Weak side shotgun shooting, in the dark, on fire, naked.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

busy googling

80s proto-tactical for guys with 2-tone 1911s and aviator glasses.




I think I'm too dense for social stress to apply because I mainly just think about whether the thing I'm doing is working for me or not. I don't mind having stress applied, I just don't want it applied in such a way that I'm practising dumb things instead of smart things. And I am pretty skeptical that shooting the 9-hole wall lefthanded while side-loading a mag fed gun the whole way is smart. I was thinking, as I was doing it, that for the time I'm taking to run it wrong-handed with one shell at a time out of my pocket, I could be getting pretty damn fast shooting it with mags and my right shoulder. I wouldn't have been fast to start with, because I never use shotguns, but I could have been fast, I think, with a couple of hours of practise.

And that's my objection: practising weak hand only shooting on a carnival ride while somebody spills coffee on you isn't really going to make you better. Or maybe it is, but I feel like it isn't. It's so specific that I think you're introducing too many simultaneous failure points. That might be wrong but I felt 2% better at the end of four hours than I did at the start, and looking around everybody else looked equally inept because honestly, how smooth can you make the bottom row of ports on a 9-hole while loading one at a time? It's just inherently screwed up, and I had the thought that doing it fifteen or twenty times wasn't really making me better. Each step was too long, and too dependent on weird issues like cargo pockets with enough shells left at a conveniently accessible angle, and so on.



I don't know, maybe it's useful but I'm pretty skeptical.


Those of you who don't bother with support-side shotgunning, what are your thoughts about shooting around barriers? Do you switch shoulders with ARs but not with shotguns?

[JAD]

Those of you who don't bother with support-side shotgunning, what are your thoughts about shooting around barriers? Do you switch shoulders with ARs but not with shotguns?

I roll out. I do not switch sides with handguns, shotguns, or carbines. I do switch sides when driving in England and Singapore, but I resent it.

[Chuck Haggard]

I am an advocate of switching shoulders to maximize cover, but this is taking that idea way into full potato areas, so nope, I don't get it either.

[JHC]

I roll out. I do not switch sides with handguns, shotguns, or carbines. I do switch sides when driving in England and Singapore, but I resent it.

Same. And since my application is inside my home; there is precious little actual cover provided by corners or furniture so it doesn't seem worth the investment to me.

[psalms144.1]

I understand the value of shooting off-shoulder with a long gun, I really do. There are plenty of times when that application offers advantages, IF YOU TRAIN IT SUFFICIENTLY. I sure as snot wouldn't do it with a pump action shotgun, unless I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours training to do. Frankly, I get little enough training time as it is, and so I doubt that I'd ever get around to this skill set.

I have spent a fair amount of time training to switch shoulder with a rifle, and to switch hand with a pistol. Frankly, my performance with support-hand-supported pistol shooting is so much worse than my strong hand supported or SHO, I don't see it as a viable option, either.

And, Misanthropist, you have my vote for winning the internet this week with the title of this thread...

[LSP552]

Add me to the list of folks who don't see the benefits of switching sides with a HD shotgun.

[Cookie Monster]

I like the idea of it and I train it because is it new and a challenge but I never have the thought I would actually use it.

Also as an instructor it helps me think about and experience how things go for left handed folks.

[JHC]

And, Misanthropist, you have my vote for winning the internet this week with the title of this thread...

+1 as well as some of his quips in commentary. Perfectly accentuates the nth degree worst case scenario implicit in the weak hand 9 hole training with a shottie.

[Mr_White]

misanthropist, I am no shotgun guy, so my comments are more general. I agree with you though. I think there is value in getting a little familiarity with outlying, difficult stuff like shooting upside down, backwards, weak hand only, in a ditch, and needing to clear a difficult malfunction, but it's nowhere near the value of improving what can be identified as likely, core skills. When I've seen that kind of stuff presented in 'advanced pistol classes', I have sometimes seen it as something that is done when none of the instructors possess the skill to work with the students on making their core skills better. Because that requires the instructor have the skill in the first place and then deal with endless subtlety in helping students refine and improve their technique. Weak hand only doublefeed clearance and weirdo positional shooting can be done as 'do step 1, do step 2, do step 3, wow, good job, you did it!' and is a lot easier in that respect. Doesn't mean that stuff has no value. The unfortunate bro who actually has to clear a doublefeed weak hand only or else die would do well to have done it before. But spending a lot of time on it? No way, not compared to what one judges as the core skills.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Thanks for the input (and appreciation/tolerance for my rather glib humour).

I don't know that I'd say I feel "vindicated" as there wasn't really an argument per se, but I now feel my assessment of the training as "focused on skills I am unlikely to utilize" is pretty accurate.

I'm very interested to hear that so many of you wouldn't run a shotgun on your off side - and particularly a pump gun. I find it fairly challenging to do efficiently and I can't see myself putting in the time to get good at it; there's other stuff I'd rather spend my time on. I do switch shoulders and hands quite comfortably on ARs and AKs (well, VZs) and I'm pretty sharp on WHO pistol, but pump guns just introduce too much physical activity for me to feel comfortable with it. Or, maybe more accurately, for me to do it with the kind of speed and precision I can do it strong side.

I found it a bit humourous when we were doing weak side shotgun, but WHO handgun. I was kind of looking around like, we've chosen to do this with awkward side just to get around cover, but are simultaneously shooting a pistol WHO because what, our right arm is shot? But not when we transition back to the shotgun?

Meanwhile we're hearing this lecture about how inside 25m, if we run dry on the AR, we need to go straight to a handgun. But with shotgun we're f##kulating around loading one and shooting one from our pockets, rather than going to the pistol each one of us is carrying? And I can't go for mags with my left hand if I'm shooting my shotgun on the weak side, because then I'll "learn" to do that in an emergency with my right hand...what? I think if I always go for mags with my left, under stress, I think I'll go for mags with my left.


Anyway the guy who runs the training group is a person for whom I do have quite a bit of respect, just on account of the amount of work he puts in for the local firearms community. But he and I do see things a bit differently in terms of high- and low-value training.


And to be fair I think that Clobb and Cookie do make points which support at least occasional training with this stuff. So I'll probably occasionally participate, and more frequently work on my foundational skills elsewhere.



Oh, and I appreciate everyone's take on this precisely because I didn't think I necessarily had the chops to critique it, but there's some people in here I think unquestionably have the chops and so getting everyone's feedback has been very instructive.