cartridge is overloaded, the additional pressure has to be released somewhere, and in the case of handguns, it may forcefully eject the magazine out. If the user is using a cup and saucer grip, the off-hand will get a pretty nasty smack.

We will look at more bad stances in subsequent posts.