The Weaver stance is a shooting technique for handguns. It was developed by Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Jack Weaver during freestyle pistol competition in Southern California during the late 1950s.

Description

The Weaver stance has two main components. A left-handed shooter would reverse the hands and the footing, respectively.

Modern technique

The Weaver stance is one of the four components of the modern technique of shooting developed by Jeff Cooper. The others are a large-caliber handgun, flash sight picture, and compressed surprise break.

History

The Weaver stance was developed in 1959 by pistol shooter and deputy sheriff Jack Weaver, a range officer at the L.A. County Sheriff's Mira Loma pistol range. At the time, Weaver was competing in Jeff Cooper's "Leatherslap" matches: quick draw, man-on-man competition in which two shooters vied to pop twelve 18" wide balloons set up 21 feet away, whichever shooter burst all the balloons first winning the bout. Weaver developed his technique as a way to draw a handgun quickly to eye level and use the weapon's sights to aim more accurately, and immediately began winning against opponents predominantly using point shooting techniques. The Weaver technique was dubbed the "Weaver Stance" by gun writer and firearms instructor Jeff Cooper. Cooper widely publicized the Weaver stance in several of his books, as well as in articles published in the then-fledgling Guns & Ammo magazine. When Cooper started the American Pistol Institute firearms training school, now the Gunsite Training Center, in 1977, his modern technique of the pistol was built around a somewhat formalized "Classic Weaver Stance". Due to Cooper's influence, the Weaver stance became very popular among firearm professionals and enthusiasts.