Racking the Slide on a Handgun

All right. What I'd like to talk to you today about is how to rack the slide on a handgun. So I actually have two different size handguns and I'm kind of gonna explain that when we start the actual hands-on. So a lot of times what I get is the person comes to me and they say I don't have the hand strength to actually rack the slide. The reason they don't have that is because they've been taught the improper technique.

So if I pick up this full-size gun and as you know all these guns are empty up here. So as I'm holding this people have a tendency to want to do the slingshot. Which is they're actually grabbing with their thumb and their pointer finger. And what happens with that is I actually have to push the gun away from me and that takes some of the strength away as I'm getting ready to rack the slide. There's also not a lot of hand strength for most people with just the finger and the thumb, okay?

So the gun has to be pushed this way and then they're pulling back. And we're losing a lot of dexterity when we do that and hand strength and it's not efficient, okay? Another way that I also see people that will do the racking on the slide, is once again they're pushing the gun away from the body. They're actually covering up the ejection port with their thumb. So if they had a malfunction, they would not be able to actually clear the malfunction by racking the slide this way.

The other style that I see that happens is you'll have somebody that will actually reach in front of the ejection port and pull the slide back and do that. You're getting way too close to the muzzle when you try to rack the slide in that style. And once again, you're pushing that away from the body. So you're losing that strength that you have. What I find is that racking the gun is a two handed technique.

And it's so not, not so much the strength that we're looking for, we're looking for the push pull technique. So my strong hand is going to push on the frame while my left hand or support hand is pulling back on the slide, okay? So, like I said I have two different style of guns here. I have the full-size gun, which the spring is a little bit easier to work. And then I have a small size gun here and you have less gun to hang on to.

And the springs are usually a little stronger. So what we're talking about when we're talking about racking the slide, is I pick up the full size. I'm gonna bring it into what we call a high compressed ready position. And I'm actually going to grasp the back of the slide. This is where people start to have difficulties because they want to cup it.

They want to wrap their thumb around the whole slide. What we're looking for is that we're catching the one side of the slide with the meat of our hand and our fingers, and we're squeezing it together so that we can get a good grip on that slide. So once I do this, I get this good grip and I'm going to push forward with my right while pulling back with my left and let it go. And that's how we get the slide to get into full battery and work, okay? On a full-size gun, it's a little bit easier because you have more mass to hang on to on the frame and you have a bigger slide to hang on to.

And the spring is not as tight as when we get to a smaller size gun. The technique is still the same technique, okay? So I'm still gonna squeeze here. I like to keep my thumb back, so I'm not wrapping it around. And I'm still going to push forward while I'm pulling back and let go.

You notice I just let the slide go. We don't wanna ride the slide forward. You can induce malfunctions in the gun when you do that. Okay so the proper technique once again, is and I'm gonna do it with a bigger gun because this is where most people would start with the full size is it's this push pull technique. What I find is sometimes people have a tendency to want to leave this hand still.

And I'm telling you to grasp here and push so that there's actually some movement away from the body. Once again, a full grip on the frame of the gun. Grasping and squeezing the slide, pushing forward while you're letting the slide go. That is the most effective, intuitive way to work the slide on a gun. It works well with what the body's doing.

We're using a natural style of anything we would do as in if I gave you a jar of pickles to open, you wouldn't open them out here, you would bring it in here. So we wanna keep everything we're doing with our gun as natural and normal with the body as we can.