Why did this become a er “fashion”? What started the trend?
EDIT:Just thought I’d add that I have seen the articles you can find with a google search, they admit it is not being used knowingly. So I suspect this started somewhere as a fashion basically.
Keeps the recoil from causing the next four shots from going into the ceiling.
Otherwise, it looks cool.
I don’t know when it really started, but Hollywood made it popular in the late 80’s or so. If you look back at say Clint Eastwood movies in the 70s you won’t find a single sideways gun. On the other hand, by the 90s it became the Hollywood standard for gangsters. Now even the good guys do it.
Mythbusters tested it and found that it worked about as poorly as most of its detractors say it does. If you want to actually hit your target, hold the gun upright. You won’t look as cool but you won’t miss as many shots.
ETA:
Yeah, they go wildly off to the side instead. 
In the upright position, gravity works against the recoil to keep the gun aimed roughly where you want it. Sideways, you are fighting both recoil and gravity.
Looks cool to some foolish people.
May have started off being used by the shield guy of SWAT teams. Like so: http://www.policemag.com/_Images/blogs/M-SWAT-Blog-LCOA.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Police_Officer_with_balistic_shield.JPG/232px-Police_Officer_with_balistic_shield.JPG
That does make sense if you’re using a cumbersome shield with one hand. Otherwise, it’s just silly.
That article from the Daily Mail shows yet once more why you shouldn’t read the Daily Mail.
I never said it worked. I would be relieved if a person wielded a weapon in that manner in real life, as he obviously has had no firearm training and is probably more of a threat to himself than to me or my family.
It started as a movie trope in Taiwanese action flicks. They got it from its real-word application in the Chinese Civil War.
Post-WWI German disarmament dumped loads of guns on the market, including broom handle/bolo Mauser pistols (and their *Spanish knock-offs, which some firearm enthusiasts say are actually superior). In battle, Chinese soldiers would hose off the entire magazine at the enemy, with the recoil putting most of the rounds into the sky. So they were trained to hold the pistols sideways so that the bullets might go along a line of charging enemies.
*one small factory where these were made was in the town of Guernica. That and the strategic crossroads nearby were the pretext for the Condor Legion’s bombing the town. However, they didn’t use Stukas, just converted airliners, so the arms factory and crossroads were not hit. The central market, full of civilians, was bombed to flinders.
It’s easier to shoot over counters at cowering convenience store clerks.
Luckily, there’s a sight for that…
It must be legit, because they even make pistol sights for sideways shooters. 
The funny thing is, there are quite a few legitimate pistol techniques that have the cant (the tilt of the pistol from straight up and down) around 45 degrees or so. See, e.g., the FBI manual for shooting their S&W 1076 (back when they were rolling out the 10mm), one-handed in rapid fire, at page 27 of the .pdf; the Marine Corps Field Manual, Pistol Marksmanship, at 8-1, also as a one-handed technique for managing recoil; and the concept of “Center Axis Relock.”
Moreover, there’s one article that claims gangbangers use that style of full 90 degree cant, in order to better obtain a “flash sight picture” for rapid shooting. I guess in essence the theory is that the entire side of the pistol is easier to acquire, and place over the target, than lining up iron sights. Particularly if your pistolcraft fundamentals are poor.
Finally, I cannot remember where I read it, but I want to say it was in an oral history collection of either WW2 Pacific troops, or Vietnam troops, but the guy being interviewed used a full 90 degree cant on a hand-held, belt-fed machine gun. This was in order to let the recoil impulse assist him in strafing left to right, but flatter in the vertical plane, than if he were to hold the machine gun in a normal upright position. Pretty much what Slithy Tove wrote about the ‘Broomhandle’ Mauser.
Some idiot in Hollywood thought it would look cool in the movies. Other idiots watched the movies and thought that was how one was supposed to hold a gun.
Related to this, and definitely in the “I heard from a guy, who knows a guy” level of veracity, a commenter (gunguy12345) at this thread at Gizmodo claims the movie guys learned the technique from Israeli air marshals. The marshals would carry their pistols in Condition 3: fully loaded magazine seated in the pistol, empty chamber, hammer (if applicable) down. If needed, they would draw the pistol and cant it towards their off hand. They then would grab, pull back and release the slide, chambering a round with the pistol canted nearly 90 degrees. If necessary, the marshal would rapidly take the shot in that position, with successive shots taken at a more normal cant.
The commenter claims it was due to the difficulty of disengaging the safety on the Beretta handgun they were issued, preventing them from carrying in Condition 1. I don’t know why they didn’t use 1911’s or such, but w/e. You’d think they could have found a stouter cartridge than .22LR too. While known colloquially as ‘Israeli carry’, an earlier mention of it is in the 1942 instructional book by William Fairbairn, Shooting to Live. While the book is interesting, I have the same critique of the method. Just carry the thing loaded and use a good holster. Done.
Anyway, they showed this technique to some Hollywood action movie people, and the rest is history. Naturally, there’s a vigorous debate in the comments about just how full of it the commenter’s claim is. It’s an interesting story, even if probably complete B.S.
You mean ‘I like hot shell casings bouncing off my forehead’ style?
Hikjack -
Just my WAG, but I think the reason behind “Israeli carry” isn’t hardware, it’s force of habit. Because of the universal draft, the vast majority of Israeli handgun users - cops, marshals, security guards and civilians - are military veterans, which means that the first firearm (and probably only, thanks to the Israeli army’s aversion to handguns) they were trained to use was some sort of assault rifle. Unlike pistols, rifles are usually carried unloaded outside of combat, and a properly-trained soldier would carry this approach over to pistols as well; in fact, a former soldier might feel actively uncomfortable carrying around a chambered weapon during “routine” activity. I know I would.
This is what I’ve read, too, except the version I read was that the technique was used by Chinese troops in room clearing to keep the line of bullets running horizontally at a desired level from right to left (in response to recoil forces). In a machine pistol (fully automatic and hard to control), as employed in the rough-and-tumble world of Chinese internal wars of the 1930’s, this might be plausible. No guarantee that it’s not just an established urban myth, however.
Well-trained Russian special forces today use the very similar APS “Stechkin” machine pistol (it too can be fitted with a wooden stock) in fully automatic fire without employing the Chinese technique. The caliber is 9x18 in the APS (as compared to the more dynamic Mauser “broomhandle” round), slightly more than a .380 and less than a 9X 19 NATO round.
Reportedly (as witnessed by an expert evaluating ex-special forces Russians for a Western commercial bodyguard service), a well trained user using a solid stance and two-handed upright technique can keep all 20 rounds in the black on full automatic at reasonable combat range for the 9X18 cartridge (“about as far as you can throw a pistol chambered for it”).
That being the case, the argument for holding a machine pistol – or any pistol – sideways, except due to some specific tactical situation, would seem rather weak.
Far more likely style, not substance.
Yeah, you want to avoidthe Hot Shell Dance if you can…
This gal shrugs it off better than most guys I’ve seen!
Oh man it burns, burns, burns.
As to the OP. I guess with practice that you could learn to shoot relatively accurately with that technique but I would worry about recoil to the face. That is something you do not want to experience.
Capt
For centuries, handguns were held upright with the sights on top and the butt downwards. Then in the late 70s, Ken Hackathorn and other combat shooting specialists/writers dreamed up shooting sequences that required shooting with the weak hand. They discovered that canting the gun 45 degrees inwards makes for a stronger grip and didn’t impair sighting too much. So 45 degrees with the weak hand is justified. But laying the weapon 90 degrees with the strong hand is really Hollywood.
