I like stippled grips on my handguns. The textured surface helps give my hand that leverage it needs to take a nice, high hold of the pistol. Years of spending quality time with my handguns on the range has lead me to use shooting gloves when I want to put some long hours. Shooting gloves help me maintain my grip over the gun while reducing the impact of hundreds of rounds cycling through.
I know in a real life situation, I’m not going to be wearing gloves. I don’t carry a pair of gloves with me when I’m out and about. So, tactical or shooting gloves are not really something I want to depend upon for my shooting.
That said, a comfortable set of shooting gloves is just plain comfy. Once they’re worn in, I almost wish it was socially acceptable to just wear them out and about. My wife is thankful it’s not. She usually makes some comment about, “oooh, how tacticool.” I can only imagine what she’d say if I made the claim it’s completely alright to wear tactical gloves as an everyday clothing accessory.
But this got me thinking: when do gloves come in handy for practice?
Shooting gloves (or tactical gloves) offer me the following:
- Trigger finger relief
- Protect the skin on my hands
- Reduce the number of blisters I get after multiple days on the range
- Keep a good, positive grip on the pistol
And while I love those features, I also know I need to get used to shooting without the gloves. That’s why I always set aside some time either early on in my range day or at the end to do a series of handgun drills without gloves.
I don’t care if I’m tired or fresh, I want to ensure that the principles of marksmanship that I applied throughout the same course of fire apply the same way with or without gloves.
Winter Considerations For Shooting Gloves
The winter is probably the only time where I’ll legitimately have gloves on during the course of my day. I still probably won’t be wearing shooting gloves but I will take advantage of discrete little ways to ensure the gloves I wear in the winter have good grip and I have full tactile function.
Things I practice for winter time concealed carry:
- Wearing the gloves I typically wear
- Drawing my concealed carry handgun from the holster with those gloves on
- Shooting with winter gloves
- Changing magazines with winter gloves
- Safety check, unloading and clearing my gun with gloves on
This is really important. It’s not the gloves we want to practice with that are usually the ones we’re stuck wearing if we’re in a self-defense situation. Especially when concealed carry handguns get into the subcompact and micro-compact range, it’s very useful to know how they handle while you’re wearing gloves.
It only takes a few minutes at the range to figure out if your winter gloves are compatible with your everyday concealed carry handgun choice. If they’re not, change up gloves or change up gun or change up carry style until you find something that works. Keep those hands warm and carry on!