Concealed Carry Corner: Shooting With Your Offhand

Welcome back to another edition of Concealed Carry Corner. Last week, we talked about the good and bad aspects of Constitutional Carry. If you happened to miss that article, be sure to click the link here to check it out. This week, I wanted to talk about a real-life problem many of us run into when it comes to carrying over a long period of time. Whether you are injured or just find yourself in an odd situation, it can be tricky to have a good carry setup if something happens. Sometimes the best course of action is to learn how to shoot with both hands in order to be proficient. Some may not understand why it's important but there are a number of benefits to learning how to shoot offhand. Let's take a closer look at shooting with your offhand.

Problems In Daily Life Happen

When I start talking about learning how to shoot with your non-dominant hand, the number one question I often get is a simple why? Whether you hit your finger or hand working and end up either fracturing or breaking something, bad luck happens more than you realize. Last week, I was lifting a larger piece of wood and hit my elbow real hard. I didn’t think much of it at the time but the next morning it was rather swollen and I couldn't fully extend my arm.

Things like this happen in life and having the ability to quickly shoot with your left hand means you can still protect yourself and use your dominant hand as your support hand. It's certainly not the perfect situation but it's better than nothing when you still want to protect yourself. Whether it's a hurt arm, swollen elbow, broken hand or finger, we have to adapt if we want to be able to still protect ourselves. Switching to your left hand and using your right hand as a support won't be ideal but with a little practice, it's certainly doable.

How To Adjust While Carrying

If you happen to hurt some part of your hand or arm, another factor you have to look at is how you plan on carrying your gun. 99% of the time, a normal IWB belt holster works fantastic but if you have hurt your strong hand, a normal holster like that can be rather tricky to draw from. Having a smaller option like a pocket carry pistol can be a much better choice since you can throw your gun in either pocket and still easily draw from concealment. Most holster types have a specific position it needs in order to function properly.

Being able to pocket carry is one of the best ways to switch sides on your body without purchasing anything or having to relearn how to draw from concealment. Of course, you could always carry in the same holster as you typically do and then switch hands but the danger of dropping the gun or having an accident occur does go up with that option. Having to deal with a broken hand or something similar may never happen to some of you but with the way accidents happen in life, it's never a bad idea to think about what you would need to do in order to have the ability to protect yourself. The other aspect that we need to keep in mind is the training portion of this.

Range Tips For Shooting Offhand

Shooting offhand with your support hand is something that's very easy to work in when at the range. Almost every single drill that you may normally shoot with your dominant hand can be done with your offhand as well. Whether that's something like a simple Bill Drill, all the way to multiple targets with transition and a reload. While you don't need to be as proficient with your offhand as you are with your strong hand, it's important to be able to fire your handgun with either hand. At first, you will have a significant disadvantage with your offhand but with enough practice, the difference in accuracy will start to close after some time. There's no secret trick in order to learn how to shoot with your offhand but rather just takes reps and lots of practice.

Overall Thoughts

While it's not common to hurt yourself to the point where you can't draw or shoot your gun in your dominant hand but it certainly can happen. It's important to be able to manipulate your handgun with both hands as a base rule but really becomes important if you have a cast or have limited use of your dominant arm. Have any of you ever had to deal with a broken hand and arm while trying to carry a concealed handgun? Let me know down in the comments below. If you have questions about carrying concealed or firearms in general, feel free to shoot me a message on Instagram @fridgeopeartor. Stay safe out there and we will see you next week for another edition of Concealed Carry Corner.