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 I struggle sometimes about what the
subject of my editorial is going to be. I was a ponderin' on this
subject when I thought of a letter I received recently about safety
concerns regarding the Gunfighter shooting class. I started shooting
Gunfighter last year and really enjoy it. I know that there has been
a lot of controversy about this class both within SASS and at
various clubs. I will tell you that I really, really enjoy shooting
Gunfighter. However, after reading this letter and then studying
upon it, I now also have my concerns. The following excerpt is from
a letter I received from three people that have extensive firearms
training and instruction background.
"The
Gunfighter category is the only pistol style where the weak side
hand is filled with a pistol and the other hand is not kept free to
help out in the split second when the weak hand slips or otherwise
refuses to obey the mind. Likewise, momentary coordination goofs
with pistols in both hands accelerate the possibility of getting a
hand in front of the other pistol."
This quote
by itself is not necessarily disconcerting. The letter became more
and more thought provoking as I read on.
"If
you lose your one-handed grip on a cowboy pistol with your finger
inside the trigger guard, the pistol will rotate down and around,
coming to rest with the barrel pointing at your midsection, and the
weight of the gun is now pushing the trigger against your finger! If
that starts to happen, and you also have a loaded pistol in the
other hand, then you have no effective means of recovering from the
slip!"
Although
shooting Gunfighter is a lot of fun and I really enjoy it, I wonder
how authentic it really is. Does anyone out there know of someone in
the Old West, prior to the movies, actually having shot this way?
Anyway,
back to the safety issue. I decided that I needed to test this
process out. I like a fairly light trigger pull, so most of my
sixguns are set to an even 3-lb. pull. I first took out a 3rd
generation .45 Colt that I had custom tuned. Making sure it was
unloaded (checking it 4-5 times, not just once) I placed it in my
strong hand and cocked it. I then let it slip out of my hand, the
barrel naturally rotating forward and down. You got it, it went off!
If it had been loaded I would have been shot in the stomach!
I decided
to delve further. I proceeded to try this with a variety of
single-action sixguns, Colts, Colt clones, Rugers, Cap-n-ball, and
conversions, with varying trigger pulls from a low of 2 ½-lbs. to a
high of over 8-lbs. The firearm certainly had a tendency to go off
easier the lighter the trigger pull, and though it didn't always
go off as the trigger pull got up higher into the 4 ½-lb. range, it
would go off the majority of the time.
Editorial
Continued
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