Wednesday, April 30, 2008 Rama: The move to draw right By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
MANY shooters put a lot of emphasis on quick-draw in shooting practice.
Beyond doing it right, however, I don’t believe a draw nanoseconds faster than the next guy is really as crucial to wining a
shooting competition as, say, a faster magazine change.
With the exception of certain standard exercises, shooters draw their guns once per stage in a shooting match. However, they change magazines as much as three or four times in a field course.
Still, I can understand why some shooters are fascinated by it. Call it a Jungian archetype fed perhaps by the cowboy duel movies we’ve all watched in our childhood.
Many gun owners don’t understand that if the draw is done right, the draw will be fast.
Therefore, in practice, one should aim to get it right; not draw faster. Fast, in this context, is relative. It means as fast as the body allows.
SMOOTH IS SPEED. A fast draw comes from eliminating wasted motions and refining those movements that are necessary to clear the gun from the holster and indexing it properly for the presentation, sighting and shooting.
An example of a wasted motion is raising the hand towards the hip, jamming it down on the grip in an attempt to gain a full hold, and then raising the gun up to clear the holster.
Getting the gun clear off the holster and then raising it to the level of the eye in the same manner volleyball players hit the ball two-handed with their forearms is another example of a wasted motion.
Yet another example is clearing the gun from the holster and then casting the gun forward in the same manner a Kendo student initiates an overhead sword strike.
In facilitating a good draw, the shooter must always know where the gun is. While this might sound flippant, it’s not meant to be.
Imagine standing in a shooting box, your shiny-new auto-loader mounted in your holster, hands hanging by the side, and your first objective – a spotless metric target--a mere seven meters away.
As taught, you square your body to your juicy target numero uno. Then you gaze at it, knowing that moving your eyes around will cause you to waste precious moments in reacquiring the target once the start signal goes off.
Suddenly, you hear the timer’s shrill bleep. Your eyes squint; your teeth clench and your shooting hand go for the gun grip. Everything is happening so fast that it’s all a blur. You begin the mantra: front sight, front sight, and front sight.
Alas, your hand caught the gun low on the grip frame and automatically you sense something has gone wrong. In focusing all your attention on squaring the body towards the target, you forgot where the gun was in relation to your hip and your shooting hand.
You struggle to compensate and wriggle your hand to get a high-rise grip. But, in so doing, your thumb accidentally hits the safety lever as your mind goes on hyper drive and instructs your trigger finger to make contact with the trigger face.
A resounding blam is subsequently heard and you know you’ve committed either one of two things–scored miss on the first shot or committed a negligent discharge.
BODY MECHANICS. In knowing where the gun is located regardless of where the body may be facing, many expert shooters touch the gun grip, mostly at the magazine well area, with the inside of their forearm just below where the elbow begins to crook.
On start signal, they simply shoot their elbow towards the back. This causes the hand to go up below the grip, with the base of the middle finger making contact with the underside of the trigger guard, exactly where it begins to jut out of the grip’s front strap.
The thumb, meanwhile, goes up beyond the beavertail (hammer spur in the case of revolvers or tang in the case of auto-loaders that don’t have grip safeties) and wrap itself around the other side of the gun grip. The trigger finger remains outside.
Simultaneous with this, the gun hand clears the gun out of the holster and moves it toward the centerline, wherein the support hand already stands indexed to meet with the shooting hand to make the proper presentation. No wasted movement means a quicker draw.
