Gun Digest’s Double Action Trigger Concealed Carry eShort. Grant Cunningham

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.