Fandom Firearms Q&A #1
OK. So this is the first firearms Q&A I am writing as a supplement to my Inception fic writer firearms tutorials.
The Usual Disclaimer: I am not a professional shooter, gunsmith or range instructor, nor do I claim to be. I'm just a private individual who enjoys putting holes through targets, and I am writing these guides and tutorials for the purposes of fanfiction writing. If you have any interest in learning firearms use IRL, please look up a range near you and talk to one of the range instructors, as the information given here is, by necessity, brief and cursory.
Today I'm going to open with a couple questions, both regarding southpaws.
Handedness and Firearms Use.
ilovetakahana asked: I remembered belatedly, hey, I'm a lefty, how do I compensate? do I even have to?
Similarly, bauble sent me an interesting question about hand dominance and injury affecting firearms use, which I will detail below.
Here's an answer that's applicable to both questions, and it's going to be a bit of a doozy because of the depth of the topic.
The first question is: do gun users learn to shoot with their dominant hand, and is it relatively easy to learn how to shoot using your weaker (non-dominant) hand? - bauble
In general most gun users learn to shoot with their dominant hand. Sighting can be a concern if you're shooting left-handed but sighting with your right eye, and you'll probably have to tilt either your head or the firearm to actually sight up properly because it's held in your off-hand. Also, most guns eject the spent brass to the right so it won't clip the shooter's field of vision, so when you fire a right-handed firearm left-handed it sometimes is a little annoying
Many firearms are now pretty much ambidextrous save for the ejection port where the brass goes out, so if a character were forced to learn to shoot with their left hand they probably would have an option - either that or have a gunsmith customize the firearm so that the magazine release and safety are left-handed or ambidextrous. (Some handguns can even have the slide stop and magazine release easily moved to the other side for a left-handed shooter, like the Yarygin PYa, or the Grach, the current Russian military sidearm.)
If we're going with the military background implied for Eames in the interviews and production notes, then he probably would already know how to shoot left-handed - a lot of professionals learn to in case they take a hit that incapacitates their dominant hand/arm in a gunfight.
It's not easy initially, to shoot left-handed when you're right-handed, but practice can eliminate a lot of those penalties. (This is relevant because an OC - Eames' ex - in one of my fics is an amputee who winds up learning to shoot left-handed, so I did a bit of asking!)
Second question: typically, shooters use the index finger to pull the trigger, yes? If that finger were to be cut off, how easy would it be to simply retrain your hand to pull the trigger with, say, your middle finger? - bauble
This is interesting. I think that would depend on the shooter, the injury and the gun.
(I am going to use Eames for the example as bauble's original question pertained to him as a character, but this is applicable to any dude with bigger hands than your author, which is almost all of them, really.)
For example; I have a Browning Hi-Power on my nightstand, and I have fairly little, girly hands with longish fingers. I just did a test grip with my middle finger as the trigger finger (while still observing trigger discipline) and it would be doable, really.
However, one has to consider the potential loss of strength from not having the middle finger on the grip. If you're using a two-handed stance, like the Weaver and isosceles having the off-hand bracing may compensate, but it may make shooting in a firefight somewhat recoil-intense. I found my ring finger and pinky aching a bit from the weight of the gun without my middle finger taking the weight of the firearm, even braced for shooting with both hands.
That would probably be easily addressed with training and practice, though, as the real reasons my ring and little fingers aren't as strong is because my index and middle fingers (as with most people with a full complement of fingers) do most of the heavy lifting, and thus the muscles are better developed.
I'm a BFA in sculpture, and one of my professors has a missing index finger on his dominant hand - I suspect from a sculpting injury. He's so used to not having it that it really barely matters to him any more and I don't see him having grip problems. Of course, it actually does look like a very old injury, but then I doubt Eames is going to be running around shooting until he's at least completed physiotherapy, which would address a lot of the weakness concerns.
It helps that he has big hands, too, and thicker fingers, which would also allow him to exert a better grip because of the broader surface area of his hands and remaining fingers. Friction tape - like, skateboard tape - can be added on the grip to help, as that's what's been done with my nightstand gun.
I had slight problems reaching the magazine release with the increased distance from my thumb to the stud, but then, I have little girly hands. Eames does not, so that actually wouldn't be a problem. No problem reaching the safety either way, though.
A slight issue, depending on the firearm, would be the mechanical action of the gun getting in the way. Some semiautomatic pistols have big slides (the top part that contains the sights and covers the ejection port when it is not being fired), and sometimes the action of the gun can cause the slide to lacerate the shooter's hand as it slides backward on the frame of the gun to reload. That is usually never a problem in modern firearms if you're holding it normally - however, there is more of your hand sticking up if you use your middle finger to shoot instead of your index finger, which can put it in the way of the slide, or the hammer as the firearm works.
Testing the middle-fingered grip with my Hi-Power I can safely say a slide or hammer-related problem wouldn't occur for me if I lost enough of my index finger - ie: actually losing it beyond the knuckle - because there simply wouldn't be enough hand left to get in the way of the slide. If there's a stump, if the index finger were taken off beneath the knuckle on the back of the hand, that might be a concern because it does cover the slide itself.
I've heard of shooters who've trained to shoot left-handed following the loss of a finger on the dominant hand simply because of the above concerns I've addressed. In the case you're talking where he's going to need surgery and orthopedic fixation, there probably is going to be a shit-ton of muscle and ligament damage (not to mention potential peripheral nerve damage), which may necessitate him using his left hand anyway due to lingering weakness post-surgery, recovery and physiotherapy.
And this concludes the first installment of my Fandom Firearms Q&A. If y'all have any questions about guns, please ask them in comments, or LJ-message me, or send them to cyanidebreathmint at gmail dot com, and I'll get around to answering them and then compile them into another entry like this.
- Mel
The Usual Disclaimer: I am not a professional shooter, gunsmith or range instructor, nor do I claim to be. I'm just a private individual who enjoys putting holes through targets, and I am writing these guides and tutorials for the purposes of fanfiction writing. If you have any interest in learning firearms use IRL, please look up a range near you and talk to one of the range instructors, as the information given here is, by necessity, brief and cursory.
Today I'm going to open with a couple questions, both regarding southpaws.
Handedness and Firearms Use.
ilovetakahana asked: I remembered belatedly, hey, I'm a lefty, how do I compensate? do I even have to?
Similarly, bauble sent me an interesting question about hand dominance and injury affecting firearms use, which I will detail below.
Here's an answer that's applicable to both questions, and it's going to be a bit of a doozy because of the depth of the topic.
The first question is: do gun users learn to shoot with their dominant hand, and is it relatively easy to learn how to shoot using your weaker (non-dominant) hand? - bauble
In general most gun users learn to shoot with their dominant hand. Sighting can be a concern if you're shooting left-handed but sighting with your right eye, and you'll probably have to tilt either your head or the firearm to actually sight up properly because it's held in your off-hand. Also, most guns eject the spent brass to the right so it won't clip the shooter's field of vision, so when you fire a right-handed firearm left-handed it sometimes is a little annoying
Many firearms are now pretty much ambidextrous save for the ejection port where the brass goes out, so if a character were forced to learn to shoot with their left hand they probably would have an option - either that or have a gunsmith customize the firearm so that the magazine release and safety are left-handed or ambidextrous. (Some handguns can even have the slide stop and magazine release easily moved to the other side for a left-handed shooter, like the Yarygin PYa, or the Grach, the current Russian military sidearm.)
If we're going with the military background implied for Eames in the interviews and production notes, then he probably would already know how to shoot left-handed - a lot of professionals learn to in case they take a hit that incapacitates their dominant hand/arm in a gunfight.
It's not easy initially, to shoot left-handed when you're right-handed, but practice can eliminate a lot of those penalties. (This is relevant because an OC - Eames' ex - in one of my fics is an amputee who winds up learning to shoot left-handed, so I did a bit of asking!)
Second question: typically, shooters use the index finger to pull the trigger, yes? If that finger were to be cut off, how easy would it be to simply retrain your hand to pull the trigger with, say, your middle finger? - bauble
This is interesting. I think that would depend on the shooter, the injury and the gun.
(I am going to use Eames for the example as bauble's original question pertained to him as a character, but this is applicable to any dude with bigger hands than your author, which is almost all of them, really.)
For example; I have a Browning Hi-Power on my nightstand, and I have fairly little, girly hands with longish fingers. I just did a test grip with my middle finger as the trigger finger (while still observing trigger discipline) and it would be doable, really.
However, one has to consider the potential loss of strength from not having the middle finger on the grip. If you're using a two-handed stance, like the Weaver and isosceles having the off-hand bracing may compensate, but it may make shooting in a firefight somewhat recoil-intense. I found my ring finger and pinky aching a bit from the weight of the gun without my middle finger taking the weight of the firearm, even braced for shooting with both hands.
That would probably be easily addressed with training and practice, though, as the real reasons my ring and little fingers aren't as strong is because my index and middle fingers (as with most people with a full complement of fingers) do most of the heavy lifting, and thus the muscles are better developed.
I'm a BFA in sculpture, and one of my professors has a missing index finger on his dominant hand - I suspect from a sculpting injury. He's so used to not having it that it really barely matters to him any more and I don't see him having grip problems. Of course, it actually does look like a very old injury, but then I doubt Eames is going to be running around shooting until he's at least completed physiotherapy, which would address a lot of the weakness concerns.
It helps that he has big hands, too, and thicker fingers, which would also allow him to exert a better grip because of the broader surface area of his hands and remaining fingers. Friction tape - like, skateboard tape - can be added on the grip to help, as that's what's been done with my nightstand gun.
I had slight problems reaching the magazine release with the increased distance from my thumb to the stud, but then, I have little girly hands. Eames does not, so that actually wouldn't be a problem. No problem reaching the safety either way, though.
A slight issue, depending on the firearm, would be the mechanical action of the gun getting in the way. Some semiautomatic pistols have big slides (the top part that contains the sights and covers the ejection port when it is not being fired), and sometimes the action of the gun can cause the slide to lacerate the shooter's hand as it slides backward on the frame of the gun to reload. That is usually never a problem in modern firearms if you're holding it normally - however, there is more of your hand sticking up if you use your middle finger to shoot instead of your index finger, which can put it in the way of the slide, or the hammer as the firearm works.
Testing the middle-fingered grip with my Hi-Power I can safely say a slide or hammer-related problem wouldn't occur for me if I lost enough of my index finger - ie: actually losing it beyond the knuckle - because there simply wouldn't be enough hand left to get in the way of the slide. If there's a stump, if the index finger were taken off beneath the knuckle on the back of the hand, that might be a concern because it does cover the slide itself.
I've heard of shooters who've trained to shoot left-handed following the loss of a finger on the dominant hand simply because of the above concerns I've addressed. In the case you're talking where he's going to need surgery and orthopedic fixation, there probably is going to be a shit-ton of muscle and ligament damage (not to mention potential peripheral nerve damage), which may necessitate him using his left hand anyway due to lingering weakness post-surgery, recovery and physiotherapy.
And this concludes the first installment of my Fandom Firearms Q&A. If y'all have any questions about guns, please ask them in comments, or LJ-message me, or send them to cyanidebreathmint at gmail dot com, and I'll get around to answering them and then compile them into another entry like this.
- Mel