There’s something to be said for training on diverse platforms. Last week I burned my hand at work, along my right thumb and the web between the thumb and forefinger. Not hugely serious, but painful, and any pressure makes it worse. Because of it’s location it also requires a pretty big dressing to secure the gauze. In an emergency the pain isn’t really going to be an issue, but the bulk of the dressing? I discovered that I cannot hold my EDC pistol correctly.

Oops. Yeah, I can shoot left-handed, but I am far, far better with my right hand. If I am betting my life that’s the safe money.

I can operate the gun, but in an emergency if I have to snatch it and shoot fast it’s not going to be pointed where my muscle-memory thinks it is, and I’ll miss the most important shots of my remaining life. If I was a ‘one gun to rule them all’ type I’d be boned. Fortunately I have a broad variety of handguns I shoot well enough to be my life on, and one of them still works just fine.

We all train to shoot weak-hand (or should) in case our strong-hand is disabled, but it didn’t really occur to me to have a plan if my strong-hand is disabled in daily life and out of action or limited in usefulness for a week or more. Because I practice with a broad variety of guns there was a solution, uh, at hand.

It’s something to think about.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 28 February 2021