Brand-new shooters don't need a technique that allows the Nth degree of speed and precision; they need a technique that's easy to understand and execute, that will swiftly give them a decent level of performance.

The thumb-over-thumb grip is not used by any top shooter; however, its easy "learnability" and execution by new shooters makes it an excellent first grip for beginners.

Thumb-over-thumb is a universal technique that works with any type of gun--1911, SIG, Glock, revolver, anything. The same can't be said of straight-thumbs. Shooters using straight-thumbs while firing SIGs find that, unless they specifically build their grip to move the right thumb slightly away from the side of the gun, they ride the slide stop with the shooting-hand thumb, and the slide won't lock open when empty. With Glocks, shooters who use an especially high iteration of straight-thumbs sometimes find themselves pushing up on the slide stop with the heel of the support hand and locking the slide open with rounds still in the magazine. With a Browning Hi-Power, in my experience not only does the right-hand thumb depress the slide stop at its rear, but the left thumb bangs into the front of the slide stop in recoil, causing failures to feed and/or eject. The thumb-over-thumb grip gets the thumbs curled down and out of the way so they're not banging off the controls.

Straight-thumbs can be an especially bad deal with revolvers. Dave Sevigny commented, "I grip the gun the exact same way whether I'm firing a Glock or a 1911, whatever; it doesn't matter. The only time I'll curl my thumbs down is when I'm firing a revolver. The first time you get a flash burn on your thumb firing a revolver straight-thumbs, you'll never want to do it again."

Thumb-over-thumb will reliably disengage the grip safety of a 1911 every time. Straight-thumbs, depending on the size and shape of the shooter's hands, can pull the web of the master hand far enough away from the back of the piece that the grip safety won't be fully depressed, resulting in failures of the gun to fire.

There are two ways around this: You can pin the grip safety--not my preference--or you can have the grip safety "sensitized," i.e. metal is taken off the underside of the grip-safety tongue (the protrusion off the front of the grip safety inside the gun that must rotate up and out of the way to allow the trigger bow to move far enough to the rear to trip the sear) so that, while still completely functional, the grip safety disengages with little inward movement. This is a modification easily performed by any competent pistolsmith or end-user.

The problem with thumb-over-thumb is that under stress it's just all too easy, since you're basically holding the gun wrapped in your fists, to begin muscling it, generating forces on the gun causing it to do a hula dance in recoil. Also, because wrapping the left thumb over the right opens up a gap between the heel and thumb of the left hand and the gun butt, the piece can twist in your hands under recoil, thus your group size explodes at speed. Straight-thumbs allows a much more neutral grip with better sight tracking and complete hand contact between the heel of the left hand and the side of the gun.

One very good thing about straight-thumbs is that it automatically rides the right thumb atop a 1911's safety lever. Thus there's no need to ingrain reflexive disengagement of the safety into part of the drawstroke, as there is with thumb-over-thumb, a procedure requiring thousands of repetitions before it becomes an unconscious reaction. Instead, with straight-thumbs it just happens when the hands meet, with no extra effort on the shooter's part.