Back in November, Aaron wrote an article on off-hand shooting. A number of people left comments and sent in e-mails with some questions on the topic. To help clarify one of the things mentioned in the article, Aaron recorded this short video to show how to transfer a handgun from one hand to another using a technique called the palm-to-palm transition.
Questions, comments and concerns can be left in the comments section below. As with any firearms training technique, this may or may not work with your current tactics, department policies and existing training. You have to evaluate on whether or not you want to use this technique. It is not the only method of transferring a gun from hand to hand, but it is one way of getting it done.
Oh, never practice this with a loaded firearm.
Transcript:
Hey Blue Sheepdog readers, this is Aaron. I’m doing a video follow-up on an article that I wrote about off-hand shooting. In particular I’m going to cover one of the techniques that I have for transitioning your pistol from your strong hand to your support hand. The palm-to-palm method that I described in my article gathered some questions from some of the readers about exactly how that looked as it was played out. So I’m going to show that to you today using a training pistol.
All right. Coming out of my holster I would punch out into my normal shooting stance. Now my normal shooting stance is a two-handed, supported shooting style and my particular preference is that my support hand thumb runs down the slide of the handgun. My strong thumb is just resting on top and this is my preferred style.
Now there are a couple of crossover methods or different styles. Some people want to be down below, but this is my preferred method. I find it to have the most reliability and stability in my shooting platform.
So I’m a right-handed shooter. This would be my preferred method of coming out to my two-handed supported shooting stance. Now, when I want to transition all I need to do is extend the fingers of my support hand, I still have a good grip with my shooting hand, my strong hand. Bring the thumb up. Okay? Bring the thumb of the hooting hand up.
And all during this time, at any time, if something were to change, I can go right onto the trigger and engage a threat. I can go right back into my stance. Okay? But I’m going to extend those fingers, extend the thumbs. Bring the thumb of the shooting hand around as I’m pressing that pistol into my support palm. Just like that. Okay? Just like this.
So it’s pressed in there. I still have a good solid physical contact with the handgun. My fingers are away from the trigger and I’m still generally pointed in the area that I want to address a threat. All right.
To finish it off, I’m going to bring my thumb and the fingers of my strong hand out as I curl in the fingers of my support hand. Taking up that traditional shooting stance that I was showing you earlier. It’s the exact mirror of what I had when I was holding the pistol with my strong hand.
All right. Now I’m going to show it to you a little bit quicker, so you can see that it is, I mean, that’s kind of awkward to slow it down and show each particular point. One more that’s kind of slow. Fingers out, thumbs around, fingers curled back in, fingers curled back in, thumbs in place, into that same shooting stance. Coming back, coming back, back, back, and back again. All can be done very quickly, maintaining a really good positive contact with the handgun, and maintaining the same shooting stance as I would from my strong hand to my support hand.
All right. I’m going to show it to you from a side angle. Fingers out, curved around, pressed in, curved back in. All right. And from the other side. Fingers out, pressed in, curved back in, and may have to do a little bit of adjustment, but with more practice and repetitions it’s a very fluid and a very safe way of transitioning to your off hand.
One of the readers pointed out that when you go to your off-hand, you really need to try to be aiming with your off-eye. You know, you’re non-dominant eye. So in this case, having the gun in my left hand, which is my support hand, I would need to be looking down the sights with my left eye. And that’s how I need to line up.
To start off with you may need to close your right eye to really figure out how to do that. You know, you’re mind is playing tricks with you. It’s used to having the weapon in your strong hand. So you’re going to need use that off-eye to line up the sights. The more time you practice with it, then I think you’ll have more ability to actually get into this situation and still use a two-eye, open shooting method, which is obviously much safer because it allows you much more peripheral view.
So , one last time, starting from my strong-hand side, and that’s as easy as it gets with the palm to palm method, to transition from you strong to your support hand.
Again, this is Aaron, with the blue sheep dog. I hope this helps all the readers understand a little bit more about the palm-to-palm method. I think it’s a very strong and a very adequate method to use to transition to your off hand and I hope that this has helped the readers to understand that a little bit better. Thank you.