r/elementary • u/_msimmo_ • 3d ago
Couldn't Bell Have Just Learned to Shoot Left Handed?
In the season 2 story arc with Bell getting shot and the complications from this, Bell has the potential to not be able to be a detective anymore because "detectives are required to carry a gun".
I am a trained marksman and instructor in rifle and shotgun as well as being pretty good with a pistol. I am cross dominant, meaning in my circumstance I am right handed but shoot left handed because my left eye is my dominant eye.
I learned how to shoot and was actually teaching people to shoot before I fully accepted this, so for may years I was shooting with the wrong hand.
So, my question; would Bell's inability for properly fire a gun with his dominant hand actually have ended his career? If I can learn to shoot with the wrong hand and then retrain myself to shoot properly, why couldn't Bell have been able to do the same?
I'm not saying there aren't other reasons why a detective wouldnt't be benched for palsy in a hand, it's just that the way it is framed in the story arch focuses on the inability to shoot properly
Thoughts....
15
7
u/Winter-Grand-3215 3d ago
Honestly, no clue. A trained shooter like you would prob know better whether it’s possible to learn to shoot with a non-dominant hand. Personally, I’m left-handed and there’s no chance in hell I could train myself to write with my right hand. By shooting might be different from what I understand(?)
4
u/_msimmo_ 3d ago
It's hard but it is possible, It's one of the things I specialized in, training people to use their non dominant hand when they want to resist it because in the long run it will make them a better shooter
My mentor was the same and did the same thing for me.
2
u/ludonarrator Attending a Meeting 3d ago
No clue about guns, but at least with archery, it is not uncommon to be cross dominant (hand and eye don't match), and while some such archers prefer eye patches (or to simply close "the wrong" eye), switching hands tends to be the preferred solution. But this is also "caught" and recommended early on, when the archer doesn't really have much muscle memory to begin with; it gets harder as you get better, which is probably why we feel it's impossible to switch the writing hand.
6
u/Live_Pin5112 3d ago
it took me years of training to write left handled, I don't think learning to shoot, specially when you're disabled, would be easy
6
u/NathanAdler91 3d ago
Whenever you learn to do something with your non-dominant hand, you essentially start back at the bottom of the learning curve, and it's harder because it doesn't come as naturally.
3
u/No-Somewhere-8011 3d ago
Well part of the issue was he couldn't grip well and I can see that being a safety concern for a detective. I think them referring to the problem as his inability to shoot made it seem like that was the only issue he was having. I'm sure he needed a certain level of grip strength to fully return to active duty.
5
35
u/therrubabayaga 3d ago
It wasn't a career ending injury, but he didn't know that at the time. It could have been much worse, so his future was up in the air, and this is why he was very mad against Holmes and didn't want to work at the precinct with him.
He might have learned to shoot with his other hand if he had no choice, but it was still a set back since he had to go through training all over again, get certified and such. Having a permanently injured hand might have kept him to lower levels in the police too.
The plot point was the anger against Holmes for not caring about consequences for others and also that the career he had worked so hard to build had become very uncertain, so "simply changing shooting hand" will not have solved anything really.