When did Trigger Finger Discipline go mainstream?

[Vermiform]

This is a question for the old timers. When did trigger finger discipline come on the scene? Has the straight finger method always been around?

I ask because I don't remember being taught it when I was young. I had hunters safety (1984-ish) in Junior High and also earlier while I was in scouts. I didn't actually learn to point my finger straight until I got into shooting later in life and it took a lot of work for me to break the habit of putting my finger inside the trigger guard.

 

[JNieman]

I'm 29 and I've been taught "finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire" since I was single-digit-years-old, and my dad only learned what he has from old revolver and cowboy shooters and magazines, as his family wasn't big on guns in early ages.

The NRA mags have always had their "10 commandments" in their propaganda rags since I was old enough to thumb through the ones my dad got. My dad used those '10 commandments' (which are the 4 safety rules and some basic hunting tips really) to teach me safety as I began hunting. My hunter's ed course when I was like 11 or 12, included the safety rule about your trigger finger, and included that you never even take the gun off safe until you're shouldering, or shouldered the rifle.

My dad got into shooting and hunting when he was around 25 and moved out to the boonies where he could do it more casually, which would be around 1980.

/random-anecdote-in-time

The way I understand it, it was ol Jeff Cooper that standardized and condensed those safety rules in his hay-day of really introducing realistic and intelligent training practices for the time.

 

[Emperor]

I don't ever remember anyone ever telling me that as a general rule of firearms handling when I was younger for sure and/or before I started USPSA! Agreed I saw it in older magazines like Outdoor life in the early 80's, but it was not expounded on by peers.

At 50, I will say commonplace was the early to mid 2000's for me. Most assuredly it was commonplace in my exploits with USPSA and NRA. And EVERYDAY NOW!

 

[SpeedRacer]

I don't know the answer to your question, but wanted to address your last part. Gomez stressed an interesting fact about this. Our brains, especially under stress, cannot think in "negatives". In other words trying to remember "keep my finger out of the trigger guard" simply doesn't work. You have to replace that with another "positive" thought. Instead of just floating your finger out there along the frame, give it a specific place to go. Something tactile and repeatable. For example on Glocks, I stipple the area just behind the rail and use that. Many people use the ejection port.

So basically instead of my finger simply being "outside of the trigger guard" it's actively engaging it's "I'm not shooting right now" spot.

It's the little things that make a huge difference.

 

[Vermiform]

I don't know the answer to your question, but wanted to address your last part. Gomez stressed an interesting fact about this. Our brains, especially under stress, cannot think in "negatives". In other words trying to remember "keep my finger out of the trigger guard" simply doesn't work. You have to replace that with another "positive" thought. Instead of just floating your finger out there along the frame, give it a specific place to go. Something tactile and repeatable. For example on Glocks, I stipple the area just behind the rail and use that. Many people use the ejection port.

So basically instead of my finger simply being "outside of the trigger guard" it's actively engaging it's "I'm not shooting right now" spot.

It's the little things that make a huge difference.

That certainly would have been helpful to me back then. It would have made my re-education much easier. Nowadays, anything I pick up with a pistol grip activates my trigger discipline. Like this poster:

Even when I was a med-jockey at the VA, when I used a bar code scanner my finger just automatically stuck out straight when i wasn't scanning.


Oh and while searching for images on google, I found this one demonstrating poor trigger discipline. I love that scene!

 

[Emperor]

That certainly would have been helpful to me back then. It would have made my re-education much easier. Nowadays, anything I pick up with a pistol grip activates my trigger discipline.

Make a few tweaks and apply it to the flicking motion that propels cigarettes out of your vehicle too!

 

[Vermiform]

Make a few tweaks and apply it to the flicking motion that propels cigarettes out of your vehicle too!

You mean like this?

 

[Emperor]

You mean like this?

That's a good one!

I guess when a person comes out of their coma of being a democrat (your avatar sig), you get a sense of humor too.

 

[Hitman]

Oddly enough, and without really coaching her to do so, my wife sort of over extends her trigger finger like the late great;

 

[Vermiform]

That's a good one!

I guess when a person comes out of their coma of being a democrat (your avatar sig), you get a sense of humor too.

Oh I've always had a sense of humor, though as I became more and more conservative my humor became drier. Much darker as well.

 

[AustinBR]

I was taught that when I first learned to shoot which would have been in the late 90s or so. I would have been 7 or 8 at the time probably.

 

[Emperor]

Oh I've always had a sense of humor, though as I became more and more conservative my humor became drier. Much darker as well.

Then stop littering you sack of "becoming conservative" ****!

 

[Emperor]

Seriously though; the lack of response on this question is telling!?!

 

[Vermiform]

Seriously though; the lack of response on this question is telling!?!

Well I've also been thinking that all of the hunter or firearm safety classes I took back then, none of them involved handguns nor any rifle with a pistol grip. It may have just been understood that you gripped the rifle or shotgun with your whole hand around the stock and that you didn't slide forward and put your finger on the bang switch until you were ready to shoot. I also remember that they did hammer into us about putting the safety on until you were ready to shoot. There may have been an over reliance on the safety mechanism back then.

I have another semi-related question for the old farts. Do any of you that keep a revolver handy still keep an empty cylinder in front of the hammer? My dad still does this, even though his S&W has a transfer bar.

 

[FTRrookie]

60 yrs old. Was given my first BB gun at 6, my first .22 at 8 and my first shotgun at about the same time. I was always taught to never point a gun at something I wasn't going to shoot, never load the gun until your in the field, and to always verify that the gun was empty when the shooting day was over. Finger in the trigger guard was never mentioned.

If I'm going to carry a single action revolver then yes I still leave the cylinder under the hammer empty. At the range I load all 6

 

[JNieman]

So here's a question for the older, more experienced, or more well-read among us regarding military training. I'd always been told that there really was no formal firearms training in the private world to speak of, until Jeff Coopers era. So the only training was gotten in the military; even police forces had little to speak of outside of a few select areas (so I'm told.. again I'm 29, it's not like I was there to know)

Is it true that the old training for rifleman was that they carried with their finger in the trigger guard? I've seen the pictures of Viet Nam era US soldiers carrying their M16s and their finger is in the trigger guard. It seemed like "one of those things" they learned from eventually, like sticking your elbow straight out, if that's also true of combat training.

I don't know the difference, here, between myth based on out-of-context photos, actual historical training that's changed, and whatever else may be true.

Could it be that military training is what impacted civilian practices, if anything did, and that the 'finger on the trigger' thing didn't change until the military changed it? If so, when could that have been?

 

[FTRrookie]

Oddly enough, and without really coaching her to do so, my wife sort of over extends her trigger finger like the late great;

So, is that a pic of your wife?

 

[kpm1234]

Senior Drill instuctor Terry Lee in 1976 "Keep your bugger hook off the bang switch untill someone has to die"

 

[Win1917]

I started shooting in the early-mid 80's sometime and "keep the finger off the trigger" until ready to shoot was gospel and I doubt that was a new idea at that time. The difference seems to be the direct instruction of physically what to do with the finger while "it's off the trigger". I don't remember anyone ever talking about or seeing people keeping the finger straight along the gun like is commonplace now. I'm sure some people were doing it then but I wasn't aware of it.

 

[kz45]

When I started shooting uspsa, I honestly don't remember before that where I kept my finger, you can see where I keep my finger on my pistol now!!