matter in a close-range gunfight!”
Ya think? Then, consider this.
You and I start the fight at the distance of only one yard, 36 inches torso to torso. You have drawn to shoot from the hip so I can’t reach your gun. Let’s assume further that your pointing skills are perfect today and your gun is dead center on my torso. You now jerk your trigger, moving the gun muzzle a mere inch to your strong-hand side. Only one yard away, your shot will miss my main body mass. It might go through the “love handle” and give me a .45 caliber suction lipectomy, or it might even hit my arm if it’s hanging to the side, but it won’t do anything to effectively stop me from harming you.
That’s why, in real world combat shooting and not just match shooting, trigger control is so important. The trigger is the heart of the beast! If you don’t control the trigger, you don’t control even what should have been the most perfectly aligned shot!
S&W’s wide, serrated “target trigger” is the best type for single-action target shooting, but the worst choice for double-action combat shooting.
How can we hope to control the trigger under extreme stress? By being trained and conditioned to do it beforehand. Is it easy? No, and that’s why we’ve devoted a whole chapter to the concept.
Understanding The Mission
Too much combat handgun training has been borrowed from the world of target shooting. While some of the concepts survive the translation from range to street, some don’t. One that doesn’t is the targeteer’s concept of trigger activation.
We are told that we should contact the trigger with the tip or the pad of the trigger finger. When asked why, we are told that this is the most sensitive portion of the finger and therefore the part most suited to this dextrous task. That makes sense as far as it goes, but let’s analyze the target shooter’s task versus the defensive shooter’s.
In bull’s-eye pistol matches, the core event is shot with the .22 caliber. You have, let’s say, a High Standard .22 match pistol. It weighs 48 ounces, more if you have it scoped, and it has a crisp 2-pound trigger pull that needs to move only a hair’s breadth. The gun is loaded with standard velocity (read: low velocity) .22 Long Rifle, which kicks with about as much force as a mouse burp. In this course of shooting events, “rapid fire” is defined as five shots in 10 seconds. All well and good.
But let’s put ourselves somewhere else, perhaps a darkened parking lot. Our 260-pound assailant, Mongo, is coming at us with a tire iron. We are armed with a baby Glock, the G33 model that weighs only about 19 ounces. Its New York trigger gives us a pull weight of almost eight pounds over 3/8 of an inch. The power of its .357 SIG cartridge is that of some .357 Magnum revolver rounds, generating significant recoil. For us, “rapid-fire” has just become five rounds in one second, before Mongo reaches us with the tire iron.
Let’s see, we have a few things to think about: a 3-pound gun with a 2-pound trigger, versus a 1-1/4-pound gun with an 8-pound trigger. We have 1/10 of an inch of movement versus 3/8 of an inch. We have almost no recoil versus sharply noticeable and palpable recoil. We have five shots in 10 seconds versus five shots in one second. Have the mission parameters changed for the trigger finger?
Obviously, the answer is yes. We’re going to need a stronger finger, a finger with more leverage, to achieve the necessary results.
Placement And Fit
You’ll find that you have much more control of a longer, heavier combat trigger pull if you contact the trigger with the palmar surface of the distal joint of the index finger. It is at this point that the digit has the most leverage to draw the trigger rearward with the most speed and the least effort.
At LFI, we developed a simple test to allow you to see and feel this for yourself. Open this book and set it down where you can read it with your hands free. Take your non-dominant hand, turn its palm away from you, and extend the index finger. Stiffen it up: this finger is going to be a trigger with a heavy pull.
Now, with the index finger of your shooting hand, try to pull that “trigger” back, using the tip of your trigger finger. You’ll have to use great effort – enough effort to probably distract you from focusing on much else – and when the finger does start to give, it will move in fits and starts.
S&W’s “Ranger” trigger has smooth surface so the finger can glide across it during fast double-action work without pulling the muzzle off target.
Now try it again, making contact with the pad of your trigger finger. The pad is defined as the center of the digit, where the whorl of the fingerprint would be. You won’t feel much difference.
Now, for the third and final portion of the test. With your “finger/trigger” still rigid, place your trigger finger at the same spot. Make contact with the crease where the distal phalange of the finger meets the median phalange, as shown in accompanying photos. Now, just roll the stiffened finger back against its force. Feel a huge difference? This is why the old-time double-action revolver shooters called this portion of the trigger finger the “power crease.” It is here that we gain maximum leverage.
Of course, for this to work the gun must fit your hand. In the early 1990s, when gearing up to produce their Sigma pistol, Smith & Wesson paid some six figures for a “human engineering” study of the hands of shooters. It turned out my own hand fit exactly their profile of “average adult male hand.” Not surprisingly, I found the Sigma to fit my hand perfectly.
In the old days, shooters tried to “stage” double-action revolvers, especially Colts like this snub Python. Today’s more knowledgeable shooters use a straight-through trigger pull. Note the distal joint contact on the trigger.
Gaston Glock did much the same. However, he went on the assumption that the shooter of an automatic pistol would be using the pad of the finger. When I grasp the Glock properly in every other respect, my finger comes to the trigger at the pad. To make it land naturally at the distal joint, I need the grip-shape slimmed and re-shaped, as done by Robar (21438 N. 7th Ave, Suite E, Phoenix, AZ 85027) or Dane Burns (700 NW Gilman Blvd, Suite 116, Issaquah, WA 98027). On a K-frame S&W revolver whose rear grip strap has not been covered with grip material, my trigger finger falls into the perfect position. Ditto the double-action-only S&W autos, and ditto also the Browning Hi-Power with standard trigger and the 1911 with a short to medium trigger.
This is the hand of a petite female on a gun that’s too big for her, a Model 625 from S&W Performance Center. Note that she has been forced to use the “h-grip,” in which the hand and forearm are in the shape of lower case letter h. One can get better trigger reach with this method, but at the expense of weakened recoil control.
Proper
