Avoid These Common Mistakes | Back to Basics by Mike Glover
Hey guys, what's going on? Mike Glover here with Back to Basics. It's always important to revisit the basics, and that's what we're going to do today. Today we're going to talk about basic gun handling. Now, if you're new to firearms, or even if you're experienced with firearms, something that's often done with a new firearm, even if you just bought a gun and have never shot that gun before, you immediately go to loading that firearm up and then getting your practice on the range. There are a whole bunch of things that you could do, including dry firing and dry practice to be good and confident with that new firearm. And if again, you're new to firearms completely, these are things that you could do always with every single particular firearm. You could go from pistol car being to rifles and shotguns and still benefit from it. It's all about back to basics.
Alright, let's talk about this. So I have my pistol, my everyday carry pistol in a fanny pack. I'm going to ahead pull it out and just assume, because I unloaded it, I'm going to assume that it's unloaded. No, you're never going to do that. You're always going to assume that the firearm is loaded, especially if you walked away from that firearm. I'm not going to take the chance. So the first thing I'm going to do is make it safe. In this case, I want it to be safe, so I'm going to make it safe and ensure and confirm that it's not actually loaded. So I know the condition of this right now, but again, I'm just confirming that I'm going to lock it to the rear, and that would happen with an empty magazine. So it's kind of confirming it for me. I'm dropping the source of feed three point, checking it inside the back of the barrel, inside the magwell on the bolt face, and I know it's clear, not it's in a safe condition.
I want to bring it back and restore it to here and then insert the empty magazine for the sake of this content. So that's an important thing that you always do, and on a lot of the ranges that I teach on when I see somebody manipulating a firearm, pistol, carine, whatever I know out the gate, if they're experienced, or at least they've practiced with firearm handling because there's universal things that you always do with each particular weapon system that are common to all. Okay, let me give you an example of some things that you could do to practice safe gun handling. So this doesn't require a range. It just requires a safe cleared pistol, carine rifle or shotgun, and it just takes practice. It just takes some time. So I have this firearm that I just cleared. It's in my right hand, I'm going to put it down on the ground.
The first thing I'm going to do is practice picking up this firearm and you're like, practice picking up a firearm. Why would you practice picking up a firearm? Well, because a lot of people pick up firearms like ham sandwiches. It's a hot dog from seven 11. They're delicious, but that's not how you pick it up. You don't just pick it up from this end and start manipulating to your grip. That's not how it works. Imagine if you did that in self-defense. This is a loaded firearm on your nightstand and you picked it up and then you had to acquire a grip. If you do competitive shooting, there is an actual method optimized way of doing it, and that's what I want you to practice, and that's what we'll practice now. So no matter where this firearm is, it's in your holster, in your center console, in your fanny pack or on your table and practicing.
You should practice these different variations because a lot of you carry firearms in different configurations. We don't all carry on a multicam battle belt on a range, so it's sitting here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to first come into the pistol applying my trigger finger on the side of the frame, and I'm going to rotate the pistol with a nose on the surface with the rear end, the back strap up so I could acquire a grip with a V notch in my hand, right? All of that happens before I lift the gun off the table. Again, practicing that, you could actually isolate that. I come into it, lift it again, come into it, trigger finger, touches the gun first. Then I lift with my fingers into my thumb. Thumb is high, it's making room for my support and if I had it to, and so when I lift this gun off the table, there's a few things to note.
One, my wrist is stiff. I don't flop my wrist. I see people doing this on the range all the time. They're like, okay, I'm doing the thing with the gun. And I'm like, why would you do that? Why do you have a floppy wrist and you know, have to get a stiff wrist when you pick up a firearm, it should be ready to go into action immediately. So again, rolling into it, picking it up immediately. You notice that one, my wrist is stiff. Two, the orientation of the barrel is in a safe direction, and three, the v notch in the back strap of the gun with the middle finger pushed up against the trigger guard. Those two points of contact are critical. If I was like this and the gun started muzzle flipping and recoiling my hand, it just wouldn't be appropriate. Again, I'm not intending to fire this firearm, I'm not going to shoot it, but it's just safe gun handling and good practice to do this all the time.
Even if you look at it from an efficiency perspective, and I'm looking at dropping the source of feed, clearing, loading, unloading all the procedures, it's more efficient to be built out this way. Lastly, I want you to take note of how close this firearm is to my face. It's close because it's in my work box, my field of view where I understand exactly where it's at. A lot of you like to hold your firearms away down in a way, because that might be a constraint from the range restriction. So don't do that. Keep it upright in your field of view where you could see it pointed in a safe direction so I could handle it properly. Alright guys, so the last thing that we're going to talk about is the positioning of my right hand to my left hand with the firearm. Alright? Even in this transition of picking up this firearm and moving it to here where you could see my hands, I'm going to be cognizant of my media guys who are in the room filming me.
And so again, that's a good practice. It's like gun handling is tethered to gun safety. So it's imperative that you understand it because it is the basics. That's the way I got to go back to it constantly. So I come here, I pick up the firearm like I taught you, going in trigger finger first, touching the side of the frame, rotating it up into the backstrap and the V notch of my hand, and then I'm going to rotate it this way because my mini guys are there, and now I have the barrel oriented in a safe direction. Even though I know this is empty, I always treat a firearm as if it's loaded. As so should I'm here. Something that you could practice is the transition of getting comfortable in rotating the gun from your strong hand to the weak hand. Now, there's many reasons why you would practice that.
I won't belabor it. I'm just going to tell you it's good for practice in conditioning your hands with your firearm, because the more coordinated your hands are, the more confidence you're going to have and likely the better you're going to shoot. So if I'm here, I'm going to take off my thumb and I'm going to rotate it on the outside of the firearm and I'm going to rotate it straight into the back strap of my other hand. Now, when I do that, notice that my trigger finger on my left hand is immediately a tethered and touching the side of the frame of the pistol. It's not here floating. Remember that whole flinch response thing? I don't want to be floating a trigger finger outside of the trigger guard just in case I want it tethered here and then I'm going to put it here. Now, even with me, who's done this a lot, I'm not very comfortable with my left hand and I want to be better at that. So I'm going to practice it. I'm going to open up my left thumb outside of the V notch again and rotate and push it into my right hand and do that transition. And then with practice, again, getting it right, do SLOWMO practice. If you need to get it better, I'm going to practice rotating that farm in and out of my hand. Now, Mike, what purpose would that ultimately serve? Again, it's back to coordination. It's all back to basics.
That's just a couple pro tips on getting back to basics that I wanted to go over. Look, a lot of people hone different things, but if you're worried about loading and going straight to the range before you've become very intimately familiar with the intricacies of your firearm, I think you're making a mistake because you'll be more confident when you actually load make ready, and you're ready to train. Guys, we're starting a gunfighter program. I don't know why I haven't started it before. I've taught GUNFIGHTER courses, pistol, Carine, DMR, long Gun, the list goes on, but we're starting an actual program. The difference is we're providing the equipment pistol, the Carine, the DMR rifle, eventually the long gun and the advanced training. Why would I ever do that? Well, a lot of times on the ranges, you take 24 students from 24 various backgrounds, what 24 pieces of different equipment, and you got a lot of different opinion, and you got a lot of different opinion on all the things.
So the reason I'm doing that is because I want to optimize you your trending experience and your capability with the equipment. So we're starting off with BCM. I'm going to give you a wrecky gun at the end of November, a 16 inch BCM Wrecky dialed, optimized for accuracy out the gate. That's how they produce 'em. I'm going to put a vortex optic on that, and we're not going to go to the range and start smashing targets. We're going to start with, here's the optic, here's how you mount it, here's how you boresight it. Here's a mill radian scope. Here's how you use it and optimize it. And then we're going to go to the range and get a high speed zero. That's how we're going to start it Every single night, we're going to break 'em down, we're going to clean them, and then we're going to get better and optimize so you guys can take advantage of that equipment and being more efficient with it. I'm looking forward to the gunfighter program. If you're not subscribed to my Patreon, make sure you do that. It's patreon.com/ Mike Glover. I'll link it down below, and I'm towing all the details. I can only do so much firearm wise on YouTube, but I appreciate you guys. Until next time, peace out.
Credit: Mike Glover, The FieldCraft Survival Channel