Dispelling the Myth of Left-Handed Shooters

Hey guys, Deryck Poole here at Echo-5 Training. I wanna talk to you guys for a little bit about this myth of left-handed guns or selecting a gun has to be different for the left-handed shooter out there. Let's look at this gun right here. This is a prototype of the PD-10 from Avidity Arms. Right now it's set up traditionally how you see most guns with a right-handed magazine release, a right-hand slide stop lever.

Now a lot of people say, well, you know I'm a left-hander I need something special, you know so I can run this gun. Well, the fact of the matter is you can actually run a right-handed gun and be as efficient or almost more efficient than the right-hander running the right-handed gun. The reason being is when you're gripping the gun you need to drop the magazine as opposed to worrying about if your thumb is long enough, or you have the strength in your thumb to push the magazine release, you have the ability to use your middle finger. That middle finger can come back, pressure and leverage on this button by pushing straight in to guarantee the magazine will drop. So this is your typical gun that you're gonna find at the gun store, but let's look at some of the other options out there that are good choices for personal defense guns.

Here we have a Springfield Armory gun. It has a magazine released that is actually ambidextrous, so it's on both sides. With this gun if your thumb is long enough and you have the actual strength to press it you then can use the right handed thumb. The beauty of learning on a right-handed gun though is that if you pick up a gun like this that is ambi, you don't have to learn any new technique, you can still use that middle finger to drop the magazine. Finally, let's look at the Glock.

This is the new Glock Generation Five. With this new gun, you have the ability to swap the magazine release over to the left-hand side. But if like I said earlier, if you've learned on a right-handed gun, you can take this gun straight out of the box and not make any changes to it. What they got is an ambidextrous slide stop lever. Now, a lot of left-handers think this is a very important thing to have on a gun, but let's be clear.

The slide stop lever is primarily an administrative thing. We're going to use that when we want to unload the gun or in the rare case of a malfunction and we need to lock the slide to the rear to clear that malfunction. But let me show you a little trick. When the gun is forward, if we are going to try to use our thumb like the traditional right-handed person would do to lock the slide to the rear, sometimes they have problems getting that upward pressure and the backward rack at the same time. Here's a little tip.

Pick the thumb of your strong hand, putting it straight on the back strap, taking your trigger finger and pushing straight up and then rack the slide back. It gives you a much more positive connection with that slide stop lever, as well as giving you plenty of leverage to get the gun to the rear and locked. Hopefully there's just some tips that are gonna help you pick a gun, make a good choice and actually help you run your gun a little bit more efficiently. Thank you.