Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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 The Weaver Stance Tom Shafer SCRA meeting 7/6/09 August 2009 GunNews Jack Weaver was quite a fellow. He applied his own initiative, skill and determination and invented a new type of shooting stance for a handgun. He never wrote a book about it, never made it into a movie or put his credit on the internet. He never did any media interviews even with the gun trade journals. He never spoke about it. He just taught it, that this was the way he learned to shoot. He was shooting at the time in the 50's. Jeff Cooper was the guy, you've probably read his book, the grandfather of the father of the modern .45. All things .45 were basically attributed to Jeff Cooper and his work with that .45 pistol. They were doing these matches in California in the Southwest Pistol League which were called Leather Slap Matches. Basically they were a form of quick draw match with an automatic pistol instead of a revolver. They still had them in a leather holster, they still had them on their side and they still engaged targets for a timed score. They'd set up different targets, the Mexican Standoff scenario, the Bank Robber scenario, and the Shoot & Move scenario. These were different skilled courses that tested your ability to shoot under pressure and the pressure was for time. You weren't being shot back at but you were timed so that you could try to win these matches. It was a competitive event and Jack Weaver kept losing at these events so he tried to figure out why. The reason was he was taking his pistol out and he was shooting it from a low shot stance. If you remember your stances the first stance was your hand behind your back with your one flintlock pistol where you aimed slowly at your target with a horrible trigger pull and black powder, a long lag time and KABOOM it went off. That was your dueling stance from the 1700s. That was the only way you had to get one shot with your pistol and that's the way you took it. The other guy who was shooting back at you took that same stance so obviously it worked when you only had one shot. It didn't work for anything else. Then the years went by and in the 30s the FBI did some studies for their agents when they finally became armed and they had a stance where they would draw a pistol like this and they would actually put the other hand, the off hand because they only used one hand on the pistol not two, above their chest. They did have their head up, both eyes on the target, both eyes open but only one hand, which at that time was a revolver, and they'd shoot at the target with point of aim or instinctive shooting not using the sight on the gun at all. This hand here was supposed to deflect the bullet that was shot back at you and Shafer supposes that instead of just getting shot in the chest, you got shot in the arm and the chest! It was all before kevlar and ballistics. In fact it started up when the FBI wasn't even armed. So that tells you the roaring 20s, when the Dillingers, the Baby Face Nelsons and Pretty Boy Floyds, and the Bonnie and Clydes were killing agents who were pursuing them for bank robberies. The agents said we've got to have pistols, we've got to be armed, they're killing us out there. So that was the FBI Crouch which was the next innovative stance for pistols. Then came the Isosceles stance. The shooters went to the college professors and asked, how would you shoot mechanically for the best results? The college professors said you have to have two hands on the pistol and, actually for the college professors, it was a major advancement. They said no more of this FBI Crouch. The Crouch was supposed to make you harder to hit and your other hand was supposed to block your vital organs. Shafer doesn't know if it worked or not but that was the theory. So they said you stand up straight which made you a better target but you had two hands on the pistol which helped to overcome recoil. Remember the pistols were getting more powerful. They were still revolvers. They were more powerful double action revolvers now and you needed two hands to control what was getting to be a substantial recoil. Remember the .357 magnum was invented in 1936 so its a really old caliber. Of course a really powerful caliber back then. A .357 caliber pistol in 1936 was actually quite a pistol. Shafer shoots a .357 magnum nowadays and its still quite a pistol. In 1936 the cars were really ancient and there was no internet or no modern anything else. 1936 was a pretty long time ago folks, four years after the depression ended. So they had a big .357 magnum pistol and they said you're going to shoot it like this. Stand up straight and put both arms out in a in a pyramid or an Isosceles triangle to overcome the recoil and you bring it up to use the sights on the gun. So the barrels were longer and the sights were more finely made, more accurate and they were adjustable for different weights of bullets with your pistol. So the Isosceles stance came in big. That was in the mid or late 40s. Finally Jack Weaver through his work with Jeff Cooper in the Southwest Pistol League at these Leather Slap matches shot an automatic pistol which changed your stance, changed your recoil, you had more shots, totally different than a revolver. Equally as powerful but totally different moves so that you could reload and not have to look down at it. You could have an extra magazine on your belt so everything else was a little bit more advanced. But still Jack Weaver kept losing and he couldn't figure out why. Finally he figured instead of standing up straight and trying to bring his gun so high that he had to use the sights on it or not use the sights on it, he would duck his head down and he didn't have to bring his pistol up that high. That was one part of the Weaver stance. Then instead of using this Isosceles designed by the college professors to overcome the recoil with two arms reaching one point, he would pull in with his front hand and he would push forward with his other hand which pre-tensed his muscles before the gun went off. A muscle controlling stance which sends up a dynamic tension in your arms. If you try it with your two hands and you've seen the isometric exercises where you don't use weights, you just pull against yourself, the type where your body is working against itself with it's muscles. So he pulled in with his free hand and pushed forward with his gun hand. That helped him to overcome recoil. He raised his gun up and lowered his head. Now he was looking down the sights and could shoot and move and overcome the recoil of the followup shots. Actually it was a genius move that is still used today. He named it after himself, the Weaver Stance. You could shoot and move, you could keep both eyes open and shoot Weaver, and you could overcome recoil. Remember sometimes you were engaging three, four and five or more targets with these type of pistol matches. Pistol shooting overall became much more popular. Defensive Shooting and all the other writers of today were writing books about buy a pistol, use it for home defense. Shafer was born in 56 and didn't come of age in the shooting market until the early 70s. He doesn't know what the people were learning, doing or teaching in the 30s, 40s and 50s but this was all new stuff at the time. Obviously the wars had gone on and guys were returning from the wars and had rudimentary gun knowledge but Shafer doesn't know how much pistol usage was going on. He just knows that its big right now. Weaver died in late May. Shafer believes he was 77. He was a genius at pistol shooting and what he wanted to accomplish but he was also a humble guy. He never wrote any books about it and never took any direct credit for it. In fact Shafer believes he gave a lot of the credit to Cooper. Weaver didn't push his own stance. He just said this is the stance that works for me. In fact it worked for everybody who learned it. Its very easily taught and very easy to revert to under stress because remember you fight as you've trained. If you've trained incorrectly your flubs will show up in combat or some fight scenario because you'll come up short. Weaver said this worked under all the matches he'd been under. He was also a functioning police officer. He was a subtle, quiet, soft spoken guy and he really changed the course of pistol shooting. With the stuff now that pistols are equipped with, lasers, holographic sights, flashlights, infrared sights and a lot of different stuff now, a lot of high-tech battery powered stuff they didn't have in the 30s, 40s and 50s, Shafer doesn't know what the future of pistol shooting holds but we can really give a lot of credit to Jack Weaver for really being an innovative guy. Thats just a little bit of history for someone who is an unsung hero of pistol shooting. Tom Shafer's Commentaries Return to SCRA Home Page |