U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- When people talk about practicing weak hand shooting, what is their typical justification? The most common reasoning I hear is preparation in the event their dominant hand is struck by gunfire. This isn’t without reason. Often times we see individuals struck in the hands and arms when shooting at an armed threat, as tunnel vision focuses their eyes on the weapon that has caused them to fire. However, I think there is a much less dramatic, and much more likely reason for needing to practice weak hand shooting.
What reason am I thinking of? Simple; injuries to the dominant hand produced by day-to-day accidents. How many of you have ever broken or fractured a bone? Dislocated a joint, or in extreme cases, had an amputation? Slipping on ice, tripping over children and pets, sports injuries, car wrecks, and more are never too far away. Having personally dislocated a shoulder and elbow, I know this reality all too well. Unfortunately for me, these injuries occurred as a child, and the potential implications of them didn’t hit me until much more recently. Even amputations aren’t too far from reality, as I’ve known a couple of dozen people who have lost partial and whole fingers from injuries as simple as having a door slammed on their hand.
Supporting my Argument
Emergency Room Visits
Supporting this is a 2009 study conducted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), using information collected by the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). You can read their information here. Below are the results of the study:
“A query of the NEISS resulted in 92,601 records of upper extremity injury treated at an emergency department in the USA in
