"The Real Combat Stance"

[FUNDAMENTALS]

The information for this post came from a article by Robert Stasch, A Detective from the Chicago Police Department. He has survived 6 actual
gunfights. The article can be found on the following website: www.survival
primer.com/TF_Pistol_Combat_Stance.txt. The article is only three pages
long, but very well worth the time to read.
He questioned his tactic of shooting one handed when attacked by a perp
with a knife in deadly force encounter. He had been a firearms instructor,
and had trained always in the "Weaver Stance". He always taught that in stress situations you responded as you were trained, yet in 6 deadly force
encounters, he only shot two handed once. Why?
Since his article was gleamed from incidents in the Chicago Police Department,
his research indicated that one handed shooting was most natural way to
shoot. I will leave the rest of article for you to digest. (no specific distances
were stated, but they had to be close).
One handed shooting is something I believe should be taught and practiced,
wether as a private citizen for every day carry or as an Police/Security
Officer. It may in an actual situation be the only stance you have time
to get into for close encounters of where deadly force may have to be used.

[twoguns]

I have a hard time reading an article that has been published with so many spelling/grammar errors.....but the premise of the article is sound.

I would also encourage serious shooters interested in self defense to practice shooting one handed with the non-dominant hand. Another very important aspect of defensive training is gun manipulations with the non- dominant hand and single hand only ie; draw the gun from the holster with the opposite hand, one hand racking exercises, clearing malfunctions with only one hand.

If you are not familiar with these techniques, I implore you to get some quality training under your belt and then practice, practice, practice. These are vital skills that could save your life in the event you have taken a hit or have suffered any type of injury to your dominant hand.

[Steve in PA]

If you train to use both hands, you will use both hands.

A LEO firearms instructor periodical just covered this topic in an article. Here are a few snippents;


One of those shootings is extremely instructional. It occurred inside a convenience store, with the surveillance cameras rolling. The entire fight was captured in good quality color video, from two angles, so there is no guess work involved in seeing what happened and how it happened. In brief, an armed robber entered the store, walked toward the clerk, and as he got near, drew a large handgun from underneath the waistband of a hoodie. The clerk quickly sidestepped to the left, presented a 9mm handgun, in both hands, to eye level, and fired one shot, which struck the suspect in the upper chest. The suspect bent over and hobbled out of the store to a waiting getaway car, again seen on the outside cameras. The thug never got off a shot.

The most interesting thing about this episode to me is the fact that the student involved was a 53 year old Thai immigrant female, who had never touched a gun prior to receiving training here, less than two months prior to this shooting. There is no gun culture in Thailand, and this lady was a blank slate when we trained her. This was a classic, close range, reactive, surprise gunfight, and she did as trained.

I suspect that the “stick it out in one hand” form of shooting is not instinctive, but rather cultural in origin. The Thai lady had not spent her formative years watching people shoot that way on TV, so we had no ingrained mental image to overcome. The other nine students in this ten shooting sample were, however, all American males, yet they also went to two hands and eye level, with the exception of two involved in contact distance shootings.

We teach two default responses: two handed eye level sighted fire if the target is beyond arm’s reach, and retention position firing if it is not. One handed shooting is taught strictly as the choice when one hand is disabled or otherwise unavailable. If we have both hands, we put them on the gun. This simplified training works.

The author also did a little test;

In my case, I fired five three-shot strings, drawing and firing with the dominant hand only, plus five three-shot strings drawing and firing with both hands. Again, the requirement was to keep all hits inside the IALEFI®-Q chest circle.

The results were as follows:
One Handed Two Handed
2.39 secs 1.59 secs
1.97 secs 1.70 secs
1.86 secs 1.58 secs
1.82 secs 1.58 secs
1.85 secs 1.60 secs
9.89 secs total 8.05 secs total

Thus, with two hands, I was 19% faster than with one hand. As I suspected, with a highly experienced shooter, the difference was less, but still significant.
Two handed fire allows better recoil management, faster follow up shots, and fewer blown shots (misses). Proper training includes explanation of the situation, presentation of proper technique, dry practice of proper technique, and repetitive practice in live fire.

[synergy]

I have a hard time reading an article that has been published with so many spelling/grammar errors.....but the premise of the article is sound.

I would also encourage serious shooters interested in self defense to practice shooting one handed with the non-dominant hand. Another very important aspect of defensive training is gun manipulations with the non- dominant hand and single hand only ie; draw the gun from the holster with the opposite hand, one hand racking exercises, clearing malfunctions with only one hand.

If you are not familiar with these techniques, I implore you to get some quality training under your belt and then practice, practice, practice. These are vital skills that could save your life in the event you have taken a hit or have suffered any type of injury to your dominant hand.

In all honestly, the likelihood of anyone being in a protracted gunfight, and having the time, opportunity, and necessity to clear a malfunction with their non-dominant hand only is about as likely as being hit by lightning, twice.

Learning how to draw quickly with one hand, and how to integrate firearms usage with combatives and edged weapons is a far more likely skill set to need.

[Valorius]

If you train to use both hands, you will use both hands.

Maybe.

As the OP's article clearly demonstrated, one well trained cop who was trained to shoot with 2 hands did so only 1 time in 6 actual shootings.

That's not a mantra, it's a fact.

[mythaeus]

Maybe.

As the OP's article clearly demonstrated, one well trained cop who was trained to shoot with 2 hands did so only 1 time in 6 actual shootings.

That's not a mantra, it's a fact.

While that is a fact, it's one anecdotal fact. It was evident that ONE cop shot 1-handed 5 out of 6 gunfights. I'd be interested in seeing an across the board study of "number of hands" used by many different cops through many different gunfights. If the evident were so overwhelming, I'd think training in this regard has changed a long time ago.

Al

[FUNDAMENTALS]

I would have liked to have seen more of the statistical data gained from
the interviews/debriefings. I am taking what he states, like in Paragraph
#3: "I reviewed 100 Police Officers involved in shootings in the Chicago
metropolitan area and found that three out of every four cops fired one
handed"(that is 75/100). I am looking at the article in total. The possibility,
depending on the circumstances may require "One Handed Shootings"
techniques.

[Valorius]

While that is a fact, it's one anecdotal fact. It was evident that ONE cop shot 1-handed 5 out of 6 gunfights. I'd be interested in seeing an across the board study of "number of hands" used by many different cops through many different gunfights. If the evident were so overwhelming, I'd think training in this regard has changed a long time ago.

Al

Actually, if you read the article, he states that most cops he interviewed that had been in a lethal force encounter also only used one hand.

So it's not one cop at all.

[mythaeus]

Actually, if you read the article, he states that most cops he interviewed that had been in a lethal force encounter also only used one hand.

So it's not one cop at all.

I just saw the paragraph Fundamentals posted.

The article also cited no sources and the author is a police officer, not a statistician or scientist and I don't know anything about him. The original publication is not known either. There's a different between an internet publication and a reputable research journal. I don't see the date on that article or charts/graphs of the 100 officers, their ages, their experience, their trainings, and the locations where they shot from (i.e behind barriers or in the open). All of those factors should be accounted for. Maybe they were accounted for, maybe they weren't, that wasn't clear to me. Peer reviews of the article also lend some merits to the gathered information and conclusions.

I'm not saying that he made these things up nor am I trying discredit his credentials/profession. Neither am I trying to discount the possibility that 1-handed shooting is significant (as I do practice 1-handed). I'm just trying to validate the details in the numbers and I still think the variations in situations and other factors can be significant and may not necessarily validate the conclusion.

Al

[synergy]

People do what they are trained and confident in doing. If they are not confident 2 handed shooters they won't use two hands. What were their qualification scores pre-gunfight? How many years had it been since they went through their academy or attended formal pistol instruction?

Were they gun owners outside of work? How often did they shoot? What kind of shooting did they do? Did they practice holster work? Shooting on the move? Multiple target engagements? Low light training?

Without the answer to the above questions (and many more) looking at why someone did or didn't do something won't have much meaning.