Back when I first got into the gun business in the mid-1990s, my gun-handling and shooting skills were, to put it charitably, extremely—well, let’s go with “mediocre.” I was enthusiastic, read everything I could on the topic and knew all manner of facts and statistics, but I just didn’t have a lot of trigger time or formal instruction. I was the sort of shooter who would have been referred to on the internet then as a “Counter-Strike Kiddie.”
My carry habits were similar: Enthusiastic yet casual. In the gun store I managed I carried a Glock G23, mostly. Sometimes I’d carry a different pistol, just because. I was still a 20-something club kid who liked to dress cool, and carry options like PHLster’s Enigma didn’t exist back then. When I wasn’t at work, I toted a SIG Sauer P228 in a dedicated carry purse.
In plinking sessions and the occasional casual competitions in which I’d participate, I didn’t notice any real difference in performance between the Glock or the SIG because, frankly, any mechanical pistol differences were swamped in the sea of my own mediocrity. When you’re having to use all your skill to keep them in the 8-ring of a B27 at 7 yards and your reloads can be measured with a sundial, pistol differences don’t matter much.
Fast-forward about a decade and I’d gotten a lot more serious. I was carrying the same pistol in the same holster—a full-size custom 1911 in a Galco Royal Guard inside-the-waistband holster at the 4-o’clock position—every day, whether at work or at home or wherever.
I’d also sought out some one-on-one instruction and was spending as much time reading up on software—technique and principles—as hardware. Finally, I was doing a lot more shooting, since I was living somewhere I could shoot in the backyard and working at a shop with an indoor range.
I picked up another classic SIG Sauer, a P226 in .40 S&W, to use as a range toy. While it shot fantastically, I suddenly noticed I had a problem with it that I hadn’t had with the P228 back in the ’90s. To wit, the slide frequently wouldn’t lock back on an empty magazine.
You see, in the intervening years I’d fixed my grip on the pistol, choking up on the grip and eliminating the gap between the web of my thumb and the tang on the pistol’s frame, as well as getting my fingers jammed up snug on the bottom of the trigger guard.
More significantly, I’d learned to use a “thumbs-forward” firing grip, so as to position my strong-side thumb on top of the 1911’s thumb safety. It turned out that my grip also put my thumb in the perfect position to interfere with the operation of the slide stop on the classic SIG Sauer semi-autos. (For those not familiar with them, the classic SIGs have the positions of the decocker and slide stop reversed relative to the vast majority of other semi-autos. The decocker is high on the frame, slightly above and behind the magazine release, while the slide stop is far more rearward on the frame, in almost the same place as the thumb safety on a 1911.)
All those repetitions building in good habits for driving my 1911s were actually hindering my ability to run the SIG with anything like “unconscious competence.” I had to expend mental energy trying to keep from influencing the slide stop—energy that could have been better spent on the sights or the overall scenario on the range.
Two pistols chambered in 5.7×28 mm I’ve tested recently resulted in similar problems with unfamiliarity during handling.
I tried to use the KelTec PR57 to run some standardized drills, some of which involved starting with a specified number of rounds in the gun and performing a mandatory reload. With the PR57 having a blind magazine, when the slide locks back on an empty gun, you fetch your stripper clip and jam more rounds in through the ejection port, drop the slide and get back to work.
However, every time the gun ran dry on the timer, I reflexively pulled the pistol back into my workspace and stabbed my thumb at the place where the magazine release would be on a typical semi-auto. After a second or two (which feels like an eternity while the timer’s running) of poking at a nonexistent button would come the “D’oh!” and the initiation of a proper reload. Even when not under time pressure, just standing on the range doing some casual shooting, half the time I’d find myself trying to hit a button that isn’t there.
The other incident happened in a class with conducted by John Hearne of Two Pillars Training. His Cognitive Pistol class is a 600-round, two-day course that is specifically marketed as a class that is not for beginners. After the first couple drills on the line so Hearne can ensure all attendees are capable of safely running a pistol from a concealed holster and can keep up with basic accuracy standards, the rest of the class is given in such a way that every drill increases the cognitive load on the student, requiring solving problems and knowing when and when not to shoot. A certain amount of automaticity in running one’s pistol is assumed, because otherwise you won’t have the mental-processing cycles available to determine whether or not you’re supposed to shoot this particular target.
Due to the vagaries of various other current projects and reviews, the only handgun chambering for which I had 600-plus rounds of good factory ammunition that weren’t allocated to something else was 5.7 mm. “Hey, no biggie! I’ve put a lot of rounds through the FN Five-seveN, so I’ll just bring it. It’ll be interesting to run a 5.7 mm pistol with a Trijicon RMR through a class-type setting.”
What I didn’t stop to consider is that almost none of the rounds I’d fired from the Five-seveN previously were from concealment and under any sort of time pressure. If you’re not familiar with it, the ambidextrous safety on this FN handgun is located forward of and above the trigger guard and best operated with the trigger finger.
While I’m sure that various agencies and units that issue these pistols have developed a set of efficient TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) for how and when the safety should be disengaged and reapplied, I had no idea what exactly those might be. I found myself in a very demanding course having to concoct TTPs on the fly from first principles. If I hadn’t had hundreds of hours of training and fired all kinds of handguns for a living, I’d have been completely at sea. As it was, it was all I could do to keep up.
Gun games and training classes, however, are safe places to figure this stuff out. Firearms can be the stuff of fun and games when used for competition, however, your EDC is an entirely different animal and should be treated as such. For a pistol that’s intended as a lifesaving tool, there’s no reason to switch heaters because you’re in a “different gun mood.” You don’t move the brake pedal around in your car on a whim, so why would you want to randomly cycle through carry handguns to essentially the same effect?
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