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bdickens wrote:I also forgot to mention that 100% of the world's master gunfighters, everyone from Hickock and Doc Holliday through Bill Jordan and on to Jim Cirillo used the inferior index-finger-on-the-trigger technique, too.

I hate to think how much better McGivern would have been with this radical technique, not to mention Miculek, imagine sub half second accurate rapid fire.

gregthehand wrote:I'm still confused. If you are properly indexing should you be able to point with your index finger than then squeeze the trigger?

I think the point is that if you use your index finger to pull the trigger, the gun will point where your index finger does, ninety degrees off of your target.

I do have to wonder what left handers are supposed to do, they will be applying the slide stop with every shot on just about every semi-auto made.

5shot wrote:Here are snippets of text from a few manuals which caution against using the index finger for aiming and the middle finger for pulling the trigger, plus URL's. To me that attests to P&S being a known shooting method and in use.

. . .

Platoon Training by Lt. Col. William H. Waldron, United States Army - Page 612, 1921, carries the same cautionary language as the 1912 manual.

This is the URL: http://books.google.com/books?lr=&ie=IS ... n+training" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

..........

An ROTC publication of 1921 also carries the cautionary language. It states in part that..."the trigger must be squeezed with the index finger. If the second finger is used on the trigger the index finger will be extended along the side of the receiver where it is apt to press again[st] the projecting end of the slide stop pin, thus causing a jam when the slide recoils....."

This is the URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=holCAA ... ISO-8859-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wouldn't you think that by 1921 they would have figured out how to get it right?

5shot wrote:There even is a video on the web of it being used by Jack Ruby when shooting Oswald. Both parties were moving, the target area was small, Jack was not in contact, and he had his right index finger (some say it was missing, but that was his left hand index finger, and his finger print chart confirms that).

As mentioned in a previous post, even if Ruby did it, Ruby is hardly what anyone would consider to be an expert on shooting, his point contact shot only just nicked Oswald's mesentery artery and a half inch either way Oswald would have survived. Cite McGivern espousing it and you might have a case, but Ruby was a relative non-entity who shot his way to fame on live tv.

And there is also the simple fact that the few grainy frames of Ruby doing his deed don't conclusively show Ruby firing with his middle finger, in one of the frames it even appears that the finger is outside the front of the trigger guard, a common practice I have found among neophyte shooters that I have taught and coached - when they couldn't get all of their fingers gripping the butt, instead of letting the little finger dangle below, they moved their grip up and pointed out their middle finger, somewhat like Ruby appears to be doing in the picture.

5shot wrote:The other side of this coin, is that there is no proof that traditional sight shooting works in CQ SD situations. There should be hunderds if not thousands of pics and videos since its been taught for 100+ years, but they are like pics and videos of flying saucers. Some good minded folks attest that they indeed exist and that they have seen them. Science says it will fail due our fight or flight response that kicks in in CQ SD situations, and police combat studies confirm that. That it may be used in some cases, is most probably true, but that will not be the case for the run of the mill mortal.

And what has traditional sighting got to do with the "finger alongside" position you say will be a fatal error if using a 1911?

I have a lot of pics and videos of fellow shooters doing just fine at contact distance using their index fingers to pull the trigger.

5shot wrote:Here is something of interest that deals with CQ SD situations.


. . . Treatise about point shooting . . .


Waiting until you are in a real CQ life threat situation to learn it, could be terminal.

While I agree that learning point shooting is essential, I still see no reason to believe that putting the index finger in danger has anything to do with improved accuracy or effective point shooting.

5shot wrote:And here is the stuff on the index finger method which works with and can enhance instinctive point shooting as mentioned in the tests. I could give you the edge in a terminal confrontation. IMHO, in a lead exchange, it would be better to give than receive.


As to using the index finger along the side of the gun for aiming each and every shot, and using the middle finger to pull the trigger, which I call AIMED Point Shooting or P&S, and which is effective at close quarters:

1. The US Military manual on the 1911 that came out in 1912, cautioned against using it:

..."(3) The trigger should be pulled with the forefinger. If the trigger is pulled with the second finger, the forefinger extending along the side of the receiver is apt to press against the projecting pin of the slide stop and cause a jam when the slide recoils."

Now, by cautioning against its use, the manual "officially" recognized that P&S did exist and that it was in use.

In formal debating this would be known as a logical fallacy: Saying that the military cautioned against it, therefore they must have sanctioned its use previously is not supported factually and is a defective conclusion. Point and shoot did exist, and maybe some relatively untrained recruits used an index finger alongside, therefore the military cautioned against it, would be an equally valid argument. Since it was mentioned, probably someone tried it, but that is by no means proof that it was in common use or that a paradigm change in shooting was needed.

5shot wrote:2. The following is the URL to an article that talks about the use of P&S by the Chinese military in the early 1900's when shooting the C 96:
http://www.iar-arms.com/mausereview1.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Already covered, not proof, not even really a c-96.

5shot wrote:3. P&S was used in duels as far back as 1835. Here is a link to info on that: http://www.pointshooting.com/1835.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The web site seems to be yours, and it hardly is surprising that it would contain information supporting your thesis.

5shot wrote:4. And P&S was used in the late 1800's in gunfights: Here is a link to info on that: http://www.pointshooting.com/revolver.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Same as above.

5shot wrote:5. I was told by a WWII Sgt to use P&S when shooting my grease gun from the hip.

I am assuming you are referring to the M3 or M3A1, and I just looked it up in my FM/TM and couldn't find any recommendation for shooting it this way, so your "Sgt" was probably teaching off the page, which does nothing to enhance your argument beyond adding to the word count. The M3 was equipped with rudimentary sights at best, it was meant for close combat, and, due to its simplistic design, had an awkwardly placed trigger, which may indeed have been easier to grip and fire with the middle finger, especially for people with large hands, but the Army didn't teach it that way. When I was teaching shooting in the Navy, I taught the "Weaver Stance" (and BTW, Weaver used his index finger on the trigger too) but it was not in any of my manuals, the Navy still taught "stand and deliver" one hand behind the back shooting with the handguns, but that did not make me right. I also taught M1A1 and M3A1 Submachineguns using the index finger on the trigger and never had a problem.

5shot wrote:6. Walter J. Dorfner, the long time lead firearms instructor for the VSP, developed and experimented on its use. Walter felt it was going to be the next step in the evolution of survival shooting. He wrote a paper on it, and I made a digest of it which we both had published. The method was not part of the official curriculum at the academy, but Walter introduced it to recruits. Walter has since retired, and is now deceased.

Here is a link to the digest: http://www.pointshooting.com/pands.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

P&S is natural, instinctive, fast, accurate, requires little cognitive thinking, and it is not dependant on fine motor skills and being able to focus on the sights as is the case with Sight Shooting. P&S also requires no special body index, or stiff arm, or Isso grip, or some practiced "Zen" like ability to make hits. All you need to do is grab your gun and point-n-pull, point-n-pull.

P&S also provides the firer with an automatic and correct sight picture.

And using your words to prove your words does nothing to prove them. What is "VSP", Vermont State Police?

5shot wrote:Now, it is quite understandable that some to many do not know about P&S. That is probably because of the US Army cautioned against its use with the 1911.

The 1911 was the standard issue sidearm of the US Military from 1911 to 1985, so and as such, the P&S method was not used for 70+ years by the military and Police. And the 1911 is still carried by some forces and Police.

The reason for cautioning against the use of P&S, is that if the slide stop pin is depressed when the 1911 is fired, the 1911 can jam.

And now you attempt to use your original thesis to prove itself. Circular reasoning also does not work.

.................

5shot wrote:As to the military manuals that reference P&S, there is a listing of them and links to them an this article on my site. http://www.pointshooting.com/1911.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; The publications have recently been digitalized by Google as part of its effort to make old publications available to the widest audience.

Sorry for the book.

Sorry, I thought it was your site, but didn't actually have it confirmed until here.

Google will "digitalize" anything, right or wrong, like my local public library having a copy of Bellesiles' book doesn't make it right.

Reference military manuals that actually teach the technique you espouse, and you will be doing a lot better. It's no wonder your articles are not well received.

5shot you're starting to recycle stuff.

More tomorrow, it's too late for this right now.

For now, just point out one place where acknowledged marksmen like McGivern, Miculik, or others espouse this manner of point and shoot, as opposed to a highly skilled expert like Jack Ruby.

5shot wrote:Jim,

In the article on the C96, we find this about shooting it gangsta style:

"There were also two side benefits from shooting the pistol in this manner. As the Mauser ejects straight up, fired cases can fall back into the weapon and jam it, or fall on the operator's head and distract him." I could have quoted it earlier but did not to save speca.

Here again is the link to the article: http://www.iar-arms.com/mausereview1.htm

I have seen one in a gun shop and looked at pics. I don't think they eject to the side.

Also, the Military manual on how to use the 1911, which came out in 1912, specifically cautioned against using the index finger along the side of the gun, and the middle finger to pull the trigger, as the 1911 can jam when fired if that is done.

The quote was also repeated in other military manuals published around that time. I don't have info on later years as I have only seen the manuals that Google has digitalized as part of its "books" program.

.."(3) The trigger should be pulled with the forefinger. If the trigger is pulled with the second finger, the forefinger extending along the side of the receiver is apt to press against the projecting pin of the slide stop and cause a jam when the slide recoils."

Having fired a C-96 in 7.63 many times, I can assure you they do not eject straight up, but at an angle to the forward right, and the same with the 9mm. It's entirely possible that the Chinese variant, in .45ACP, which was not a Mauser product, may indeed have ejected straight up, remember that it was produced by copying and adapting a 7.63, and while somewhat ingenious the "field re-engineering" of a well designed gun may have resulted in some flaws.

If a fired round makes it back into the action of any semi-auto and jams it, there is something seriously wrong. Smokestack jams from poor powder, yes, smokestacks from limp wrists, absolutely in every class I ever taught, and extractor and ejector failures, well maybe. But not a round falling back into the action.

I shot an entire match once with a 1911 that had a broken ejector, and the fired shells did eject straight back under that circumstance, somewhat distracting, but not to where I was about to lose the match because of the distraction. I also managed to break the ejector on my XD-9 (well it's my wife's now, but that's another story) and had a similar experience, rounds ejected up and back instead of right and forward.

My guess is that the Chinese did a poor job of making the .45ACP C-96 copy and neglected to make the rounds eject in a controlled manner, so they taught their troops to shoot funny to compensate for it.

And another point to consider. Once those troops got used to shooting that way, what were they going to do when they needed aimed fire, like beyond 7 yards or so, flip the gun up into an unfamiliar position and use sights that they have not learned to use?

The last time I qualified for my CHL, I didn't bother to sight at the three yard target, and I still got a nice tight group centering on the ten ring, just point shooting, and using my index finger on the trigger, at 7 yards I "played" with it a little, having plenty of time to shoot I fired the first shot point, looked for it, and fired the second shot aimed, it was fun. At 15 yards, every shot was aimed from a point.

The references in the field manuals may have been because self appointed experts were espousing the index finger method, but there was no policy in the Army to teach that method with revolvers. Refer back to what I said about powder burns.

5shot wrote:Looks like I stepped on the toes of some 1911'ers. Sorry.

I just provided the info about a known and effective method of close quarters shooting that our armed forces members were cautioned against using with the 1911 when the gun was adopted, due to the design of the 1911's slide stop.

The result was to take away a CQ shooting option from our military forces to use in combat. You may not consider that a flaw. I do.

I understand the the Chinese used that method when shooting the C96: Here is the URL to an article about that and a quote from the article.

http://www.iar-arms.com/mausereview1.htm

"Special commando units were armed entirely with the C-96, and later the selective fire variants, as well as a large beheading sword carried in a leather scabbard on their back. Recognizing the Mauser's weak and strong points, the Chinese developed the following technique for using the C-96 and later the 712. They would hold it sideways (what we would today refer to as "Gangbanger style"), with the index finger lying on the magazine well pointing at the target, and pull the trigger with the middle finger. In doing so they found that they could throw the weapon up very quickly and be instinctively pointing it at the target."

Nice to be able to do that when you can't see the sights or their is no time to use them.

In the US Army's combat pistol manual of 2003 we find:

"Everyone has the ability to point at an object.

"When a soldier points, he instinctively points at the feature on the object on which his eyes are focused. An impulse from the brain causes the arm and hand to stop when the finger reaches the proper position.

"When the eyes are shifted to a new object or feature, the finger, hand, and arm also shift to this point.

"It is this inherent trait that can be used by a soldier to rapidly and accurately engage targets."

. . . .

But then, the US Army doesn't instruct the soldier to use this inherent trait to rapidly and accurately engage targets??? Doing that wouldn't negate the use of the sights if you could see them and there was time to use them to make the shot more precise.

Makes me for one, wonder some, about just what's going on?
.....................

Thanks for your comments.

I don't feel as though you have stepped on my toes as much as you have overstepped your bounds by embellishing questionable fact to support your theorum, and presenting it as proven.

Have you ever fired a C-96? I have, and I can assure you it's one of the most difficult handguns to grip ever made. If you grip where it's comfortable to use a natural shooting grip it tends to point your index finger down at an acute angle, so it's not much of a surprise that the Chinese, with their generally smaller stature and hands would "develop" a technique that would make it more comfortable for some to grip the gun. Of course laying it on its side "gangbanger style" is just asking for jams as the gun will not eject spent cases properly that way, but after all, the Chinese didn't care much about second shots, they also taught their troops to go into combat unarmed and to pick up the gun of the fallen comerade in front of them fr the next shot.

Coming from a long line of military, and with FMs and TMs and all sorts of documentation from the era you metion, I can't find any mention of the caution you are citing, nor for that matter, can I find any record of our soldiers being trained to use the middle finger with the revolvers they were issued up until then. I do have records of my great grandfather Col John Sylvanus Loud, then an instructor at West Point, being quite an able marksman, and my father, taught to shoot by him, taught me in the same manner, and it never involved laying the index finger anywhere except on the trigger.

It was my great grandfather's C-96 that I fired many times as a child, engraved and presented to him by his troop ad he retired, and like I said, that was a cumbersome beast at best.

Yes, pointing is ingrained in us from earliest infancy, and we do index from target to target quite naturally, but that has little or nothing to do with being able to point shoot, if you raise two fingers and point them, do they not also point in the same direction? Of course they do, and my grandson has pointed with his middle finger since infancy, which raised some eyebrows when he was a kid, but natural point shooting has been taught for decades and with practice can be accomplished with any soldier except the most uncoordinated (and I taught a couple of them whan I was training.)

All the training I ever gave, except with the machine gun (not really a hand held weapon) involved developing the natural tendency for point shooting and with few exceptions my students did well with many of them qualifying expert despite not having grown up around guns.

I will admit that I never though of trying to use an index finger point on an M1919A4, but with the trigger mounted way down there, maybe pulling it with a pinky would work best.

And lastly there's this statement "When a soldier points, he instinctively points at the feature on the object on which his eyes are focused. An impulse from the brain causes the arm and hand to stop when the finger reaches the proper position."

Actually the arm and hand never really stop, and although the first stop will be within a couple of degrees of on target, the eye/brain/hand interface continually corrects, and corrects, and corrects, it's a feedback loop infinitely superior to any so far designed by man, but it's not absolutely on target any time every time.

Here's a little experiment to try, attach a boresighting laser to your finger and collimate it to point where your finger is pointing at some decent range, and then try pointing at things. Watch that little red or green dot dance as you try to get, and keep, your finger on target. I have done that in my classes and do it myself just to entertain the dogs, but try as I may, that dot rarely rests exactly on whatever I'm pointing at the first try, and it never stays still. Pick one target and try it over and over and see what you get.

John M. Browning designed his gun to be fired with the index finger, if the current Army wisdom of the era said to fire it with the middle finger, he would have designed it that way, after all, he was trying to sell the gun to the Army and he catered to them through several design modifications, why would he have balked at that?

When I was a kid, one of the big deals, besides "Fanner 50s" and "Greenie Stick Um Caps" was when one of the self appointed firearms experts among my peers declared that using your index finger along side the gun and the middle finger to pull the trigger was the absolutely best way to shoot. And it came back up again in the Navy when I was trying to teach sailors to shoot and there was always someone in the group that wanted to show what an expert he was and challenge the teacher, quite often by declaring that the only proper grip was the index finger alongside.

But here's a thought, just try it.

Handling a 1911, or just about any other semi-auto, in that manner is clumsy at best, at least with the several that own, 1911 or not, and downright uncomfortable and maybe even dangerous at worst.

And then there's the lesson learned with a revolver or two, where the index finger alongside grip presents a couple of other interesting problems. First, it doesn't matter which direction the cylinder indexes in, if you have big fingers they are goikng to impinge on the rotation, sometimes with a pretty painful pinch. Not to mention that if your hands are large enough and fingers long enough, and mine are, you can get some pretty nasty burns from the flash at the cylinder to barrel gap. Been there, done that.

I just don't see the slide stop pin as being a "fatal flaw", out of numerous 1911s I have shot, and many that I have tried that grip with, I have only found a couple where the pin was loose enough for me to knock it out of position significantly with my index finger during shooting, and I have tried it.

I still own the one, and carry it frequently, and haven't bothered to tighten up that slide stop.

Well, I find a lot of flaws in the articles, but it's just one person's opinion, not really fact.