Drawing Isn't For Artists Only

So you’ve spent hours practicing on the range. You’ve dry fired at least 1000 times a night while watching a baseball game. You’ve incorporated weak hand practice into your range time. Today you feel more confident than you ever have in your gun handling skills. And then it occurs to you; you don’t really understand how to draw your weapon, let alone draw it from concealment. Now what?!

Between a holstered draw and rapid fire, these are the two most difficult tasks to practice. The reason is actually quite simple. It’s not that the movements are difficult, it’s that most public ranges (and even most private ranges) do not want the legal liability associated with those actions. Think of it this way, many shooters, by and large, are novices on the firing line. Most have never handled a gun and others are just out to have a little fun plinking at a target. Any firearms safety training these shooters may have had was probably the moment they scanned the range rules before handing over their money to the rangemaster. This is all well and good—the sport needs to continue to grow, so there are bound to be newbies on the line—but it does mean that the range owner must be extra careful to keep his customers safe. As a side note, any time we go to the range we should be mindful of unsafe conditions and call attention to them; everyone is responsible for range safety.

Assuming there are no firearms ranges in your neighborhood that will allow you to practice drawing your gun, there are no laws barring you from practicing a draw in your home. I shouldn’t have to remind you to follow proper safety rules and procedures. If you’re practicing in your home, be extremely careful to keep your gun unloaded and check it often.

The steps of a proper draw are simple:

1. Bring your support hand to chest height lined up under your dominant eye. At the same time you are bringing the support hand up, your strong hand obtains a firing grip on the pistol. If the holster is equipped with a retention strap, release the strap. Always keep your eyes on the threat/target.
2. The strong hand pulls the pistol straight up from the holster. Rotate the muzzle toward the target as soon as it clears the holster lip. Your finger should be indexed along the side of the receiver, not in the trigger guard.
3. Bring the strong hand to the support hand.
4. As the support hand finishes the grip, push the gun out to arms length. The sights should begin to line up on center of mass under your dominant eye. As the weapon is pushed out, the finger goes onto the trigger and squeeze begins. The shot should break as the weapon goes to arms length and is on target.
5. To holster the weapon, follow the reverse order of each of these steps.

Sound easy? Like anything shooting related, the steps are indeed simple but the implementation can be quite difficult. The mantra needs to be, “You’ve got to be fast, you’ve got to be smooth. Smooth is fast.” This is what Bob Young of Gunsite Training Academy had to say about drawing a pistol. To be both smooth and fast requires that all unnecessary movement be eliminated from the draw stroke and any movement that can be done in parallel, rather than sequentially, should be. It also means that you practice it so frequently that your muscles can do the movement without you concentrating on it. Remember, though, that practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. If you’re going to spend the time learning the skill make sure you learn it properly! Some of the steps are fairly self-explanatory, so I’ll call attention to some of the details you need to pay attention to so your stroke is as fast and smooth as you can get. The Devil is in the details, so it’s critical to master the steps. Move slowly. Move deliberately. Don’t try to be fast initially. The speed will come with practice and time.

Step 1:

The reason we bring the support hand below the dominant eye is that it will help you bring your weapon right on line and ready to fire with the clearest sight picture. It acts like the govenor on the throttle of an automobile by providing an index for your the strong side. Simultaneously you are gaining a solid purchase on the butt of the pistol with the firing hand. As you reach down, you need to teach your hand to grab the weapon high on the back strap and properly indexed (read Choosing the Right Pistol – Part 2 for discussion on indexing the weapon). Gripping the weapon is the most important action in step 1. If the gun is not properly grasped, it will be off camber and you’ll fail to shoot what you’re aiming at, or in close quarters combat, the assailant may take it from you. Make certain you grab the gun properly every time you practice.

Step 2:

If you draw the weapon out of your holster in a way my mother-in-law likes to call “cattywompus“, you will not get a smooth pull. In fact, it’s possible that—depending on the holster make and model—you’ll fail to draw it on the first tug and have to start the motion all over again. Remember the mantra? Cattywompus isn’t good on the draw. Pull the gun straight out. Once it’s out you can start to rotate the muzzle toward the target.  If you start to rotate it before clearing leather, you can wedge your gun in the holster which violates the “smooth” order. Don’t foget about that trigger finger!

Step 3:

Once you have cleared the holster and begin to put the muzzle on target, start to bring your strong hand to the aligned weak hand. You’re not going to move the weak hand to catch the pistol, it’s the other way around! As your hands connect you can begin to establish the support hand grip on the weapon. Practice steps 1 through 3 until they become a single fluid motion.

Step 4:

Step 4 is based on a single, albeit major, assumption; you have determined that there is a sufficient action requiring you to deliver deadly force. You’ll notice that as you run the gun out to arms length, your finger begins to apply pressure to the trigger. The rules of gun safety say keep your finger off the trigger until you are certain of your target and what’s around it. In this exercise you have determined what the target is and need to bring the weapon to bear. As the gun is run out you want all the slack taken out of the trigger travel so that as soon as you have a sight picture, the hammer will fall and send the bullet at it’s intended target. Normally when we train our finger is well off the trigger until we are sufficiently relaxed and the gun is pointed at the little paper target. In the draw, we’re assuming you need to be quick; no time for getting into the perfect shooting position.

Taking up the slack minimizes the time it takes to deliver the shot by combining two actions. As the arms move out, the trigger is inching toward engagement. In your drills, be careful not to fire before the target has been acquired. The goal is to put accurate shots into the target as quickly as possible so that the target will cease to do the action which caused them to be the object of your violence. When drilling with live ammunition, you should be able to keep your first shot inside an 8″ plate from 10 yards away. If you can’t, slow down and continue to train your muscles to memorize the movement.

Step 5:

To re-holster the weapon we do everything in reverse. Again, this is to train the muscles to memorize each movement individually so when they are strung together, everything goes right where it’s supposed to. Each time you draw your gun you can practice the stroke twice!

I can’t stress enough how important it is to move slowly in the early stages of this training. There is a danger of shooting yourself if you are not careful. There are plenty of stories of “cowboys” thinking they can draw at lightning speed—after all, it looks easy on television. As these guys draw, they pull the trigger before the gun is on target or has cleared the holster and the bullet traces its arc through their leg. At a range I used to shoot at in Dallas, the rangemaster would allow drawing from a holster. I would see many LEO’s (Law Enforecement Officer) practicing their technique. They wouldn’t move fast and several times they would stop in the middle of the action and start all over. If the movement is done incorrectly, it doesn’t help if you keep moving through it. Restart. Get it right. Do it slowly. Concentrate on the movement. Speed comes after you learn smooth.

Austin Tactical Firearms
Shoot.Straight.Accurate.