Is anyone proficient with dual handguns anymore?

[Skyyr]

I was thinking last night (and this is purely conjecture - it has no real application that I can think of)...

In the days of the old west, it wasn't entirely uncommon for cowboys to be proficient with using two guns at the same time, one in each hand. Many written accounts and photos back this up. Many of the top shooters of the 1800's dual-wielded pistols as well. These guys didn't simply spray-and-pray, they were ambidextrous expert marksman.

Fast forward to today... and not many people even own more than one handgun, let alone do they know how to use two. Now I know our culture and technology has removed much (if not all) of the "need" for such a skill, but I personally would think that it would still be a skill (relatively) many would want to pride themselves in excelling at. Outside of maybe cowboy action shooters, I've never seen or even heard of anyone being proficient with dual handguns (Hollywood movies excluded).

Any thoughts or insights?

[Dale Gribble]

I don't see a reason to be proficient at dual wielding. But I do wish I could shoot left handed as well as I can right handed. My reason being that in a true self defense situation for a non-LEO you are not likely going to be firing the first shot(except maybe within your own home). Assuming the gremlin shoots first and wounds your normal shooting side and assuming you aren't completely taken out of the fight it would be nice to be able to competently return fire with your off hand.

[BWT]

Capacity, reliability and the technique of shooting have all changed that, in my opinion anyway.

Before you had five or six shots, also often times they were cap and ball, not cartridges, so if the powder got damp, or if it sat too long for whatever reason, you'd have a misfire in the cylinder and have a bullet/powder and primer stuck in the gun's cylinder.

I think it would be reckless to carry back then with just one gun, because also, look at the magazine capacity and how complicated a reload is, with 5-6 shots and then you have to mess with an op rod and rotating a cylinder, or some designs were tip up, but still, in a gun fight, who has time for that? They didn't have speed strips.

Lastly Technique, everything back then was also massive calibers for the most part .45 Long Colt, .44 Magnum, etc., long barrels with the weight at the front of the gun, firing it one handed and then raising and firing another revolver in the other hand to speed up follow up shots or basically point shooting was the methodology employed, or at least from what I've observed.

I'd say carry a spare gun, if you feel the need, but don't carry a spare gun to have one in each hand, you sacrifice control in recoil, and really aiming the weapon, Strong hand only and weak hand only shooting is much harder than shooting with both hands, or at least following up is.

Also, what range will let you practice with handguns in both hands?

Almost none I know, because some people insist on shooting guns as fast as they can pull the trigger often times without seeing the sights on one pistol with both hands.

YMMV, interesting discussion, but I just think that the modern technique points to different weapon handling skills.

[DocH]

I routinely include 2 handgun shooting in my sessions using threat focused skills,mostly with a pair of G19's.I have also done so with a 19 and a17,auto and revolver,or two revolvers.
I started doing this in the late 60's-early 70's and got away from it for a while but there is value in it and I have always included it for past several years.
It's really not that difficult to do well with good coordination.It just simply adds to your proficiency,another tool in the box so to speak.

[TOrrock]

Kind of hard to use the sights on two different pieces at the same time.

[Skyyr]

Originally Posted by Templar

Kind of hard to use the sights on two different pieces at the same time.

That's what was so amazing about the cowboy shooters - they (typically) didn't need sights. They had so much practice and proficiency that they knew from muscle-memory alone where their shots would impact. Horse-shoes is a game that relies on similar skills (albeit not as honed or as spectacular).

For longer precision shots, yes, you'd need sights, but out to 25-50yds, they could nail virtually anything from the hip.

[DocH]

Originally Posted by Templar

Kind of hard to use the sights on two different pieces at the same time.

That's where threat focused skills come into play which is what you will be doing in a fight anyway.May as well be good at it.

[Zhurdan]

I learned to shoot "better" with my support hand when I was running Cowboy Action Shooting guns. I shot "gunfighter" class, which is one in each hand, alternating hands. The targets were stupid close, but it was fun as hell. Aside from a game like SASS, there's no real application of one in each hand that I can think of... other than it's just damn fun to do with single action revolvers. Yeeeehawww!

Besides that, I think historical accounts are probably a little "colorful" in regards to how things actually took place in the old west. I'm sure it happened, but as with many things in the old west, there was some serious exaggeration. There weren't any gunfights at high noon that spanned half the town in length. Many were at contact distances to 10 feet. A pistol back then (1880's) would cost around $25-$75 depending on what part of the country you were in. That's around $550-$1650 in today's dollars. Considering how much they were paid(loose term) at that time, carrying two pistols either came about from gambling well or taking it off someone you'd killed.

Dual wielding is for movies, video games and Cowboy Action Shooting IMO.

[Crow Hunter]

What advantage would you gain with a gun in each hand at the same time?

I have actually done it with both single action revolvers and G19s.

I was significantly slower than I was firing single handed when holding any type of accuracy.

Even if I was ambidexterous, I don't see it as an advantage to constantly be switching focus back and forth. If I put both guns in exactly the same position so I don't have to switch focus, I am even slower and I might as well just fire one until empty then bring the other up. If you factor in reduced control/speed firing 1 handed, I would be better off firing one until empty 2 handed, do a New York reload and continue firing left handed. (Assuming I was a mutant and just as good with both hands).

Now for sheer fun factor, that is something else.

One thing about revolvers and gunslinger is watch out for hand placement and the cylinder gap.... Oww Oww Oww....

[Byron]

Originally Posted by DocH

I routinely include 2 handgun shooting in my sessions using threat focused skills,mostly with a pair of G19's.

What do you gain by firing two weapons with half as much control and no use of sights?

For what scenarios are you practicing? In what context do you envision finding that the best use for your hands is to hold two pistols?

I can't imagine a single situation in which the off hand wouldn't be better used for manipulating things (slide, flashlight, doorknob, magazines, etc), controlling the primary weapon, or fending in close quarters.

Wielding two pistols seems to offer the worst of all worlds.

[NCPatrolAR]

I dont see the need. In the times you cited; people probably learned the skill (argueably to what actual level) due to revolver being slow to reload.

[Entropy]

Originally Posted by Byron

What do you gain by firing two weapons with half as much control and no use of sights?

For what scenarios are you practicing? In what context do you envision finding that the best use for your hands is to hold two pistols?

I can't imagine a single situation in which the off hand wouldn't be better used for manipulating things (slide, flashlight, doorknob, magazines, etc), controlling the primary weapon, or fending in close quarters.

Wielding two pistols seems to offer the worst of all worlds.

Exactly. I get so annoyed with movies that have people wielding two pistols and doing "well" with their shooting. If I see a preview on TV for such a movie, that is just enough for me to completely avoid seeing the movie.

[Skyyr]

I see many people bring up that it would be slower and more awkward. Both of these items could be solved with practice and training. If people can juggle dual chainsaws while the blades are running without incident, then shooting dual pistols should be a cakewalk by comparison. Let's not focus on anything that could be solved through an decent amount of practice.

The valid points I've seen are 1) practicality and 2) loss of support hand.

This is a good discussion... carry on!

[NCPatrolAR]

Originally Posted by DocH

but there is value in it

And that is?

[NCPatrolAR]

Originally Posted by Skyyr

I see many people bring up that it would be slower and more awkward. Both of these items could be solved with practice and training. If people can juggle dual chainsaws while the blades are running without incident, then shooting dual pistols should be a cakewalk by comparison. Let's not focus on anything that could be solved through an decent amount of practice.

The valid points I've seen are 1) practicality and 2) loss of support hand.

This is a good discussion... carry on!

Why not use the time it takes to become ok with two pistols to become even better with one?

[Byron]

Originally Posted by Skyyr

I see many people bring up that it would be slower and more awkward. Both of these items could be solved with practice and training.

Mitigated? Yes.
Solved? No.

It's basic physics: firing a gun with one hand will never be as fast as with two hands. Shot to shot recovery will take time.

If it could be "solved" with just practice, why would competition shooters ever bother putting two hands on the pistol? They could use that off hand to shave time in all sorts of crazy ways. As just one example, imagine if they just ran around with the off-hand on the spare mag: they could shave reload times.

[John_Wayne777]

Originally Posted by Skyyr

That's what was so amazing about the cowboy shooters - they (typically) didn't need sights. They had so much practice and proficiency that they knew from muscle-memory alone where their shots would impact.

I think you're confusing legend with fact, my friend. Aside from Wild Bill Hickock who is documented firing two revolvers simultaneously at two separate targets, I don't know of any other examples of individuals using two pistols at the same time. Even Wild Bill's shot was a trick shot.

For longer precision shots, yes, you'd need sights, but out to 25-50yds, they could nail virtually anything from the hip.

I'd say that's a lot more legend than fact. It's easy to dramatically overestimate the skill of old west gunfighters because an entire genre of entertainment flourishes around the mythology of the old west. In truth, we know a hell of a lot more about gunfighting today than they ever did. We shoot more than they ever did. There are competitions today using firearms and equipment from that era and even the most dedicated competitors couldn't hope to reproduce the feats many people seem to think were common among gunfighters in those days. The American west did not, in fact, see a generation of superhuman gunfighters.

Originally Posted by DocH

That's where threat focused skills come into play which is what you will be doing in a fight anyway.May as well be good at it.

Threat focused sighting is fine within the range where it applies...but I'm telling you from considerable experience that you can stare as hard as you'd like at where you want the bullets to go, but it won't accomplish much. In a fight you'll do what you've trained to do...which is why training is important.

Originally Posted by Byron

If it could be "solved" with just practice, why would competition shooters ever bother putting two hands on the pistol? They could use that off hand to shave time in all sorts of crazy ways. As just one example, imagine if they just ran around with the off-hand on the spare mag: they could shave reload times.

IIRC there is a "gunfighter" class in SASS where competitors have to use a pistol in both hands. To the best of my knowledge even the best shooters in the "gunfighter" class are routinely bested by skilled shooters running guns one handed. That would be a clue about the utility of that particular approach.

[Alex V]

Im pretty damn good with Akimbo Glock 18s in Call of Duty...

But in real life I have a hard enough time placing the shot where I want with both hands on my Beretta let alone a gun in each hand.

As stated before, I think the availability of more than 5 or 6 rounds per handgun, the speed of magazine reloading eliminated the need to fight with two handguns at the same time.

Having said that, I find it increadible how they were able to draw, fire and hit their target all without even raising the gun to eye level.

[Lumpy196]

Originally Posted by Skyyr

That's what was so amazing about the cowboy shooters - they (typically) didn't need sights. They had so much practice and proficiency that they knew from muscle-memory alone where their shots would impact. Horse-shoes is a game that relies on similar skills (albeit not as honed or as spectacular).

For longer precision shots, yes, you'd need sights, but out to 25-50yds, they could nail virtually anything from the hip.

Wyatt Earp's own words, from Eugene Cunningham's book Triggernometry:

"I was a fair hand with pistol, rifle, or shotgun, but I learned more about gunfighting from Tom Speer's cronies during the summer of '71 than I had dreamed was in the book. Those old-timers took their gunplay seriously, which was natural under the conditions in which they lived. Shooting, to them, was considerably more than aiming at a mark and pulling a trigger. Models of weapons, methods of wearing them, means of getting them into action and operating them, all to the one end of combining high speed with absolute accuracy, contributed to the frontiersman's shooting skill. The sought-after degree of proficiency was that which could turn to most effective account the split-second between life and death. Hours upon hours of practice, and wide experience in actualities supported their arguments over style.

The most important lesson I learned from those proficient gunfighters was the the winner of a gunplay usually was the man who took his time. The second was that, if I hoped to live long on the frontier, I would shun flashy trick-shooting -- grandstand play -- as I would poison.

When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a sixgun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear to a man who has never been in a gunfight. Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, is what I mean.

In all my life as a frontier police officer, I did not know a really proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who literally shot from the hip. In later years I read a great deal about this type of gunplay, supposedly employed by men noted for skill with a forty-five.

From personal experience and numerous six-gun battles which I witnessed, I can only support the opinion advanced by the men who gave me my most valuable instruction in fast and accurate shooting, which was that the gun-fanner and hip-shooter stood small chance to live against a man who, as old Jack Gallagher always put it, took his time and pulled the trigger once.

Cocking and firing mechanisms on new revolvers were almost invariably altered by their purchasers in the interests of smoother, effortless handling, usually by filing the dog which controlled the hammer, some going so far as to remove triggers entirely or lash them against the guard, in which cases the guns were fired by thumbing the hammer. This is not to be confused with fanning, in which the triggerless gun is held in one hand while the other was brushed rapidly across the hammer to cock the gun, and firing it by the weight of the hammer itself. A skillful gun-fanner could fire five shots from a forty-five so rapidly that the individual reports were indistinguishable, but what could happen to him in a gunfight was pretty close to murder.

I saw Jack Gallagher's theory borne out so many times in deadly operation that I was never tempted to forsake the principles of gunfighting as I had them from him and his associates.

There was no man in the Kansas City group who was Wild Bill's equal with a six-gun. Bill's correct name, by the way, was James B. Hickok. Legend and the imaginations of certain people have exaggerated the number of men he killed in gunfights and have misrepresented the manner in which he did his killing. At that, they could not very well overdo his skill with pistols.

Hickok knew all the fancy tricks and was as good as the best at that sort of gunplay, but when he had serious business at hand, a man to get, the acid test of marksmanship, I doubt if he employed them. At least, he told me that he did not. I have seen him in action and I never saw him fan a gun, shoot from the hip, or try to fire two pistols simultaneously. Neither have I ever heard a reliable old-timer tell of any trick-shooting employed by Hickok when fast straight-shooting meant life or death.

That two-gun business is another matter that can stand some truth before the last of the old-time gunfighters has gone on. They wore two guns, most of six-gun toters did, and when the time came for action went after them with both hands. But they didn't shoot them that way.

Primarily, two guns made the threat of something in reserve; they were useful as a display of force when a lone man stacked up against a crowd. Some men could shoot equally well with either hand, and in a gunplay might alternate their fire; others exhausted the loads from the gun on the right, or the left, as the case might be, then shifted the reserve weapon to the natural shooting hand if that was necessary and possible. Such a move -- the border shift -- could be made faster than the eye could follow a top-notch gun-thrower, but if the man was as good as that, the shift would seldom be required.

Whenever you see a picture of some two-gun man in action with both weapons held closely against his hips and both spitting smoke together, you can put it down that you are looking at the picture of a fool, or a fake. I remember quite a few of these so-called two-gun men who tried to operate everything at once, but like the fanners, they didn't last long in proficient company.

In the days of which I am talking, among men whom I have in mind, when a man went after his guns, he did so with a single, serious purpose. There was no such thing as a bluff; when a gunfighter reached for his forty-five, every faculty he owned was keyed to shooting as speedily and as accurately as possible, to making his first shot the last of the fight. He just had to think of his gun solely as something with which to kill another before he himself could be killed. The possiblity of intimidating an antagonist was remote, although the 'drop' was thoroughly respected, and few men in the West would draw against it. I have seen men so fast and so sure of themselves that they did go after their guns while men who intended to kill them had them covered, and what is more win out in the play. They were rare. It is safe to say, for all general purposes, that anything in gunfighting that smacked of show-off or bluff was left to braggarts who were ignorant or careless of their lives.

I might add that I never knew a man who amounted to anything to notch his gun with 'credits,' as they were called, for men he had killed. Outlaws, gunmen of the wild crew who killed for the sake of brag, followedthis custom. I have worked with most of the noted peace officers -- Hickok, Billy Tilghman, Pat Sughre, Bat Masterson, Charlie Basset, and others of like caliber -- have handled their weapons many times, but never knew one of them to carry a notched gun.

There are two other points about the old-time method of using six-guns most effectively that do not seem to be generally known. One is that the gun was not cocked with the ball of the thumb. As his gun was jerked into action, the old-timer closed the whole joint of his thumb over the hammer and the gun was cocked in that fashion. The soft flesh of the thumb ball might slip if a man's hands were moist, and a slip was not to be chanced if humanly avoidable. This thumb-joint method was employed whether or not a man used the trigger for firing.

On the second point, I have often been asked why five shots without reloading were all a top-notch gunfighter fired, when his guns were chambered for six cartridges. The answer is, merely, safety. To ensure against accidental discharge of the gun while in the holster, due to hair-trigger adjustment, the hammer rested upon an empty chamber. As widely as this was known and practiced, the number of cartridges a man carried in his six-gun may be taken as an indication of a man's rank with the gunfighters of the old school. Practiced gun-wielders had too much respect for their weapons to take unnecessary chances with them; it was only with tyros and would-bes that you heard of accidental discharges or didn't-know-it-was-loaded injuries in the country where carrying a Colt's was a man's prerogative."

[Byron]

Thanks very much, Lumpy. Fascinating piece, 95% of which sounds like could be written today.