Strong Side vs. Other Strong Side OC Carry

In the photo above, you'll notice that the shooter still has the OC canister in her support hand. Thanks to our arboreal antecedents, one of the things we do when we're startled is grab on to things really tightly. (Tree-dwelling critters who let go of things when startled tend to plummet to their deaths before they can have many offspring.)

In her case, she'd verbally engaged the moving target, which kept coming at her. She sprayed it with (inert) OC, and when that didn't work, she drew and fired, still with the OC compromising her grip.

 Dude here is fixin' to have the exact same thing happen to him.

The different-colored lasers from the SIRT guns are being used, along with dialogue, to indicate whether the target is hostile or not. 

She had the presence of mind to dump the pepper spray when she went to guns, but she's the exception that proves the rule.

Now, an argument can be made that when you jettison the pepper spray, you're leaving a potential weapon on the field for your attacker to pick up and use against you, and it would be better to retain it and shoot one-handed (and if your assailant is close enough to spray, he's close enough to shoot strong-hand-only.) Personally, if dude wants to bend over to try and retrieve it while I'm busy shooting him, that's okay with me.

For myself, I keep my flashlight in my left pocket and my pepper spray in my right pocket for three reasons:

1. I know I'm going to drop the spray when going for my gun, because my gun hand has been given an overlearned task to perform that supersedes the reflexive "Hold tight!" response.


2. I carry a stream-type OC dispenser, and I'm going to be more accurate using my shooting hand if I have to spray some dude.


3. My light is in my support hand pocket. I can see situations where I may need to light and spray simultaneously, and I can see situations where I might need to light and shoot simultaneously, but I can't envision a ton of situations where I need to spray and shoot simultaneously.