Shooting with thumb blocking back plate and other non-best practice items

[JCN]

The LCR 9mm has a lot of cylinder “free bore”, and seems less blasty than other snubbies I’ve shot. I’m willing to try a live shot, but with a heavy rash guard and a t shirt I don’t like.

I just did a similar dryfire draw with a P-07, under a light weight sweater, and it worked surprisingly well. The bigger-than-Glock trigger guard was helpful.

About thumb on backplate: obviously that’s not an option with a TDA. Also, all of my Glocks have Gadgets. The motivation is to prevent a malfunction, or to keep the slide in battery on contact? A thumb-pec index shot ideally shouldn’t result in a contact shot.

A while back we (@mr_white) experimented with firing from inside a t-shirt wrapped around the gun. It was surprisingly difficult to make the gun malfunction.

Why not just pocket carry? Good question. I just don’t find pocket carry comfortable, and am used to having the gun AIWB.

I would think if you shot a Glock with the kind of grip shown with the revolver the case might stovepipe or not clear the chamber. If the slide closed on the shirt it could get tangled and more difficult to draw cleanly for the second shot.

I would think that have a forced malfunction and a predictable non snag would be better than a 50/50 chance of some unpredictable malfunction and draw.

Of course this is all mall ninja stuff, but you can only talk about Mozambiques so many times.

[JCN]

Also, I love the “surprisingly well” comment. There have been a lot of suboptimal things I’ve tried that actually kind of work and there are times suboptimal might be all you can do.

[BehindBlueI's]

Maybe if he had racked it with one hand on his leg! (Just kidding)

Racking a round wasn't the issue there, the gun was chambered and ready to go. The real issue there was rock/hard place. He felt he was going to be killed if he didn't draw but his draw was contested from the get go and just kind of a shit sandwich.

I know you're kidding, but I also know my ground game is the weakest link in my chain. When we tried to learn lessons from that event, my thought was to try and pull the attacker in closer to prevent him punching you in the head any further, trust the retention holster to do it's job, and access a weapon with the off hand. I can't do it any longer due to a rules change on holster requirements, but before I kept a LCR revolver in my left cargo pocket for this exact sort of thing. Now my BUG isn't accessible in the same way if I'm chest to chest so I keep a blade in the same position.

[Clusterfrack]

I would think if you shot a Glock with the kind of grip shown with the revolver the case might stovepipe or not clear the chamber. If the slide closed on the shirt it could get tangled and more difficult to draw cleanly for the second shot.

I would think that have a forced malfunction and a predictable non snag would be better than a 50/50 chance of some unpredictable malfunction and draw.

Of course this is all mall ninja stuff, but you can only talk about Mozambiques so many times.

I expected that to happen too, but I recall going through at least a mag in a Glock 19 wrapped in a t-shirt with no malfunctions. The ejection port wasn’t as vulnerable as you would expect. We had to do some contrived things to induce one.

[YVK]

When you present weak hand, your index gets it close and your vision refines to get on target.
The better you get at presenting and index, the less refinement it takes to get on target.

Being an optic guy and trying go full target focus with irons, I don't want "index getting it close". I want "index getting it right on". My observation is that with weak hand and dots, people all the way to GM levels do funny things regularly. Stage 8 on this year's Area 1 comes to mind as the most recent example.

To the point where if you get good enough, you can hit a reasonably sized target without the visual refinement.


Getting the index to minute of man without vision helps in obstructed view, getting punched in the face, blinded by sweat or blood.

Pretty sure I can. I just don't do much of minute of man practice, live or dry, and I still want to always get some visual confirmation, whatever that might be, that my index got me where I wanted it.

[JCN]

Being an optic guy and trying go full target focus with irons, I don't want "index getting it close". I want "index getting it right on". My observation is that with weak hand and dots, people all the way to GM levels do funny things regularly. Stage 8 on this year's Area 1 comes to mind as the most recent example.

Pretty sure I can. I just don't do much of minute of man practice, live or dry, and I still want to always get some visual confirmation, whatever that might be, that my index got me where I wanted it.

I’m an optics guy too and I don’t change what I do with weak or strong hand.

I think you are misunderstanding the resolution I’m talking about.

I cannot draw and hit a head box A-zone at 10 yards on index alone.
I can probably draw and hit a head box at 10 yards on index alone, but it would take me correcting the dot slightly to get the A-zone.

It’s “getting it close” and not perfect because that kind of index is pretty hard to achieve. Maybe it could be done. But I cannot.

I don’t do much minute of man practice either, which is why this was an interesting experiment for me. It’s not something I practiced at all. I just worked on my index.

Your definition of “right on” maybe different than mine.

This was a video I did with point shooting (no BUIS, dot turned off) compared with dot shooting from a draw with pairs.



I was actually faster with the dot because I could confidently confirm the shot quicker.

Index wasn’t too far off the dot though, even though its a gun grip angle I don’t shoot much.

When I do something like the Stoeger 4 ACES drill from close up or the Can You Count classifier, at least some portion of the shots are shot without a visual (for me) because I know I’m in the A-zone anyway and I’m going for speed and rhythm.

One time I was practicing 4 ACES and it took me a little while to notice that I hadn’t turned the dot on....

[DDTSGM]

Other then contact shots, the only other justification I've heard for the thumb on the backplate is to purposefully cause a malfunction if you're losing your gun in an entangled gunfight. This is the same school of thought that advocated for having a magazine disconnect and dropping the magazine if you thought you were going to lose your primary. The theory is the bad guy will then concentrate on the gun he just took from you, get stuck in the OODA loop when it doesn't fire, and you've used that time to access a BUG or make space and...'tactically gain distance' until help arrives. I know of one real world incident where the magazine disconnect thing worked, but I don't know anyone who trains for that any longer and the prevalence of magazine disconnects probably peaked what, 20 years ago?

If training thumb to back plate for that reason, they should also training releasing the magazine also.

We did thumb to back plate along with triggering while slide was against chest (vest actually) to drive home the importance of rocking wrist out in the vest index position we taught.

That's pretty much the only reason I see for doing it.

[JCN]

I know you're kidding, but I also know my ground game is the weakest link in my chain. When we tried to learn lessons from that event, my thought was to try and pull the attacker in closer to prevent him punching you in the head any further, trust the retention holster to do it's job, and access a weapon with the off hand. I can't do it any longer due to a rules change on holster requirements, but before I kept a LCR revolver in my left cargo pocket for this exact sort of thing. Now my BUG isn't accessible in the same way if I'm chest to chest so I keep a blade in the same position.

Totally reasonable in your line of work. Definitely Onion field preparation.

For a little while I tried a system of AIWB strong hand primary and 9 o’clock weak hand IWB secondary. Drawing weak hand wasn’t so bad and I reasoned that if that side was more protected or opportune than a frontal draw it could be brought into play.

If I were in security or LEO I would consider something like that. Maybe.

I think martial arts and blade work would be more important than quick draw skills for a lot of fields.

I know I’m screwed if it comes to a ground game.

[DDTSGM]

Racking a round wasn't the issue there, the gun was chambered and ready to go. The real issue there was rock/hard place. He felt he was going to be killed if he didn't draw but his draw was contested from the get go and just kind of a shit sandwich.

I know you're kidding, but I also know my ground game is the weakest link in my chain. When we tried to learn lessons from that event, my thought was to try and pull the attacker in closer to prevent him punching you in the head any further, trust the retention holster to do it's job, and access a weapon with the off hand. I can't do it any longer due to a rules change on holster requirements, but before I kept a LCR revolver in my left cargo pocket for this exact sort of thing. Now my BUG isn't accessible in the same way if I'm chest to chest so I keep a blade in the same position.

Way, way, way back shortly after James Lindel first taught his method of weapon retention to the KCMO, they reportedly had an small statured female officer get in a scuffle and had a guy go for her gun. She simply secured her gun (probably a revolver) in the holster with a reverse draw grip (my words for it) and front cross grip, and held on. Reportedly, she was physically off the ground at one point, but she held on until the calvary arrived.

At some point, especially if you hear sirens, it might be best to close your eyes tight to avoid further damage, maintain the weapon in the holster with retention techniques, and curl into the guy until help arrives.

Retention holsters, IMO, don't replace retention techniques and training. The Lindel system is an easy one to master.

[vcdgrips]

Thread drift

Re the KCPD story. I may have heard of it from her range academy instructor when he was there as a sworn Leo. (He retired and double dips as a civilian though he wears gold lettering on his KCPD logo stuff and is still called Sgt.)

It would have been a 4 inch k frame in .38 special.

They did and still do spend a fair bit of time on both firearms and retention relative to many departments.

They qual 2 x a year. They have 2 in services a year separate and apart from the qual where the guns/mags get a once over.

They run open quals and open practice most fridays 7-11 and by appointment for shooters across the spectrum. Ammo provided.