Top 3 Tips for Rapid Strings of Fire

I'm gonna share with you the top three tips for rapid strings of fire that I share with students all over the world, indoor ranges, outdoor ranges, every level of experience with any kind of semi-automatic handgun. In fact, even revolvers, these three tips are the thing. They're gonna help you with the default defensive shooting response, multiple rounds delivered quickly to the high center chest. We're trying to break down the bad guy's ability to do the things they need to do to hurt us or the people that we care about. And a rapid string of fire, multiple rounds quickly into the high center chest, that's our default response with a handgun.

When we have the handgun in our hands, we're gonna first, tip, want to hold the gun as high as possible. Now, the design of the gun, the way the grip interacts with your hands, all these things are important in terms of recoil management. But the thing that you can do, regardless of the gun shape and size, if the gun fits your hand reasonably well at all, is be up high on the gun. That means no gap at the back of your hand, underneath what we call the tang, the top of the grip. This is the tang.

You can have a beaver tail that extends out. There's maybe a little bit one on the little bit of one of those on this, SIRT pistol. But generally, we're talking about the tang. Deep in here, we wanna have as good an engagement as possible. We wanna make sure that there's no space at all right there.

The other thing, and this is the most common mistake I see, is the thumbs. When we see the thumbs down low, if you think about even where this divot is placed, that's not really where I want my thumb. So a lot of handgun designs, grips, unfortunately, have that kind of a shelf molded in there. We don't wanna use that. If anything, we're gonna use that shelf for the inside of our support hand to have a, a place to en- engage with the grip while our thumb sits up on top of that support hand.

If I'm shooting one-handed, I'm still gonna leave that thumb high because, again, bringing this down creates a weak support area, especially with the fact that my hand generally will twist this way towards my weak side. If I'm not supported up here, that's even more likely. The other thing we think about is a crush grip. If my fingers and thumb are coming together, that gives me more opportunity to have, have that crush grip. I really don't want a crush grip.

I wanna be pulling the gun back into my hand with my thumbs and both of my hands as high as possible on the gun without interfering with the operation of the gun. That means we don't wanna be blocking the operation of the slide stop or obviously the operation of the slide itself. We don't wanna be blocking the ejection port or anything like that, especially if we were a left-handed shooter. We wouldn't wanna have this, this thumb awkwardly high up here covering the ejection port or something like that. We don't want our support hand, if it's our left hand, awkwardly high where it's blocking the actuation of the slide stop and preventing us from getting slide lock on an empty magazine, anything like that.

So first tip is to be as high on the gun as possible. Second tip is really important, making sure that your shoulder's as engaged in front of your torso. We wanna lock everything up, up around the shoulders. People say, "Oh, tactical turtle." People talk about not looking relaxed. Well, not absorbing recoil.

No, I don't wanna do any of that. I'm not gonna be relaxed when I'm defending myself or someone I care about. I'm not gonna be relaxed in the face of a lethal threat to which I am responding with a rapid string of fire. So it's kinda silly to say I should be relaxed on the range with my shoulders. I'm not worried about laterally moving between multiple targets like I would be in a game or some kind of a plate rack competition qualification course requirement for multiple target engagement.

I'm worried about one guy, multiple rounds into the chest, so I want that shoulder engaged. I wanna make sure that it's in front of my torso and that this musculature back here is locked in. I want it-- I want all of this engaged. If I, if I'm up straight, this is relaxed. This is soft.

You can do this experiment at home. If I change the relationship between my hips and my shoulder, if I sink down, lower my center of gravity, that tightens this lat muscle all up, and that locks everything in at the shoulder. That's gonna give me m- better recoil management. Remember, the recoil is absorbed. The energy of the recoil of the slide moving back is absorbed by the spring.

That's an engineering issue. I don't wanna be moving at the wrist or moving at the elbow, moving at the shoulders, or certainly moving at the hip a- and letting that gun move from the point of alignment that I've placed it to get that rapid string of fire into the high center chest. So shoulder engagement, lowered center of gravity, shoulders in front of the hips, shoulders pushed in front of the torso with your head inside that triangle. That's the second tip. Third tip, trigger reset.

Now, a lot of people obsess over exactly hitting that break point and nothing more and then snapping another shot off when they're thinking about rapid strings of fire. I don't want you thinking about that exact break point. All I want you to do is keep your finger on the trigger throughout your string of fire. So you let the trigger go at least far enough to reset, but you don't move your finger off the trigger and come back. Now, you'll see plenty of demos, especially with single action triggers or very short movement triggers, where really, really good shooters with really, really good platforms and tuned guns, maybe low recoil, heavy guns, things like that, will demonstrate that they can slap the trigger and still get good groups.

I don't wanna be playing that game. I don't wanna be coming off the trigger if I don't need to, especially with a striker fired gun with a trigger that's set up for defensive use. I just wanna ride that trigger back and forth. Now, when you're using a SIRT pistol, when you're using a pistol like this, remember that you're practicing the trigger reset. You're practicing not letting your finger come off the trigger.

You're not getting a one-to-one practice with the pace at which you could shoot a rapid string of fire because obviously the photons from the lasers aren't giving you that feedback that a real gun is gonna give you. So understanding that we can certainly practice our grip, we can certainly practice our extended engaged shooting position, we can practice resetting the trigger and keeping our finger on the trigger, but don't necessarily worry about the pace at which you're doing it during these training sessions, these practice sessions, because it's gonna be different. You gotta get to the live fire range. So tip three is maintain contact with the trigger while resetting it. Asterisk, practice this live fire.

That's where you're gonna get your actual pacing for any given target size at any given distance. Top three tips for rapid strings of fire, the default response for defensive handgun use in close quarters, high grip, engaged shoulders, don't lose contact with the trigger.