Basic Sidearm skills

pointing towards the threat, but still at your hip. If necessary, you can start shooting at this point. (Breathing in)

Three – From the hip, bring your sidearm up, still pointing at the threat, to your chest, to meet your weak-hand. (Breathing in)

Four – With a firm two-handed grip, punch your sidearm straight out towards the threat at arm’s length. Your breath should be forcibly pushed out of your lungs to the point where someone standing 10 meters away can hear it.

Grip: Two-handed

One thing that needs to be explained further is the two-handed grip. It is amazing how many Police Firearms instructors are not able to teach this correctly. The reason for a firm two-handed grip is to assist in the recoil control. If there is a gap in your grip, the weapon will twist to that gap, making your shots off-target. So the goal in a correct two-handed grip is to have no gaps in your grip.

Your master-hand should already be firmly and correctly gripping the sidearm. Your weak-hand should now come up to match that. Your weak-hand does not “cup” the pistol to take the weight, a common error, as that does nothing for recoil control.

When you look at your master-hand on your sidearm, you will see a curved gap from the bottom of the heel of your palm, running up past the tip of your fingers, and underneath your thumb.

Your weak-hand heel sits in the gap on the pistol grip between your master-hand heel and fingertips.

Your weak-hand thumb slides into the gap underneath your master-hand thumb. Common mistake – Do NOT cross your master-hand thumb over your weak-hand thumb. This creates a gap in your grip. Your two thumbs should be lying horizontally along the side of the sidearm, with your weak-thumb on bottom and master-thumb on top.

The four fingers of your weak-hand should fold around the three fingers of your master-hand that are holding the pistol grip. The grip should be firm, but not too tight to cause fatigue quickly.

Practice this grip a few times, ensuring that you do it slowly and get used to the correct grip.

Another common teaching flaw, especially in this day and age of range-safety mentality is to have shooters holding their firearm at arm’s length constantly, even when not shooting. This is an error.

In combat, and that is what Police face when they are being placed in lethal encounters, you should not be tiring your arms out by holding your sidearm at arm’s-length all the time.

When moving, assessing threats, scanning your surroundings etc, there is nothing wrong with holding your sidearm in close to your chest. You can still have it pointed it at the threat, without tiring your arms needlessly. I refer to this as the “close grip”. This position is preferred to the “low-ready” where your sidearm is held at arm’s length pointed at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

The reason? The close grip position allows you to get your sidearm on target immediately without tiring your arms out.

Now to the actual shooting.

As you are punching your sidearm towards the threat, you are forcing the breath out of your lungs. A common misconception is that you should hold on to ¼ of your breath, but here’s another secret. Your body’s muscles are at their most relaxed when you have released all your breath.

Common sense dictates that you can’t hold onto empty lungs indefinitely, so you will need to shoot within a reasonable amount of time.

So, you are punching your sidearm, with a two-handed grip, towards your target. As you do so, you focus on the target, and where you want your round to land. You then focus on your front sight to make sure it is on target. Your focus then moves back to the rear sight to make sure it is lined up with your front sight. Back to the target for a final check, then front sight is focused only as you squeeze the trigger as far back as you can, focusing only on squeezing that trigger.

It helps to talk yourself through it, “Target – Front sight – Rear sight – Target – Front sight – Squeeze.”

Another common error when shooting is finger placement on the trigger. The tip of the index finger should be placed on the trigger, as opposed to shoving as much of your finger as possible inside the trigger guard. When you do not use your fingertip, the angle of your finger squeezing is not directly backwards, creating a “twisting” pressure on the sidearm, which results in round placement to the side of your point of aim.

The preferred area to be placed on the trigger is ¾ of the distance from the end of your index finger to the first joint, (being closer to your first joint). 

Once you have fired that shot, you need to remain focused on what you are doing. Keep the trigger depressed, and slowly release the pressure on the trigger whilst keeping your sidearm on target. Assess your threat, and re-engage if necessary.

If your threat is neutralised, you should then scan the area. This serves two purposes. Firstly it breaks the perfectly natural physiological response of “tunnel vision”, a form of perceptual distortion caused by stress in a lethal encounter, and secondly it allows you to assess for any other threats in your vicinity.

Whilst you scan the area, you may bring your sidearm back to the close grip. Another option is to keep your weapon on the threat when you scan to your left and right, and only bring the weapon back to the close grip when scanning behind you. I’ll leave that up to you, but whichever option you decide, practice it every time you conduct your drills.

All the basic drills I have outlined in this article are to be practiced and perfected prior to even considering more advanced drills. With the severe lack of practical firearms training in Australia for our members of Law Enforcement, the only way to increase your chance of survivability in a lethal encounter is to take responsibility for your own skill maintenance.

The best time to start is right now. Stand up, find some privacy and practice these skills now!

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