Sooner Or Later, There'll Be Blood Coming From That Knuckle

The sooner or later painful and bloody thumb over thumb grip.

Usually, when I see a shooter at the range holding a pistol like this, I am kind enough to explain to them why they should not be holding a semi-automatic pistol with a grip like that. If they are lucky, I get to them before the bottom of the slide rips open the flesh on the knuckle of the thumb that is sitting atop the other thumb. All too many times, I have seen it too late and the damage has already been done. You can rest assured, that if a person, who has had a knuckle ripped open by a slide because of that thumb over thumb grip, has half a brain - they will never or rarely do it again because it usually hurts a lot.

It's a little more difficult to have the lesson sink in when just telling folks about it. I mean, sure some shooters listen to what I say and take it to heart and learn from my own personal bad experience. Yes, I learned the hard way by having the knuckle torn open - but just once. On the other hand, there are shooters who are a bit denser and no matter how many times you tell them not to do something - they do it anyway and repeatedly at that. That is, they do it repeatedly until bad shit happens to them. So, even though I have caught many folks in time (before they got their knuckle ripped open) and warned them not to use that thumb over thumb grip, they wind up reverting to it again sooner or later and thus, sooner or later, they wind up having the slide rip their knuckle open and learn the hard way. Then again, even some of them do not learn from that painful experience and go back to that grip again and again. After a number of such warnings from me, that fall on deaf ears, I usually just give up. If they want to bleed, let them bleed - after all, maybe they like pain.

All the best,
Glenn B