Here’s another great Into the Fray by @KevinM. This time it’s about weapon retention:
https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/could-you-keep-your-gun-away-from-a-bad-guy/
How often do you train to keep control of your firearm?
Interesting question but how would you train for such a circumstance?
Plastic guns, a partner, and a good instructotr.
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Not very often anymore but I did a lot of it over a couple of decades.
It isn’t a skill often needed by civilians but critical for military and LEO’s.
Even as rare as it is needed for the average self defender it is well worth investing some training time in at least occasionally.
We trained in my tae kwon do classes to get a weapon away from an attacker. A TKD school may be able to assist you with retention as well.
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This is one of the most important things anyone who carries should be well versed in.
I’m fortunate that I train with a former Gung-Ho Chuan Association Instructor (GHCA) who is also a former LEO like me, and we train this often. The GHCA was formed decades ago by Bob Kasper, Kelly McCann and a couple of other hard-charging former military guys.
Craig Douglas (aka SouthNarc) also has a very valuable class called ECQC (Extreme Close Quarters Combat) that is as good as anything out there in this space. He has a bunch of videos on YouTube and FaceBook under his ShivWorks brand. Great material.
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To be honest one needs to be real wary about developing overconfidence in the ability to disarm an attacker.
If you fight for a gun you’re probably going to get shot. It may or may not be a life threatening wound but you’d better approach it from the mindset you’re going to have to fight through that.
Same with a knife disarm, you’re probably going to get cut and have to fight through that to take the knife away.
Lots of things are made to look very easy on youtube or in a class with blue guns and knives, it’s a whole different world confronting a bad guy with the real thing.
Warriors go through thousands and thousands of reps to develop real proficiency and even for the true professional a disarm is a very high risk choice.
For every move, or virtually every move there is a counter and if you get into a physical confrontation it’s probably going to come down to who is the best trained and the most committed to doing whatever it takes to prevail.
For the average self defender your best option is to avoid at all costs closing to within two arms reach of an attacker. Always find a way to create distance if at all possible before engaging, and if it’s too late create that distance as quickly as possible.
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I’ve done decades of training in many different systems including DT when I was an LEO. A gun is infinitely easier to disarm than a knife, provided you are within lunge and reach distance. Anyone with a modicum of blade usage ability will simply cut you to ribbons, and it is far easier to avert the muzzle and control the pistol while pummeling the attacker than it is to do the same with someone skilled with a blade. I train with (and against) both, and have been in real fights over both, but if I am in a grappling situation I would much prefer to have blade in hand than gun. Test it out for yourselves with training weapons under full pressure and you can quickly see how this plays out.
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A knife is definitely an up-close weapon. I’d much rather not come up against either, but I’m with you on which I’d rather deal with in a grappling situation.
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Really well put.
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You can get inside the effective range of a gun pretty easily. There is no minimum when it comes to the effective range of knife.
If you fight for a gun it’s probably going to go off, if you fight for a knife, you’re going to be cut. If you go in with that mindset committed to the disarm you have a chance, if you don’t it can really end badly.
When you commit to a disarm, there is no pulling back without a very high likelihood of getting seriously hurt or killed.
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Alot, it’s one of my concerns. I don’t walk in crowds.