Point Shooting

[The Colonel]

Tactical Shooting quotes Ronald “Henry” Hall as saying a feature of the "point shooting" style of pistol operation was that " We were not taught to hold the gun out at arm’s length or with two hands but to draw the gun and hold it tucked into your navel".

I know this is an actual historical style ... but isn't it also an extremely dangerous way to operate an automatic pistol? Surely as soon as you fire the damned thing the slide's going to come back and smack you right in the gut?
Am I missing something or was this a style only meant for revolver users?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Tactical Shooting quotes Ronald “Henry” Hall as saying a feature of the "point shooting" style of pistol operation was that " We were not taught to hold the gun out at arm’s length or with two hands but to draw the gun and hold it tucked into your navel".

I know this is an actual historical style ... but isn't it also an extremely dangerous way to operate an automatic pistol? Surely as soon as you fire the damned thing the slide's going to come back and smack you right in the gut?
Am I missing something or was this a style only meant for revolver users?

If you hold the firearm and pull it in to your belly by pressing your hands or wrists against your abdomen, there's plenty of room left for the pistol's action to cycle.

http://pad1.whstatic.com/images/thum...p-3Bullet1.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gcfBcpGv3ek/maxresdefault.jpg

https://stevetarani.com/wp-content/u...013/11/wr2.png

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

If you hold the firearm and pull it in to your belly by pressing your hands or wrists against your abdomen, there's plenty of room left for the pistol's action to cycle.

http://pad1.whstatic.com/images/thum...p-3Bullet1.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gcfBcpGv3ek/maxresdefault.jpg

https://stevetarani.com/wp-content/u...013/11/wr2.png

So it's really the gun hand more than the gun itself that is tucked in to the torso or abdomen, it looks like?

[Sam Cade]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

I know this is an actual historical style ... but isn't it also an extremely dangerous way to operate an automatic pistol?

In modern parlance it is "shooting from retention" and is probably the most useful skill in defensive handgunning. I spend more time and ammo practicing drawing and shooting from retention than anything else.

Probably not as much as this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH1HioAHPW4

[Polydamas]

I will defer to actual shooters, but Doug and Sam's photos do not look like what I saw in Hans' suggested reading list, or what I have read in early texts teaching what Hans calls Point Shooting.

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Tactical Shooting quotes Ronald “Henry” Hall as saying a feature of the "point shooting" style of pistol operation was that " We were not taught to hold the gun out at arm’s length or with two hands but to draw the gun and hold it tucked into your navel".

I know this is an actual historical style ... but isn't it also an extremely dangerous way to operate an automatic pistol? Surely as soon as you fire the damned thing the slide's going to come back and smack you right in the gut?
Am I missing something or was this a style only meant for revolver users?

Hans' suggested reading list is a really good way to learn what the stances in Tactical Shooting look like. If you want a less technical version, actors hold their handguns in ways recommended by Point Shooting instructors in some films from the 1920s and 1930s ... I am sure there is a scene at the beginning of a Fritz Lang film like that.

[DouglasCole]

Here's a Wiki article with a video and some diagrams. What I referenced earlier is Pistol Retention position using unsighted shooting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_shooting

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

If you want a less technical version, actors hold their handguns in ways recommended by Point Shooting instructors in some films from the 1920s and 1930s ... I am sure there is a scene at the beginning of a Fritz Lang film like that.

From the old movies I've seen I would have called the procedure more like bracing your wrist or forearm against your side than "tucking it into your belly button" I've seen that in many such films.

It was the using two hands to do it that I found odd in the linked diagrams. That might be more about resisting gun-grabbing than stabilizing the weapon.

At any rate you've got a hand and a belly-button (probably). Try literally tucking your shooting hand into your naval. I not find it results in an uncomfortably bent wrist but it does produce several inches of clearance between the rear of the gun and the torso.

[Bruno]

The '30s gangster movies always struck me as firing from the same position you'd fire a pistol concealed in your jacket pocket from. Which seems like a sensible way for a gangster to practice firing and become most familiar with.

Well, except for the classic tommy gun kinda things, but those always look like an actor struggling with the weapon to me.

Disclaimer: I'm no expert. I just watch peoples hands more than their faces in movies.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Here's a Wiki article with a video and some diagrams. What I referenced earlier is Pistol Retention position using unsighted shooting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_shooting

I am not sure that any of those pictures shows what Hall describes, or what I remember from some of the books in Han's bibliography which are back in the Old Country. The Internet is full of enthusiastic sites teaching the latest American fashions in handgun shooting, but Hall's training was a bit earlier than that and before the turn towards two-handed grips ...

Again, I am not a firearms guy, but I ordered the parts of Hans' suggested reading which interested me. I am speaking purely about how things were done in the past, not why or what way is best.

[HANS]

The stance described by Hall is what Fairbairn and Sykes taught as the "Half-Hip Position." This is not the modern retention position mentioned by Doug and Sam, which Fairbairn and Sykes called the "Quarter-Hip" or "Close-Hip Position." Both are illustrated in Shooting to Live as Fig.13 and Fig.14, respectively.
Note that Hall certainly did not literally mean that he stuck the pistol into his navel; he exaggerated to drive home the difference between the usual one-handed and two-handed stances that elevate the pistol in order for the sights to be used.

Cheers

HANS