The cover of the book: Helps And Hints - How To - Protect Life And Property, and three pages of the book dealing with firearms and life threat situations are below. The author is: Lt. Col. Baron De Berenger.
I found the following to be very interesting:
1. his comment about being practiced so that you can be on target when you present your weapon,
2. his note on using your forefinger for aiming at objects,
3. the use of the social digit for trigger pulling, and
4. his mention of threat focused shooting in those days (some 170 years ago).
My thinking is that one should make target acquisition as mechanical as possible and repeatable as well, so that in a real life threat situation, you will at least have a LCD (mechanical), method for aiming and shooting, rather than one that requires higher level and cognitive coordinated action/s, which may or may not be available.
Of course, the more practice, the better. And also, a LCD method does not preclude the use of another.
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In the 1830's the autoloader had not been thought up yet. The first one was still about 70 years down the road, which as of now, is some 100 years in our past.
So it may be time to think of adding a plastic thing-a-ma-jig along the side of your autoloader, to keep your forefinger in position and away from the slide when firing rapidly. Could be a life saver for your run of the mill shooter, who wants to increase his/her chance of surviving a real life threat situation.
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Here is the cover of the book and the three pages.
Below are links to some other articles and books which mention using P&S, and some military pubs that exclude it.
One of the military training publication - Platoon Training - mentions that using P&S with the Model of 1911, could cause the weapon to jam.
The inclusion of such a statement, leads me to believe that, shooting that way was a standard shooting practice with many at that time, or else it would have made no sense to include it in the training manual.
From: Platoon Training by Lt. Col. William H. Waldron, United Statesd Army - Page 612, 1921, ... (3) The trigger should be pulled with the forefinger. If the trigger is pulled with the second finger, the forefinger extending along the side of the receiver is apt to press against the projecting pin of the slide stop and cause a jam when the slide recoils. Here is a link to it.
A 1917 military manual describing the automatic pistol, Caliber .45, carried the same warning. Here is a link to it.
And so did an ROTC publication of 1921. Here is a link to it.
The Colt automatic pistol was adopted by the U. S. Army, Navy and National Guard in 1911 per the international military digest annual by Cornelis De Witt.
It is my opinion that by excluding the use of the P&S shooting method as I call it, with the standard issue firearm of the US Armed services of that time, effectively squelched it, and with dire consequences for those who were to rely on the use of the 1911 and similar arms in close quarters life threat situations.
Not being able to use their natural ability to point accurately at objects, they and all those who came after them, would be left to rely on dumb luck, and/or Sight Shooting which fails to be used in most close quarters life threat situations. That is due to our natural and instinctive Body Alarm Response which is triggered in those situations, and environmental conditions such as low light or dark targets and the use of dark sights.
Excluding the use of a life saving option to accommodate a weapon, rather than making a minor modification to the weapon to accomodate those who go in harms way, makes no sense to me.
It is like producing a rifle without a bayonet lug. In a CQB situation that could prove to be a deadly for the rifle user.
And no doubt over the past "100 years" of army and police combat, the 1911 design flaw has resulted in countless injuries and deaths to members of our Armed Forces and Police. And in turn, the squelching of the use of the natural and accurate shooting method, has resulted in the poor armed encounter hit rate which continues to this day.
The suppression of the shooting method may not have been intentional, and I also feel that those who wrote the manuals and others like them, were not trying to get their own shot and/or killed.
They were just doing the best that they could to describe how best to use the side arm which was becoming the standard for all US armed forces.
However, I think it is high time for a responsable body to investigate and come up with the best shooting method to use in QC armed encounters for our armed forces, police, and civilians alike.
If that has been done, where are the results for the millions of US citizens and police who have a firearm for use in their self defense in a life threat situation?
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Note the comment in this modern link about the strength of the grip.
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