Todd Louis Green has been on a roll lately with some top-notch articles. I’ve actually been meaning to write up my comments on his “1H Shooting” for a while now… better late than never I guess.

First, go read the original article. It stands alone just fine and I think Todd makes a great point about perspective. Is learning to shoot and manipulate your gun with one hand important? Yes. But how important depends upon your actual need and shouldn’t depend upon things like “well what if you’re injured in a fight?”  I mean, yes, that’s still a valid point to consider, but should it dictate that you spend all your time learning 1H shooting? Probably not. Yes you should know it and if you don’t know how to do 1H shooting and manipulations you really need to learn them. But I like Todd’s reasoning here:

But just keep in mind that the time you put into polishing your WHO double feed malfunction clearance technique is time you’re taking away from improving the skills you’re far more likely to need, like drawing and hitting at speed with two hands.

Very true. Our time and other resources are finite, so we have to keep that perspective.

But then Todd goes on to say:

For someone who hasn’t yet learned the proper way to draw, reload, and clear malfunctions both SHO and WHO I’d recommend fixing that flaw, but in terms of sustaining those skills you need to look at your actual needs. For example, competition-oriented shooters will probably never have to perform WHO draws or one-handed reloads but SHO and WHO shooting is extremely common in both USPSA and IDPA. A K9 officer, on the other hand, is extremely likely to need strong hand only skills.

So again, it all comes down to YOUR needs. What are YOU training for? What does your context require? You shouldn’t neglect things, but just find perspective. I don’t NEED WHO shooting that much, but I need to practice it more because, as an instructor, I need to be able to demonstrate things to students. I’m expected to have a higher level of skill. That said, I still don’t kill myself to practice it to death tho. As you can see from my recent dry fire logs, I have other things that need my primary focus.

Learn to shoot one-handed. Learn to manipulate your gun one handed (and consider how hardware may matter, like Dawson Precision Charger rear sights). Practice these skills, but keep perspective relative to your context and needs.