Hold Tight To The Past

In any discipline we revere the old masters because we learned from them. “Old” does not equal “obsolete,” not for firearms and not for shooting techniques. There were reasons the old masters became icons. Much of what they taught still works, though some have been forgotten. Let’s look at a few examples:

“Yet for many years the crush grip was scorned as the ‘gorilla grip’ by shooters who advocated applying as little as 40 percent of your grip strength to the gun.”

In The Grasp Of Askins

Col. Charles Askins, Jr. was for many years the Shooting Editor of this magazine. I had the privilege of knowing him. He was a legend in the shooting world and one of the master gunfighters of the 20th Century. He won hundreds of shooting medals, and captured the National Pistol Championship of the United States in the mid-1930s. In the September 1968 issue of GUNS, here’s what he had to say about how hard to hold a handgun:

“Regardless of the size of the shooter’s gun hand there is only one proper grip so far as strength goes. That is to hold the piece with a grip like iron! The gun wants to be grasped so tightly that the end of the fingers all turn white. This is because all the blood has been pressed out of them. This kind of a pressure ensures a uniformity of recoil, which in turn accounts for a sameness of hit location. The upflip and twist of the muzzle is held to minimum limits which in turn dictates where each bullet prints.

“When you first try to hold the handgun with the force that is required, it will tremble. This will go on for quite a long time and the only cure is practice — both with the gun empty and loaded. Persist in gripping very hard and over a period of time, which may stretch into several months, and you will finally achieve a grasp as tough as it should be and yet the gun will not wobble and tremble. Then you have arrived.”

The “power grasp” won Askins prizes ranging from the National Championship to — in his many gunfights — his very life. Yet for many years the crush grip was scorned as the “gorilla grip” by shooters who advocated applying as little as 40 percent of your grip strength to the gun.

But today’s masters have come strongly back to the “hard hold,” vindicating Charlie Askins and the many of us who had followed and shared his good advice all along.

Keith Gives Us The, Uh, Finger …

Ever notice when shooting a single-action, frontier-style revolver with powerful loads, the famous “plow handle” grip rolls it in your hand and leaves the muzzle pointed at the sky? There’s good news and bad news with this. The good? The roll dissipates recoil force, where the high recurve on the backstrap of a double action revolver would slam a good part of the “kick” straight back into the web of your hand. This is why, from the 1950s on, lots of folks swore the SA Ruger .44 Magnum kicked less than the DA Smith & Wesson.

But the bad news is this: The shooter has to bring the muzzle all the way back down and re-grasp for the next shot, not to mention having to thumb-cock the hammer again. The legendary Elmer Keith (who also wrote a lot for this magazine) offered the following advice on this matter in his 1955 classic Sixguns by Keith:

“Men with large hands will usually find their best bet with Colt, Ruger and Great Western single action guns is to curl the little finger under and around the butt of the gun. It is then in the best position to aid in cocking the gun during recoil for the next shot.”

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