A Few Notes On Trigger Discipline, With Examples From Spy X Family

A few notes on trigger discipline, with examples from Spy x Family

One of the first things you learn when learning how to use a gun is that you absolutely do NOT put your finger on the trigger unless you're 100% ready and willing to shoot (and deal with whatever the consequences may be).

Accidental fire is extremely easy to occur. If your finger is touching the trigger, a simple spasm of the hand, a sudden sound or movement in the environment, or jostling from moving can cause the finger to pull the trigger. If you haven't aimed correctly at something that you want to shoot at, you'll very likely shoot something you don't want to shoot, including your own body parts. That's not even counting the fact that you may not properly control the recoil.

So normally, you need to train your discipline so that your first instinct when picking up a gun - especially during a stressful moment - will be for the finger to not go on the trigger until the gun is properly aimed at who/what you want to shoot.

I only trained with air guns some years ago, but discipline was still important; you wrap your hand around the handle with the index finger away from the trigger, make sure you have a good grip on it, raise the gun from the counter, aim, align the sights, and then you put the finger on the trigger and shoot. The one (1) time I accidentally put my finger on it before raising the gun, I shot at the wall while raising it and got a very angry look from my instructor. I was lucky that's all I got.

Since then, I've been noticing trigger discipline in media, and a lot of those get it very wrong.

To his big credit, Tatsuya Endo gets it right.

Twilight's finger is resting parallel to the barrel of the gun, away from the trigger. While this entire pose is more artistic than realistic, it was still important to Endo to portray correct discipline. You don't do that if you don't know about it.

Similarly with Nightfall in the cover of the sixth volume.

Again, artistic, not realistic pose. Still correct discipline.

More examples of artistic depictions with correct discipline:

And then! An action pose!

Twilight has a clear ready-to-shoot pose; he has a target, so finger goes on the trigger. (Normally the gun should be a little higher so he can properly align the sights but he's TwilightTM so I give it a pass)

Even Bondman has good discipline!

Seeing correct discipline in those pictures piques my interest a lot, because it shows that the artist is consciously choosing when he'll show a finger on a trigger, making such a moment more impactful.

Twilight aims his gun right on Edgar's head, his finger on the trigger. Again, you don't put your finger on the trigger unless you're about to shoot. If you're only threatening someone, it should still be off because one single unintentional fire can kill your target when you didn't mean to. Now, I can suspend my disbelief and say Twilight has super duper control over his body to the point of not being jostled or his hand not spasming suddenly because he's TwilightTM. So I instead focus on how serious Twilight was here about killing Edgar. Should Edgar do any movement, he's dead.

Again, it's about the knowledge of trigger discipline itself. When you portray a character not touching the trigger when they don't need to, showing the opposite hits harder.

The Handler prepares the gun ominously, her finger off the trigger.

But when she aims it at the student's head...

She's serious. She's made sure the students heard her prepare the gun, so when she threatens the student, he knows what he's facing despite wearing a blindfold.

Again, in a realistic scenario, in both cases their fingers would rest away from the trigger, because their intention is not to kill their targets unless absolutely necessary. But that might have confused the readers who don't know about trigger discipline, and might have made for less impactful moments. So I give that a pass, especially since Endo is shown to be aware of correct discipline.

The anime is also aware of this.

Twilight is assessing the situation; finger is off the trigger.

The Handler prepares the gun; finger off.

She threatens the student; finger on.

(Of course, there have been moments both in manga and anime with incorrect depictions. But I can let those pass cause I know there's a lot of people involved in creating the art and things can get complicated)

A few more examples, from the Imperial Scholars meeting:

Those are very short moments, but someone drew those stills and intentionally had the guards' index fingers extended and not around the trigger.

As I said above, those examples pique my interest because they are conscious, deliberate choices... and good use of that can make for an impactful scene... say, identity reveal happens, Twilight is aiming his gun at the Thorn Princess, but his finger is off the trigger. He urges himself to put the finger on it, but the damn thing won't move... she also cannot bring herself to stab him even though her dagger is right at his throat, and she notices his hesitation... Endo-sensei I am begging...

(don't spoil me if it happens in the manga, let me live in ignorance)