I don't have many gun dreams. Good because to blog your own dreams too frequently can get kinda desperate. At least my subconscious is helping out with bog fodder now and again.
In the dream I found a great, near custom 1911 at a steal of a price. Everything on it was perfect for me down to the smallest detail. Forged parts, left hand safety and subdued right hand safety, 4.25" barrel, bumpless grip safety, regular length guide rod... Ideal! Every detail perfect save one. It had sights on the side like this Glock:
That picture has made the rounds, and I have no idea where it originated. I think I saw here first, but that doesn't mean that's the origin. It's NOT www.birdman.org. It's a poor comment on the stylistic shooting technique of some urban, unlicensed, open-air pharmaceutical purveyors and entrepreneurs.
One good thing about the dream 1911. It was still perfect for me. The sights were on the other side of the slide slab. I am a lefty, after all.
6 comments:
I never did understand why gangstas always held their guns that way in the movies. I thought it was just Hollywood creating a new trend and I imagined kids on the street (the little darlings) were imitating it, or was it the other way round?
What is the effectiveness of shooting this way?
i can only imagine that it is a stylistic enhancement
It was done in the movies as a 'style' by some LA cops playing bad guys... They figured if they could give themselves any REAL advantage on the streets they would (and it seems to have worked)...
And all this time I thought it was do to the wide distribution of ONE photo from a series back in the early to mid 1980's, showing the "Israeli Method" of drawing and firing a pistol carried with the chamber empty.
Basically, you were supposed to bring the weapon up to eye level, cocked, so you could more easily "slingshot" the slide to rack the first round in. You would supposedly grab the slide and the run the the gun to full extension, with the slide hand remaining where it was.
The idea was to make sure the slide goes ALL the way back and then is released cleanly, without "riding" it down. Of course, after you had ripped teh gun through the slide hand's grip, you were supposed to rotate it back to upright and grab it in a standard isosceles stance (crouched, of course).
The photo that made the rounds in gun (and many cop) magazines showed this guy squatting while holding his pistol sideways in eye level, right in front of his face. This was lampooned as "the Israeli Method" (i.e., shooting your gun sideways, presumeably by "instinctive pointing").
Shortly thereafter, I saw it showing up in movies. Causation, or mere correlation? I dunno.
Actually, it was www.birdman.org. Although the original site's been gone for many years, it lives on in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040203000601/www.birdman.org/products/homeboy1.htm
It's worth poking around the former Birdman Weapons Systems site; some pretty funny "products" there, from a 300-round Uzi magazine ("This magazine is not recommended for anyone under 6 ft. tall as they will not be able to see over the top of their weapon") to MicroNucleic .50BMG Ammunition ("The blast factor of just one single Nuke50 projectile is equivalent to 1,200 pounds of TNT!")...
A well designed weapon should function reliably even when rotated through any angle.
Even though I am right handed, I am left eyed, as is my brother and oldest son. My youngest son is left handed and right eyed. 15% of the population is cross dominant.
It was much easier to train my left hand to fire a weapon single handed than it was to train my right eye to align sights. However, with a two handed hold, I can modify the Weaver stance shifting my two hands a few inches to the left to fire the weapon right handed using my left eye.
Using the three dot sights as shown in the picture, you should just as easily align three dots on the underside of the weapon held on its side as three dots on the topside (or aligning the black post of the front sight correctly within the two black posts of the rear sight). The change in your stance would be raising the weapon the difference between the two rear sights, about one half inch more than the width of the slide. Check it out for yourself with test sights made out of black construction paper with whiteout for the dots, taped to the slide.
The two major problems would be:
1. manipulating the slide to clear a jam unless the rear sight was forward of the serrations, reducing the sight radius.
2. procuring a holster for this rig.
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