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Bring the pad of the support hand thumb down on top of the shooting hand’s thumbnail. Adjust as necessary to get the specified contact points and make a mental note of how everything feels. It’s that feeling that you’ll want to replicate each time you grasp the gun.

Mastering the Double Action Trigger

Believe it or not, there was a time in the history of the double action revolver when it was widely supposed that it couldn’t be shot accurately. Over the years we’ve come to learn that it just isn’t true, and today many instructors say that learning to shoot a double action is the key to shooting all handguns well.

That’s what this chapter’s about. Shooting a double action revolver well is all about mastering the heavy, long trigger travel. I’ve often said that the revolver is the easiest gun to shoot, but the most difficult to shoot well. The trigger is the reason, but it’s far from impossible to conquer. It’s just a matter of paying attention to the basics.

If you’ve read my introduction, you’ll remember the story about the falling plates. There is a lesson to be learned, and I hope you’ll take it to heart: you have to commit yourself to shooting double action. It’s all too easy to allow yourself to cock the gun to single action in order to make a shot you’ve been missing in double action. Resist that temptation! Every time you take the easy way out you stop your forward progress. Even at the end of a practice session, don’t succumb to the idea that you need to leave on a high.

The only way to master double action is to always shoot in double action.

It starts with grasp

Think about this: a six-shot revolver might weigh something in the neighborhood of 38 ounces or so; that’s about 2-1/4 pounds. The trigger weight on that gun will typically be something around 12 pounds. It doesn’t take a math whiz to realize that the shooting hand will need to control about 9-3/4 pounds of excess force, and it needs to do so over a travel of perhaps 3/4 of an inch.

If the grasp isn’t solid, that extra 9-3/4 pounds of force is going to push the gun around in the hand(s). The grasp has to be strong enough to control that nine pounds of force applied to the trigger, and it just can’t be done with the kind of light ‘handshake’ hold advocated by target shooters!

It’s necessary to tighten this grasp to hold the gun steady during actual shooting. Hold the gun at arm’s length and squeeze with both hands. Increase the pressure until your hands shake from the effort, then back off the pressure just enough to stop the trembling. You’ll notice that this is much more pressure than you would otherwise exert, and it is the amount you need to apply every time you achieve your shooting grasp.

You’ll find, with even occasional practice, that your muscles will rapidly develop from this isometric exercise. The strength of your grasp will increase and you’ll have increasing control over your gun.

Big hands - little gun

On occasion I’ll encounter a shooter whose large hands and small gun present a challenging mismatch. In these cases it can become difficult, if not impossible, for the trigger finger to complete the trigger stroke without bumping into the support hand thumb. In these cases I recommend that the support thumb be placed higher on the shooting hand thumb, on or just past the first thumb knuckle. This is usually sufficient to cure interference issues.

In some cases even that isn’t enough. For those with very large hands it can sometimes be necessary to wrap the thumb around the backside of the gun, crossing the backside of the shooting hand thumb.

This is recommended only in very rare cases, because it presents a couple of risks. First, if shooting a revolver with a hammer it’s easy for the thumb to interfere with the hammer spur. This can keep the hammer from traveling back far enough, effectively preventing the gun from firing.

Second, if the person in question also owns autoloading pistols and mistakenly does this while shooting one, his thumb can suffer severe lacerations from the rearward moving slide. In such cases it’s not unusual to have the damage go clear down to the bone. I only recommend this technique for people who absolutely need it, and absolutely will not be shooting autoloading pistols.

Sometimes I find shooters with very long thumbs, where the trigger finger actually contacts the shooting hand thumb even with the thumb curled down. In these cases it’s necessary to modify the finger placement on the trigger, using the pad of the finger rather than the first joint. This is less desirable because of the reduced leverage the trigger finger can employ, but it is occasionally the only way to be able to shoot the gun.

Attaching oversized grips, particularly if fitted to the individual’s hand, is usually the best way to address these problems. Properly sized grips can go a long way in eliminating some of these problems.

While one’s choices in weaponry can be a touchy subject, in the cases of severe size mismatch the best solution is often to get a different gun. Of course that means changes to accommodate the lessened concealability, but is at least worth consideration.

Finger placement is critical

Back in Chapter Two I mentioned that fitting the gun to the hand was important to be able to shoot a revolver well, and that the key to fitting was the trigger finger’s position on the trigger. If you haven’t read that chapter to verify that your gun fits your hand, please go back and study. With the amount of force and movement that the revolver requires of your trigger finger, the better the gun fit the easier trigger control will be.

While occasionally there will be some mild disagreement from small segments of the revolver community, most trainers I’ve met recognize that the optimum trigger finger position is at the first joint (known as the distal interphalangeal joint, for the anatomy students in the audience.) Some trainers go so far as to call this the ‘power crease,’ because it seems to result in more force being applied by the muscles.

Like so many others, I’ve found that this position – ideally centered on the trigger face – gives the best combination of leverage against trigger weight. This mechanical advantage also allows for better control of the trigger. The finger doesn’t tire as quickly, and movement is smoother. With a little bit of practice, the first joint placement allows the shooter to manipulate the trigger with as little imparted motion to the gun as possible.

In times past it was taught that the pad of the finger should be the surface that pressed on the trigger. While there are still a few prominent (and very successful) shooters and trainers who champion this method, I think it’s safe to say that the majority opinion has long since shifted to the distal joint position, and not just for revolver shooting.

As I’ve mentioned, a gun that is a bit small for the hand is much easier to deal with than one which is too large. If yours is too large, or perhaps just borderline, consider a change in either the grips or the gun itself to something which better fits your for the job of practicing trigger control. Once you’ve mastered the double action trigger you can make do with a large gun, but starting out with such a size mismatch makes learning more difficult.

Terminology and preferences

In the following discussion I use some very specific terminology for the act of moving the trigger. There are also terms I don’t use for very specific reasons, mainly because they’re either not descriptive or put the wrong preconception into the shooter’s mind. Is this point of view overblown? Some might say so, but I believe that when learning to perform a physical skill a solid, consistent visualization is important.

The term ‘pull,’ for instance, implies a movement of the whole hand. One doesn’t normally pull something with just a finger, one pulls using the whole hand and arm movement. That’s not the image one should have in mind while trying to isolate the trigger finger from the rest of the hand and hold the gun steady! ‘Press’ implies using the tip of the finger and moving away from the body. Again, not really consistent with the job we’re wanting to do.

So, what does your obviously obsessive-compulsive author use? I prefer the term ‘stroke,’ as in a golf stroke. A stroke, in either golf or shooting, consists of two parts. For the revolver shooter, the first part is compression: the act of moving the trigger backward against spring pressure and firing the round. The shooter is compressing the springs that power the gun, and the term implies a smooth, consistent motion regardless of speed.

The second part of the stroke is the trigger return or reset. The golf equivalent of this is the follow-through, a term which I like very much but haven’t yet worked into my teaching lexicon. The return resets the trigger back to the forward-most position, ready for another compression.

The return is incredibly important and just as incredibly ignored. Many revolver shooters and experts have said that the trigger return is at least as important as the compression, and with this I am in total agreement. I’ve found that attention paid to the return pays dividends in consistent shooting.

A trigger stroke, then, is one full movement of the trigger – a compression and a return. I urge you to banish the word ‘pull’ from your revolver vocabulary. Let the autoloader shooters deal with it!

A proper trigger stroke - key to good shooting

Once the decision to fire has been made, the trigger is compressed smoothly, evenly, and straight backwards until the round ignites. The compression should be consistent in speed, neither slowing down or speeding up, and the trigger should be in constant motion until the gun fires. Don’t stop or even slow down once the compression has started; keep the trigger finger moving until the gun fires. This keeps any deviant or ‘steering’ pressure on the gun constant, which is easier to compensate for than pressure which constantly changes.

Once the round ignites, the trigger is immediately allowed to return. The finger pressure used in compressing the trigger is relaxed and the trigger is allowed to return forward. The trigger finger should remain in contact with the trigger as it returns, but only slightly; any resistance will simply slow the trigger’s movement, and may cause some guns to bind. Maintain just enough contact so that you can feel when the trigger has stopped, at which point it is completely reset and ready for the next shot.

The trigger return should have the same speed as the compression. Like the compression, it should not vary during the trigger’s movement. If we step back and look at the trigger stroke as a complete action, except for the direction reversal it should look like a single movement.

Naturally we don’t want the muzzle to move off of alignment with the target during the compression, and we want to develop that same level of muzzle control during the return. With a long trigger stroke, there is a significantly larger amount of time that the revolver is spending resetting compared to an autoloader. If one wants to shoot a revolver both quickly and accurately, it’s necessary to start the trigger return immediately, as opposed to an auto shooter, who can afford to pause slightly before allowing the trigger to reset.

Because efficient revolver shooting pretty much requires that the trigger return start immediately after the round is discharged, it’s not inconceivable that the bullet might still be in the bore as the trigger finger reverses direction. If the muzzle is disturbed at this point the round will not be as precisely placed as the shooter may have intended.

For this reason I recommend practicing the stroke, focusing on trigger return, until the muzzle alignment (as shown by the sights) does not vary during any phase of the stroke. In days past it was a common technique to balance a coin on the front sight and practice until the coin did not move regardless of which direction the trigger was going, which serves to illustrate both what’s required and that it’s possible to achieve.

(I’m told by a knowledgeable source that this concept of the trigger stroke was called “rowing the boat” by instructors at the FBI Academy back in the 1960s. Since I wasn’t there I can’t vouch for the claim, but I think it the mental image is certainly valid.)

Your finger, the trigger, and even some geometry

How your finger fits the trigger is important because it affects how the two interact with each other. How they interact affects your ability to keep the gun aligned on target as the stroke is completed. It’s very common for shooters to continually fight that interaction, and they’re not even aware that they’re doing it!

I said that the trigger compression should be straight back, but in practice it’s a little more difficult than that. If you think about it, you’ll realize that your fingertip never really travels straight for any distance. That’s because it pivots at the joints, and a pivot doesn’t allow straight motion. A pivot imparts a circular motion, and if you hold your trigger finger in front of your face and flex it you’ll notice that the tip doesn’t describe a straight line. At some point, no matter how much you manipulate the muscles and pivots in your finger, its path starts to curve.

If you think further, you’ll realize that a revolver’s trigger doesn’t go straight back either. It pivots too, and the tip of the trigger describes a circle. (You’ll note that your trigger guard is curved to match the arc of the trigger.)

The arcs of your finger and the trigger are at right angles to each other. As the trigger is traveling in a circle back and up, your finger is traveling out and back in. The two are working against each other for the full length of the trigger’s movement. It’s pretty obvious why most people have trouble maintaining muzzle alignment with all that going on.

It’s my contention that all this movement causes most shooters to try hanging on to the trigger – grasping it with the trigger finger – because it feels like it’s trying to get away.

Remember that the trigger is rotating up and away from the trigger finger. The finger slides down the trigger face, and the natural reaction is to hang on by curling the tip of the finger inward. It’s as if the shooter is trying to keep the trigger from running away from home!

This movement is worsened by the finger’s natural movement, which is toward the palm as it flexes backward. As the trigger is moving out of the finger’s grasp, the finger is naturally moving to grasp the trigger more tightly. This is where psychology meets physics.

This grabbing action of the trigger finger tends to steer the gun to one side. For a right-handed shooter, it usually results in the gun being pulled over to the right as the finger’s arc comes inward, toward the palm. (Now do you see why I avoid the term ‘trigger pull’? The last thing I want to do is encourage the student to pull the gun even more!)

The usual reaction is to curl the finger even more, so that the tip contacts the frame. This contact pushes the gun in the opposite direction of the finger arc, and if carefully done the two forces cancel each other and the gun stays relatively straight.

As I said upfront, my primary interest is in the revolver as a self-defense tool. Getting both of those forces just right is easy on the target range, when you can clearly watch your sights and there is no life-or-death pressure. Doing it in the face of a determined attack, perhaps in sub-optimal light, is another matter. Even in competition it’s not easy, because as the pace of shooting increases it becomes harder to balance those forces with the care necessary.

As it happens, there is a solution: stop the trigger finger from steering the gun in the first place. How do we do that? Believe it or not, it’s pretty simple, but it takes a little conscious effort to retrain the brain. We can do this with a little dry fire practice.

(Safety note: always triple-check your revolver to be sure that it’s unloaded before commencing any dry fire! You must also make sure that you have a proper backstop for your practice, one which would contain a bullet if for some reason you missed a round when you unloaded the gun. The end of a full bookshelf works well for this; another good tactic is to go to your local office supply and by a case of cheap copier paper. Open the case and reorient the reams so that they’re standing on their long edge instead of their face. Put the lid back on the box, and now you have a perfect dry fire target that will safely contain any handgun round!)

Now you can do the dry fire work. The key is to let the trigger finger do what geometry is forcing it to do: slide across the trigger face. As the trigger moves backward in compression, the finger wants to slide down the trigger face. Let it! It will want to slide sideways, across the trigger face, as the arc of the finger comes toward the palm. Again, let it do so.

We’re not talking about large amounts of finger movement, but if you pay attention to the feel of the finger on the trigger you’ll notice the phenomenon. You’ll also notice that you’re probably trying to grab the trigger, hanging on to it so that it doesn’t escape your grasp.

Many students report that the first few times they do this it feels as though the trigger is going to slip out from under their finger. Of course it’s not going to do so, and it’s necessary to get past that feeling through successful repetition. Pay attention to how this sliding movement feels and consciously replicate that feeling with each repetition.

It won’t be long before you discover the tip of your finger is no longer curling in and touching the frame. Since the finger isn’t able to steer the gun, you’ll also notice that your sights are staying in alignment on the target more consistently. You should also find that increasing the pace of the trigger stroke no longer results in the gun being thrown wildly off target, which commonly happens when the trigger finger touches the frame.

Another benefit: if you’ve got long fingers and you’re shooting a small gun like a J-frame, you’ll find that your trigger finger no longer hits the knuckles of your support thumb, or at least does so with significantly less effect on the sight alignment.

Remember what I said about the importance of the trigger return? Pay attention to the trigger return as you do this; the return should be a mirror image of the compression, with the trigger finger sliding on the trigger face in the opposite direction. Watch the sight alignment as you do this, and practice until the trigger resets with no sight movement. Remember that the return should be at the same speed as the compression.

You’ll know you’ve ‘got it’ when you can do multiple trigger strokes, with smooth consistent compression and return, and your sights never wander from the target.

How much dry fire is necessary? I don’t recommend long dry fire sessions. I find that most people pick this up in just a minute or two, some in just a few strokes. Once you’ve gotten to the point that the trigger is moving back and forth without disturbing the sight alignment, any further dry fire is of little use. It’s time to go to the range and do it for real.

Considering the trigger face

This method works with the kinds of triggers that have been standard on revolvers for the last few decades: medium width and with smooth faces.

In earlier days, before double action shooting was taken as seriously as it is today, most revolvers were manufactured with wide and/or serrated triggers. These were ideal for single action work where the finger doesn’t move much, but greatly hampered good double action work. (The reason for the prevalence of the use of the finger pad to manipulate the trigger was to make the best of those triggers.)

Thankfully, revolver manufacturers have seen fit to give us proper trigger faces. Most of today’s revolvers come with smooth faced triggers, but if you have an older gun with a wide or serrated trigger face a gunsmith can easily rectify the situation. See the chapter on revolver modifications for more information.

Allowing the trigger finger to curl or grab trigger results in steering the gun.

Finger is in same position, but allowed to slide across trigger face. Result is less muzzle movement from the trigger finger.

Staging the trigger?

For many years it was fashionable to teach the technique of ‘staging’ the trigger, and some instructors still believe in the technique.

In staging, the trigger is compressed most of the way to ignition but is paused at the last bit of travel so that muzzle alignment can be acquired or verified. Once that’s done the trigger compression is restarted and the gun fires. In practice the sequence is start-stop-align sights-restart-discharge.

The thinking behind this technique is that it’s not possible to maintain precise muzzle alignment over the entire distance that the trigger moves. With one caveat (which I’ll get to in a moment) I don’t agree with this premise. Experience, not just mine but that of my students and of award-winning shooters, suggests that staging is a crutch. If you’ve practiced a smooth, continuous trigger stroke without the sights veering off target, then staging will afford you no advantage in accuracy.

One of the issues in allowing yourself to stage the trigger is that it requires precise timing. You have to stop the trigger at a point where most of the trigger travel has been used, with the smallest amount of travel remaining to take advantage of a shorter and relatively lighter trigger action. Stopping too soon leaves more of the travel remaining, and if that happens it’s not much different than just stroking the trigger straight through.

At the same time you need to stop before the sear releases and the gun fires. If your revolver is to be used as a defensive tool, imagine the liability of trying to stage the trigger for a critical, precise shot and having the gun fire before you were ready. Way back when, when my instructors and many others espoused trigger staging, I found that on occasion I’d miss the stopping point and the gun would fire. If that happens the shot will certainly not be terribly accurate, which more or less defeats the purpose of staging the trigger in the first place.

It’s a delicate balancing act, and most shooters who espouse this system use their trigger finger to push on the frame to stop in time. Doing that steers the gun, and the shooter is obligated to stop and realign the sights because they’ve now veered off target. In my never-to-be-humble opinion, staging has very little use on a target range and less than no use in a defensive situation.

I neither advocate nor teach trigger staging, but there is one exception where it is sometimes useful. If you have a gun with a particularly horrendous trigger action, especially one which has a sudden increase in weight followed by a sudden decrease just before the sear releases, staging the trigger may be the only method to get acceptable accuracy from the gun. This, however, is just a band-aid on the problem, with the real solution being to either get the revolver fixed or sell it.

Learning double action helps all shooting

You may have heard the old saw that becoming a good revolver shot will make you a better shooter in general. I believe that to be true, but no one has ever explained to me why it’s so.

Learning to manage the heavy, long double action really doesn’t seem to have much in common with the light, short actions of autoloaders, yet alone rifles and shotguns. It could be argued that the need to hold the revolver steady against a significant amount of trigger manipulation force teaches us to hold all guns steady. It might be said that learning to keep the sights aligned on target is the key to all shooting, and it is, but I still don’t think it’s the reason.

After watching students in various classes shooting revolvers, autoloaders, and even rifles, I’ve come to the conclusion that the key skill that all good revolver shooters learn is trigger return. It’s the skill that translates to other guns and shooting and is incredibly important to all of them.

Take rifle shooting, for instance. Most rifle shooters, at least from my observations, release the trigger immediately as the sear breaks and the shot is ignited. As I mentioned above, it’s possible to release the trigger and slightly disturb the sight alignment while the bullet is still in the barrel. This results in the round being thrown off target – the amount being dependent on just how much the gun was moved. Teaching the rifle shooter to hold the trigger back for a half second or so after the round fires almost invariably improves their precision. That’s because by not allowing the trigger finger to move until after the bullet clears the muzzle, the gun stays in alignment with their target. I’ve seen this happen with several shooters in every rifle class I’ve ever taught.

A revolver shooter who wants to shoot his wheelgun efficiently has to, by necessity, master the art of trigger return without sight movement. If practiced as I’ve described, the trigger return doesn’t result in the sights being moved off target even though the return is started almost instantaneously. If this same shooter takes that behavior and applies it to his rifle (or single action autoloading pistol), he’ll find that his sights aren’t disturbed during bullet travel. The result is just like holding the trigger back.

My contention is that it’s the mastery of the trigger return, unconscious though it may be, which enables a good revolver shooter to shoot any gun well. It’s also the basis for the statement that good trigger reset is at least half of the task of shooting a revolver well.

As the hammer starts to move, restrain it with your shooting hand thumb. Take your finger off the trigger, as that will re-engage the passive trigger safety built into all modern revolvers. Allow the hammer to continue to move slowly. As it starts to pinch your support thumb, move it up and out of the way of the hammer.

Decocking the revolver

While this book is aimed at double action revolver shooting, it is conceivable that sooner or later you’ll cock your revolver to use it in single action. While I rarely find a need to do so, I’ll admit that it makes shooting beyond a hundred yards or so a bit more consistent.

What if you cock the gun but don’t shoot it? It’s then necessary to decock the gun, and you should be at least passingly familiar with the proper way to do it.

By decocking in this manner you’ll dramatically reduce the chance of a negligent discharge. Go slowly, pay attention to what you’re doing, and keep the gun pointed in a safe direction!

Strong, mechanically efficient grasp is key to good double action shooting.

Shooting Accurately in Double Action

Shooting a double action revolver accurately really isn’t all that difficult, once you know how to do it and give it some directed practice. In this chapter we’re going to put together what we’ve learned about sight picture/alignment and trigger control to make accurate double action shooting easier.

Start with a good foundation

By now you should understand that trigger control is the most important part of shooting the revolver. Sight alignment and picture are relatively easy and don’t really require much practice; once you know what a proper sight picture is, you have it. It requires no physical practice to remember.

Poor trigger control, on the other hand, will destroy even the most precise sight picture. If the gun wanders off target during either compression or reset, the deviation of your bullets will increase. (That’s a polite way of saying that you won’t hit what you’re aiming at!) It’s trigger control that makes the difference between hoping you hit your target and knowing that you can hit it.

Before proceeding, make sure that you’ve read and understand the preceding chapter on mastering the double action trigger. It’s important that you be able to manipulate the heavy, long trigger without moving the gun around. If you can’t, do some targeted dry fire. As I’ve mentioned, it shouldn’t take a lot of dry fire to cement these skills, as long as you’re paying attention to what you’re doing.

(Dry fire isn’t an activity that can be done while you watch television. To do it right, to get any real lasting benefit, you have to concentrate on the act and pay attention to what you’re doing. Done this way, it takes very few dry fire repetitions to cement the skill. Done with watching the distraction of Spongebob Squarepants, it might take years. It’s your choice.)

Start from the top: a solid grasp is essential to double action shooting. Remember that you have a trigger that is at minimum four times what the gun weighs, and the only way to keep the force applied to the trigger from moving the gun is a strong grasp. How strong? I coach my students to grasp the gun as tightly as they possibly can, until the gun starts to shake from muscle tremors, then back off the pressure just enough to stop the trembling. The resulting grasp should feel extremely solid, as if the gun and your hands were carved out of a single piece of granite.

I suggest applying equal pressure with both hands. There are those who suggest that the support hand apply more pressure than the shooting hand, but this leads to an inconsistency when shooting one-handed. If you’re accustomed to the shooting hand having less pressure, you’ll have to dramatically increase the pressure to shoot one-handed effectively. In essence, you’re learning two different grasps. Keep things consistent, apply the same pressure with both hands, and whether you’re shooting with both or only one you’ll have a predictable hold on the gun.

Compress and release the trigger without steering the gun in any direction. Pay attention particularly to the smooth, predictable release. You should be able to do several dry fired trigger strokes without moving the sights off alignment with the target.

Once those things have been accomplished, it’s time for live fire. But there is still a psychological barrier to be crossed, one which trips up a lot of people (your author included): attempting to get just the perfect sight alignment before hurriedly stroking the trigger. It’s an accuracy killer, it’s common, and there is a way to banish it forever.

How to hit the four-inch center of a Bianchi target? Let your sights wander, as long as they stay inside that circle.

Moving point of aim

There is a concept which has been around a while and is applicable to all kinds of shooting, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to be well understood by all that many people – including a lot of instructors I’ve spoken to. It was explained to me years ago by ace instructor Georges Rahbani, and at the point that I finally understood its value my shooting took a big stride forward. I’ve made use of it ever since, and I’ve watched it work wonders both with his students and my own. It’s called “moving point of aim.”