Side-mounted guns (SMG) completions are perforated with a customized system of TCP guns and special hardware that orients the short-string guns below the packer to direct all shots away from the production tubing. The dual oriented perforating guns are clamped to the outside of the production tubing. Each gun section has dual HDF heads that are activated at the same time by the direct application of pressure to the production tubing. The eFire-TCP tubing-conveyed perforating electronic firing head can also be used.

In addition to their use in wells with production tubing, SMGs can be used for dual-zone perforation with selective gas lift. The SMGs perforate an upper gas zone to activate a gas lift mandrel and produce from a lower perforated zone.