Some advise to my fellow Handgunners

L

loknload

New member
As some of you may have read in my Springfield posting. I sent my darling daughter off for her first year in college this weekend. :D
While moving her into her dorm room on Saturday a little accident occured. The last thing being moved in was her refridgerator. Now this is one of those small ones and while we were unloading from my truck and placing on the moving cart. She dropped it and my hand was not fast enough to get out of the way. My left hand,my shooting hand,my do everything hand is now covered with blood :eek:.
Bleeding profusely :eek: I might add. After about 15 minutes of trying to get the bleeding stopped from three gaping cuts. We did some fast bandage work and off to Emergency. Now three hours and nineteen stitches later my hand is all bandaged up. :o In this new predicament I cannot cut my food,write my name and everything else a lefthanded person would do with their left hand. :( Now luckly I can shoot righthanded, but I still can't rack the slide using my left hand. I have never practiced for this situation. So my advice to each and everyone,
Practice this situation once and awhile,If you don't already. I guess for a little bit until the stitches are removed I'm SOL :o
I guess I'm gonna just have to buy that Springfield now just to ease the pain a little :D Hey it works for me........


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We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap,ballot,jury, and cartridge.
Anonymous

[This message has been edited by loknload (edited August 28, 2000).]
 
I too had a hand injury quit some time ago involving my shooting hand (Right hand in my case). It ended up involing surgery and pins. It took almost three months before I was able to shoot at all with the right hand and even longer to get it back to a fully functional condition. This made shooting quite difficult. Like all other activities, it was bad enough doing it left handed, but in addition to that it had to be one handed. Racking a slide is quite difficult in such a situation. I found I could do it by placing it between my knees, but I don't consider that very safe. A revolver is much easier to load and operate in such situations. A semi-auto jam would be nearly impossible to correct in a timely manner when using only one hand.

I recommend being prepared for such unpredictable events by practing two handed, left handed, and right handed. I prefer autoloaders, but this proves one of the practical features of revolvers.

[This message has been edited by RHarris (edited August 28, 2000).]
 
What was the point of your reply RHarris other than letting me read the post again?

To loknload: try duct tape next time... i've patched up some nasty cuts 'till emergency could handle it (not necessarily on myself).

Use it as an excuse to practice wrong handed. Every weekend. For a couple of hours/days whatever it takes... :o)
 
Both hands and both eyes should be excercised regularly. A self defence situation is never tailored to your convenience.

Sorry to hear bout your incapacitation Locknload. Hope your paw heals well and quickly.

Sam
 
I guess this is just me, but I find one handed manipulation easier with an autoloader.

For slide racking, I hook the front of the rear sight on my belt, or a lot of furniture corners will work well. This kind of practice is not advisable if you care about how your furniture looks. :D Also, not all rear sights are well suited for this.

I started taking opposite hand training seriously after seeing that made for TV movie where the FBI had that huge shootout in Miami with the bankrobbers in '86. Agent Mireles did a great job of using a pump shotgun one handed.

Also, opposite hand training is useful if you ever use a backup handgun with that hand.

Edmund
 
Wait 'til you have to use the restroom. :o

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Gunslinger

I was promised a Shortycicle and I want a Shortycicle!
 
SlackO:

The point of my reply was to:

1. Stress the importance of ambidextrous practice.

2. Point out the difficulty of one-handed autoloader operation, suggest a possible technique to one handed autoloader operation, and give my opinion of it being less safe than normal operation.

3. Suggest the possible benefit of a revolver when limitied to one-handed operation.

Yes, a couple things reiterated what loknload said. A little redundancy is good because it gets more attention for important subjects. Other things were purely my own suggestions.

I would recommend avoiding the use of duct tape on serious cuts. If it's the only thing available and someone's bleeding to death, fine, but it shouldn't be the first choice. The adhesives in the duct tape could cause more severe inflammation to an area where the inflamatory process has already began. Allerigic responses could also be triggered by the various biological and chemical products in it. In a worst case scenario, septicemia could result. Even tapes specificly intended for medical use will cause irritation on sensitive skin. It's the equivalent of using the wrong cleaning products on a firearm.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by SlackO:
What was the point of your reply RHarris other than letting me read the post again?

To loknload: try duct tape next time... i've patched up some nasty cuts 'till emergency could handle it (not necessarily on myself).

Use it as an excuse to practice wrong handed. Every weekend. For a couple of hours/days whatever it takes... :o)[/quote]
 
Seems to me I remember learning how to rack the slide one handed with a military style holster. Did anyone else learn this technique? Anyone remember how it's done? Just curious.


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***Torpedo***
It's a good life if you can survive it!
 
This is one of the reasons that Ayoob recommends having weak side gear (holsters and mag holders) and practicing weak side shooting (both one handed and two handed). He says this not because he thinks it would be neato-cool to do. Indeed, he was once in the same situation you are now, but worse. He broke his right hand just days before he was going to take a one week shooting class (I think with Clint Smith). He went through the whole week shooting left-handed.

Hope you're better soon. In the meantime, carefully practice left-handed.

Jared
 
Thanks guys for all your insight. Since I originaly posted this late it was quick and off to bed. I had to do my civic duty and serve jury duty today. Just something extra I didn't need on my plate. By the way it was an illegal firearms case and I couldn't say anything because I was an alternate juror. That's a whole other post.
As far as my hand is concerned,I will be using revolvers for awhile. Went to see my family doctor after jury duty and he does not like the looks of the one cut. Now I will have to see a plastic surgeon.
I just posted this because you never know when your main hand or arm is going to be put out of commission. Things don't work the way they should when you have to do everything off handed.
And yes Gunslinger I have had that expierience and it was a real joy, But we are doing the best we can.

Happy Shooting :)

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We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap,ballot,jury, and cartridge.
Anonymous
 
Greetings,

Take care of that hand. Sorry to hear about your accidental refrigerator discharge. One reason why Everyone Should Own One Revolver.

Regards,

Ledbetter
 
I dont recall who makes it but their is a holster which allows cocking a semi during the draw stroke.......perhaps someone on the tfl will recall....there is a video on the site showing how it works.....the pistol is pushed down and then drawn.....it might be worth looking at.....fubsy.
 
Hi, Locknload,

Take care of yourself. Just goes to show we can't plan for everything. Now if you had just gotten the drop on that refrigerator...

The technique of racking the slide in the holster is to put the recoil spring plug on the rear edge of the holster or on the block and push down. Small children have racked pistols by pressing the front of the slide against a table and pushing with their whole body. It won't work with guns having a full length spring guide.

I once shot with a war vet whose left arm had been blown off just above the elbow. He was quite adept at using an M1911A1. If I remember, he racked the slide by gripping the slide between his stump and his side or pressing on the edge of the bench as described above. He reloaded by popping the empty mag, shoving the gun under his stump, getting out a full mag and shoving it in the gun with his right hand, then gripping the gun with his right and keeping on shooting.

This was not done on a formal range, and I guess would not have been allowed (the gun pointed backwards), but he was good at it and surprisingly fast. Just goes to show that handicaps can be overcome.

Jim
 
Used to occasionally train officers in this sort of thing, starting with drawing with off hand, shooting with off hand, reloading with off hand only. I would first present it as a problem to see what creative ideas might come up, then present my approaches to it. The benefits were twofold. One, the officer would now know at least one way to get the job done; just as important, he would be inclined to think that he could 'improvise, adapt, overcome' in other areas as well if he had to.

Another way to rack the slide with one hand only is to jam the rear sight into the belt buckle or substantial leather gear and push. Obviously fixed sights are better for this but you do what you have to do.

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A little side story here for Slacko and the Duct Tape bandage. When I was working as a Heating/Air Conditioning installer I had cut my hand on the end of a newly threaded piece of pipe. I left it bleed a bit to flush out the cutting oil and any dirt. I ran it under cold water to flush and rinse. Didn't have a first aid kit and it was really bleeding good so we smeared in some non-toxic pipe dope and wrapped it with a rag. Needless to say when the ER doc saw this he was pissed,never seen anyone use this method and was not to happy about the pipe dope, But hey it worked. I paid the ultimate though when they used a bristled brush to scrub this baby out,Ouchhhhhhhhh What no anestetic?
Being involved in the Fire Service and also being First Aid and EMT trained I try to do it by the book now, No creative cure alls unless its a last resort ;)

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We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap,ballot,jury, and cartridge.
Anonymous
 
loknload.....U mean u have never watched old war movies where they pull grenade pins with their TEETH?

Are u a man or not? :D

whoops......this is satire......

[This message has been edited by Lavan (edited August 30, 2000).]
 
Wait a minute Lavan and I'll go down to the basement and get a grenade and try it :D Now the last time I did this I lost the damn pin because I spit it out like they do in the movies and since I was carrying my Thompson I only had one hand to feel around for it :D So I stuck a match stick in its place. Now I have to worry about those damn termites ;)

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We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap,ballot,jury, and cartridge.
Anonymous
 
ONE more reason we need to outlaw the public sales / private "transfer of ownership" of refridgerators. Was it a small concealable fridge, or a large high-capacity fridge.
:rolleyes:
At least it wasn't an evil, black assault-fridge... can you IMAGINE the devestation? ;)
Ben
 
No it was one of those sneaky small concealable jobs. I think I'm going to start a chapter on Refrigerator Control Inc. Get the Maytag guy to be the spokesperson. We can't have these refrigerators going around assaulting people,You know we do this for the children. Had it not been my hand,It would have attacked my daughters :rolleyes:

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We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap,ballot,jury, and cartridge.
Anonymous
 
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