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Josh Benson shoots with his left
hand only, steadied somewhat by
the atrophied lifting muscles in
his right arm.
PHOTO BY OLEG VOLK • A-HUMAN-RIGHT.COM
Joshu
The most remarkable thing about Joshua Benson is the words he doesn’t say.
In a world full of whiny emo-boys and
latte-sipping cowards, a man who
never utters the words “I can’t” and
who never asks for a drop of sympathy
is a refreshing change.
I met Josh for the first time last spring
at the Firearms Academy of Seattle,
during the last course Jim Cirillo ever
taught. Cirillo’s class was a two-day
adventure into close quarters shooting
techniques, including alternative sighting
methods and shooting from downed
positions. Josh wheeled himself in on
the first day of class, taking the far righthand
end of the line so that his crossdraw
holster and unusual one-handed
reload would not cause his muzzle to
cross any of the other students. This
class was designed for intermediate to
accomplished shooters, not at all for beginners,
and I confess that I wondered if
the young man in the chair was going to
be able to keep up—a worry that seems
downright laughable in retrospect.
Josh, it turned out, was no beginner:
he is a certified handgun instructor
through Tom Givens’ Rangemaster
firearms training school in Memphis,
TN. Now 25 years old, he’s taken dozens
of professional training classes in the
three years he’s been shooting defensive
handguns. And he takes his personal
defense very seriously, carrying a concealed
firearm every day.
The physical challenges that Josh
faces are a bit out of the ordinary. An
encounter with vaccine-induced poliomyelitis
as an infant left him with
no function in either leg, roughly five
percent function in his right arm (very
little in his right hand), and only about
eighty percent function in his left arm
and hand. While most shooters struggle
to get shots on paper using both hands
in a stable stance, Josh nails the target
while holding the gun with his left hand
only, steadied somewhat by the lifting
muscles in his right arm.
“This kid just impresses the hell out
of me,” says Massad Ayoob, who taught
from left to right: Tom Givens, Josh
Benson, John Farnam, John Hearne.
Josh’s LFI-1 and LFI-2 classes in 2007.
“At LFI, we’ve had students in a chair
before. We’ve had one-armed students
before. But Josh is the first one-armed
guy in a chair we’ve ever had. He taught
us all some things.” Like many firearms
classes, LFI-2 is physically demanding in
a lot of ways. Josh, working one-handed
from his wheelchair, kept up with this
demanding class just fine. He successfully
completed the LFI Qualification
shoot at double speed, which included
getting all his reloads well under time.
“I can reload an auto-pistol in about
four to six seconds,” Josh explains. “I
recently have shaved off about two seconds
by going straight to a backup gun,
the New York reload.”
Although Josh sometimes carries a
snub-nosed revolver as a backup, his
regular carry is a semi-auto. He considered,
but ultimately rejected, making
his primary carry gun a revolver—the
gun type perhaps most commonly recommended
for people with physical
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USCONCEALEDCARRY.COM n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n JULY 2008