- Weaver stance
-
The Weaver stance is a popular technique for firing handguns. It was developed by Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Jack Weaver during freestyle pistol competition in Southern California during the late 1950s.
Contents
Description
The Weaver Stance is a two-handed technique in which the dominant hand holds the pistol or revolver and the support hand wraps around the dominant hand. The dominant arm's elbow is nearly straight while the support elbow is noticeably bent straight down. The shooter pushes forward with his dominant hand while the support hand exerts rearward pressure. The resultant isometric tension is intended to lessen and control muzzle flip when the gun is fired.
The Modern Technique of the Pistol
The Weaver Stance is one of five components of the "Modern Technique of the Pistol" developed by Jeff Cooper. The others are a large-caliber handgun, the flash sight picture, the compressed breath, and the surprise break.
History
The Weaver Stance was developed in 1959 by pistol shooter and deputy sheriff Jack Weaver, a range officer at the L.A. County Sheriff's Mira Loma pistol range. At the time, Weaver was competing in Jeff Cooper's "Leatherslap" matches: quick draw, man-on-man competition in which two shooters vied to pop twelve 18" wide balloons set up 21 feet away, whichever shooter burst all the balloons first winning the bout. Weaver developed his technique as a way to draw a handgun quickly to eye level and use the weapon's sights to aim more accurately, and immediately began winning against opponents predominantly using unsighted "hip shooting" techniques.
This technique was dubbed "the Weaver Stance" by gunwriter and firearms instructor Jeff Cooper, who widely publicized it in several books, as well as articles published in the then-fledgling Guns & Ammo magazine. When Cooper started the American Pistol Institute (since renamed Gunsite) firearms training school in 1977, his Modern Technique of the Pistol was built around a somewhat formalized "Classic Weaver Stance". Due to Cooper's influence, the Weaver Stance became very popular among armed personnel. Though in competition and special operations work today it has been largely supplanted by a modified isosceles stance, it remains a popular technique with many shooters.
See also
- Jack Weaver
- Center Axis Relock
- Point shooting
External links
- American Handgunner Feature on Jack Weaver [1]
Categories:- Firearm techniques
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.