NRA News’ Ginny Simone reports:
I’m watching the video like… “Ok… ugly IWB holsters (check)… belly bands (check)… ankle holsters (check), hideous purses (check) *facepalm*” then 1:10, 2:55, and 3:35 rolled around and I was like “OH LAWWWWWD NAH”:
Textbook teacups. The 2nd pic, the girl is directly in the presence of a shooting instructor even… same girl again at 2:55. Come on ladies… you’re better than this. If you see anyone holding a gun like this do not make fun of them and call them a newb. It’s not their fault… they probably are just going by what they see on TV and movies and don’t know any better. Please find a polite way to show them how to properly hold it.
Thoughts?
Comments
16 responses to “Teacup Grips And Women And Firearms”
Mike. Get with the times. Thumbs parallel is out. As is isosceles. All the top tier female operators are running weaver and tea cup. Some experts are even doing the wrist grab thing. Dude… Do you even HSLD?
haha yea :(
The purpose of putting the hand under the gun is to have a one-handed style of shooting while still supporting the gun with the other hand. This eliminates lots of variables when shooting a pistol. Pistol shooting is difficult for beginners, and it’s actually easier to shoot a pistol one-handed instead of two. When you add the support hand underneath, you are still shooting one-handed.
A common mistake with even skilled shooters when using the typical two handed combat grip is that far too much emphasis is placed on the shooting hand by mistake. A pistol is meant to be learned one-handed either with or without the support hand underneath. Only after this is mastered, should a person introduce the combat hold.
I’ve heard ridiculous figures like 70% of the grip when holding the pistol should be with the off-hand. That’s prepostrous. And what happens when the shooter injures his off hand? Now he’s forced to one-hand his pistol. Well, how good will he be when 100% of his grip is now his hooting hand, whereas before, he was trained for a 70% off hand.
Point is this: If you learn to shoot with a 2-handed combat grip, and place too much emphasis on the off-hand, you may not be able to shoot the pistol one handed. A combat grip with too much emphasis on the support hand should NEVER be used.
Also, in CQB, the off-hand can hold a knife upside down, held in the fist, pointing in the same direction as the pistol. The shooting hand then rests on the wrist. It is the same way you carry a flashlight. This makes you very lethal against someone grabbing at your pistol. If you’ve ever seen terminator 2, Linda Hamilton holds her 1911 this way, but she isn’t holding anything in her off-hand. I don’t get my facts from hollywood, but I’m only pointing out that her grip is just fine.
I blame Jack Bauer and George Bush, but mostly George Bush.
Considering that the current Army FM on pistol marksmanship, which lists and shows the teacup grip (“palm-supported grip”) as acceptable, was published during GWB’s administration, you may actually have a point.
LMFAO!!!!!!
I’m just jazzed that chicks be getting creative in their carry holster gear..on the thigh, calf, belly bands, shoulders, purses, bras, and fanny packs. Nothing sexier than an open carrying lady, but the conceal carrying lady who does try to keep some fashion sense is not lacking at all. Of course none of them train on getting that thing out in a second or two and will likely shoot themselves, but hey, gotta start somewhere.
It’s a shame that Michael Bloomberg has more pull than the female NY Republican senator speaking at the fashion show. I guess money does buy anything, including a posse to piss on the constitution.
What a bunch of tacticool prima- donnas!! Who cares how anybody shoots the pistol (or carries for that matter) , it’s hitting targets that counts. Everything else is a bunch of gun snob, tacti-cool B.S. that makes “gunnies” look like “know it all A** holes”. She isn’t the one with the problem–YOU ARE. The real problem is tacticool Timmy and the gun fad mafia telling everyone”how to”.
Cool story bro, tell me also how lifting heavy objects with your back rather than your legs is good too. Sorry but the physics just don’t support teacup as a good method. Unless you have some sort of hand or wrist ailment that prevents you from holding a handgun properly then I disagree with you.
+1 Good recoil management helps new shooters enjoy shooting a lot more. A crappy grip will make the gun flip more and be more uncomfortable to shoot. Discomfort at the range will mean reluctance to make a return trip.
Also it looks like the newbie backwards lean is in full effect. I remember getting a Second Amendment Sisters Newsletter where there were like 8 women on the firing line with an instructor and ALL had their weight at their heels.
Instructors need to look for this, as it’ll be fine with a .22, but when they move on up, it will make for less fun at the range.
This is a big deal!
That wasn’t a good comparison.. Everyone on the planet needs to use their legs when picking up heavy objects. However, everyone does not feel comfortable shooting the same way. Depending on the weight of the weapon and the ability to hold that weight up while still shooting straight, matters alot. I went to the gun range for the first time yesterday shooting a 9mm using the tea cup grip and stayed in the center target the entire time.. Very impressive! I was not comfortable holding that powerful gun with my hands gripped around the weapon in combat mode. I was practically teaching myself to shoot with one hand instead of two, only supporting the weight with my other hand. One hand shooting should be introduced first, then two handed military combat second.
Oh god, the “Madame Leanback”.
Seriously though, I would be more impressed if the NRA was putting stuff like this out into actual broadcast media, not stamping a huge “WE’RE THE NRA AND THIS IS STUFF YOU ALREADY KNOW AND EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE EFFECTIVELY ALIENATED THE COUNTRY ALONG WITH THE BRADY CAMPAIGN, HERE IS AN OTHERWISE USEFUL VIDEO MADE USELESS BY STAMPING NRA ON IT AND ONLY GIVING IT ENOUGH DISTRIBUTION REACH TO BE SEEN SOLELY BY GUN OWNERS”.. I mean, NRA stamp.
Late to the party, but researching “teacup grip” and this came up.
My wife has been shooting for 40 years or so, and teacups, because that’s how her father taught her. It works fine for her with revolvers. She’s very, very accurate with a Ruger Security-Six. Revolvers is mostly what she’s shot over the years. I never previously saw any reason to try to change it, because “it worked” for her, she’d been doing it that way long before she met me, and I didn’t see any reason to challenge what her (late) Dad taught her decades ago.
But recently we’ve been trying to transition her to automatics so she could have a “carry” with decent punch *and* decent concealability.
She has weak wrists, both naturally and because she also has carpal tunnel in her shooting hand.
For awhile it was confusing me why she was having consistent problems with rounds not fully seating on second and subsequent shots with a semi-auto. Not every time, but enough to be disconcerting and discouraging, particularly for what was intended to be a “carry”, which should be all about maximum confidence, right? Then I’d take the same weapon (and we tried it with more than one semi-auto). . . and it never happened to me.
So I started watching the gun while she shot. Even with a .380 with decent weight (the Walther PPK/s .380 by S&W) to help control recoil, I could see the gun rotating her weak shooting wrist quite high after each shot –even with a steel .380 that has good weight to it. The conclusion I’ve come to (after reading around this week and watching a few videos), is that is the problem causing the incomplete seating of new rounds –her weak shooting wrist combined with “teacup” offhand giving no additional support, is soaking up too much of the blowback intended by the manufacturer to work the action.
So, now I’m looking forward to getting back to the range with her, working on her grip, and I bet the problem with the slide not returning completely will disappear. But I’ll still tell her she can “teacup” her Security Six if she likes (it’s a heavy gun).
Are you guys serious?! As a woman and basic pistol instructor, IDPA shooter, women are NOT being taught a tea cup grip! A proper two handed grip gives the shooter more control over muzzle flip and less likely to have a malfunction. Yes, we should all be practicing one handed shooting with both the shooting hand and support hand. I train at different schools and some teach weaver, some isosceles, some don’t care. (Trainers at Gun Site teach weaver and trainers at Frontsight are still teaching Isosceles.) And lastly women who train defensively and practice are quite profecent at drawing from conealment.
As much skin on the grip as possible is the way to go. Teaching someone to use the teacup grip because it is easier handicaps them later. Just as the proper swing on a driver feels unnatural at first the thumbs forward combat grip feels a little weird too, but the physics work in the shooters favor for recoil control. Firearms recoil up, not down, the only thing teacup grip controls is the shooter’s noodle arm. It also bears mentioning that in the case of catastrophic malfunction most weapons, I’m looking at you Five_seveN, will blow out the mag well and you do not want your fingers anywhere near that.