And again we revisit an entangled weapons fight involving private citizens. Even though many SMEs will try to still insist that these things never happen, they do.
From Texas on September 14th. Take note that neither man is a skilled grappler but it still went to an entanglement. As a matter of fact, the gun being there made the entanglement far MORE likely rather than less. People don’t want to be shot, and if they are not paralyzed with fear, they will instinctively grab for the weapon and/or control. It is stunning to see how so many “experts” can’t grasp this fundamental concept.
Also notice that even though the older man brought the gun to the fight, the younger guy got control and took it, and could have easily used it to kill the older guy. The gun is not a magic talisman that works just because it is there. Nor does it work as an intimidator if the other guy refuses to accept the intimidation. If you cannot control the position and the actions of the other person, and they are within 4-5 yards, having control of your gun is a crapshoot.
This podcast interview I did is a couple of months old, but I think it is still the best one if you are curious about the material I teach and why.
Rich is super experienced himself so he knew what kind of questions to ask to take a deep dive in my coursework. Give it a listen if you are curious about my seminars.
I will be in OKC Oct 22-23 teaching my Close Contact Handgun course.
This class is about NOT GOING HANDS ON. It is all about how to minimize that chance. Which sounds super easy (and we have all the nice pithy phrases to give us mental comfort) but is actually incredibly difficult.
This is the fundamental base where we try to ensure that we don’t end up in an entanglement, and we can use our handgun to maximum effect. There is some very minor physical contact in the class, but it is extremely limited, making the course suitable for anyone who is looking to get their feet wet in the close range self-defense envelope.
In this class we will look at ways to maintain distance, using verbalization, footwork, positioning, and awareness to keep distance from an aggressive criminal, and to utilize the pistol in a manner in which we can prevent him from stopping us. The focus is on NOT getting entangled and having to get into a physical fight, but rather to use the pistol the way it is intended to be used – at a distance.
And yet again we have another video that according to many SMEs in the training community never happens. An entangled fight with weapons involving only private citizens.
This one is particularly good for a few reasons, and I post it to illustrate some interesting aspects.
Note the actions of the good guy in the foreground. This is a guy who is either really lucky, or has some training. As soon as the interaction happens, he squares up to the unknown contact and pay attention to how he sets himself up to move to the guy’s back. Also, there is zero hesitation – he recognizes what is happening and that action is needed. I would love to know his story because it is picture perfect in how to deal with this.
Watch how the good guy takes the robber’s back, and controls the limbs, and by doing so, he owns the weapon, not the guy who brought it to the fight. Hmm. I have seen this before. Where could it be? Oh yeah, in everything that Craig Douglas, Paul Sharp, Larry Lindenman, Chris Fry, myself, or a handful of others like John Valentine and Ben from Redbeard Combatives have been teaching all this time. Weird, it is almost like we have worked this problem…..
Also ponder how this is BJJ 101 – control the position and the limbs, and you dictate what happens in the fight.
Look and see where the fight goes – straight to the ground. For all those people who screech about “not going to the ground because you will get killed”, how do they answer this? Going to the ground here was an incredibly awesome end state. It allowed the good guys to completely control what the bad guy did, and it minimized the options the bad guy had to fight back. In short, going to the ground was an absolute win, and probably an easier win than if they had tried to keep the bad guy upright.
The final point I would like to make is the absurdity that many people in the training community like to proselytize about – “Always carry your gun”. That sounds great, and for LE, ex-LE, .mil or .gov guys on duty it works fine. For the average person, not so much. The fact is that there are many situations where regardless of what you want to do, you cannot carry a firearm. The reason I hate this trope so much is that it essentially says the only way to defend yourself is with a gun, and facing a weapon without one is a death sentence. Well, yeah, if you have not trained it under realistic pressure, you most likely will fail. But with some training and some basic awareness and acceptance of how the world is, you can always have a chance to defend yourself. After all, you can never be disarmed of skill. Certainly carrying a firearm is good, and in an ideal world we can use it when necessary. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. I, for one, refuse to accept that I am helpless without gun. And here is a shining example of how well that concept works for real.
I was on the most recent Primary & Secondary podcast with Chuck Haggard and Cody from Taurus and we talked revolvers. We still have aspects of the subject to cover so there will likely be a part 2 (hopefully with DB), but there was some good stuff here as well.
I have touched on this before, but the message is still getting lost. In the last few weeks I have seen two different articles in the gun blogosphere covering ankle carry and both amde the point this method is great if you find yourself on the ground. NO IT IS NOT. Full stop, no maybes. This is not where ankle carry shines, and in fact is the worst reason to use it.
I am pretty agnostic on how someone carries the tools that they rely on for self-defense. Mostly that stems from the fact that I’m not a narcissist, nor am I a child that thinks that my personal context and situation are the only ones that matter and that everyone’s lives are exactly like mine. I also have no need to have my own personal decisions validated by anyone else’ choices.
I may find a particular handgun carry method to not fit into my life at all but that does not mean that it is a poor method in and of itself. Someone else might find it to be the best fit for their lives. I try to ignore those kind of discussions on the internet where people are told in a very black and white manner on how they should conduct their personal matters and if they don’t walk in lockstep with the original commentator then they are stupid. Or poor. Or lazy et al.Who am I to assume that while I have little use for something like a shoulder holster that someone else may find great use for it and can put it to great effect. And most importantly in the great scheme of things, what they do or do not do in no way affect my life so I don’t need to put any time or effort into thinking about it.
The only issue I have in these discussions is when someone does not think through everything and has left either a positive or negative uncovered. The most glaring example for me that comes quickly to mind is the use of ankle carry for small handguns.
Now before we go much further I would like to make it clear that I myself have a definite use for ankle carry. There are times when my own personal environment and context dictate that the most functional means to carry the handgun is on my ankle. What I’m about to discuss in no way diminishes ankle carry as a potentially beneficial tactic.
What I’m going to talk about is a very specific part of ankle carry that many people in the Firearms self-defense community will cite as a strong reason for ankle care, when in fact it is the exact opposite.
There are many times when you will hear someone give one of the justifications to carry on the ankle is that should they find themselves on the ground and in a grappling situation, they can easily reach the gun on their ankle and use that to fix the problem. From the comfort of a keyboard and with no understanding of what grappling actually entails, this sounds like a really good tactic. And even better (and possibly more importantly for some folks), it is a way to compensate for a lack of grappling skill which means that we don’t have to spend any time rolling around on the ground with other sweaty people and potentially looking less than John Wick-like.
I know this may be very appealing, however it is completely lacking any foundation in reality whatsoever. All it takes is a month or two of training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu against a variety of training partners and you will quickly see for yourself. Any of the positions you will find yourself in whenever you don’t know anything about grappling and you were up against either someone with grappling skill or superior physical attributes ( or even worse a horrific combination of both) will graphically demonstrate this fallacy. If you’ve never put yourself in this kind of situation against someone legitimately trying to control you it is very easy to drift into Fantasyland. When you don’t know how someone is going to control you from the top you can visualize all sorts of ways to deploy firearm and have no basis in reality to support your construct.
Please take a look at the accompanying pictures. What I would especially like to point out is that every position shown is straight out of BJJ 101. The top guy is doing nothing different or special for these pictures that he would not be doing normally at any time in any BJJ academy anywhere in the world. When I asked my demo partner to participate, I did not give him any specifics. I just told him to control me that same way he would in order to set up a finishing move such as a choke, an arm break, a shoulder dislocation, or any other kind of end state where I am either unconscious or suffering from catastrophic injury and incapacitating pain . I take the time to explain this because a ton of people will look at these illustrations and they will immediately try to rationalize them away.
One of the ways non-grapplers attempt to minimize the usefulness of grappling in a weapons based environment is that they will say something along the lines of “BJJ guys don’t train against weapons so they will not see it coming and be totally unaware of the gun”. First of all, that is a mighty big assumption that all BJJ players do everything the same and that none of them will ever think about applying this while carrying a gun. Second of all, as you can easily see from the photos, it is irrelevant. Look at how the top guy is controlling the bottom person. In the mount depiction for instance, the top guy has the bottom guy’s back pinned solidly to the mat, and is stretching forward. Both of those prevent the bottom guy from being able to stretch his arms far enough to reach far, and with the top guy posting on his leg to strengthen the pin and choke, he blocks the bottom guy’s legs from being able to come close to the hands. Without the bottom guy having extraordinary flexibility, he is stopped from accessing the ankle gun. And, to add to the problem, desperately reaching for said gun, he does nothing to prevent the entire weight and strength of the top guy being applied against his neck. The choke will happen in 2-5 seconds at the maximum. For those who have never experienced that particular move – called an Eziquiel choke – it is excruciatingly painful in the couple of seconds of consciousness you have. I guarantee you that your ability to withstand the pain and the choke is close to non-existent.
For the knee on belly shot, it is similar in pressure and control to the mount. In order to direct the bottom guy and to keep him in place, the top guy has to manage the arms while putting massive pressure into the bottom guy’s diaphragm. Top guy also has an easy view at everything that is going on and the freedom to move and react in any way. Even if the bottom guy can somehow manage to reach for the weapon, the top guy will see it and realize, even if he is not thinking about the gun or pays attention to that possibility, what is happening and can deal with it. And I leave it to you to decide that if the gun does come out, which of these two people is in a better place to use it?
Finally, for the side control illustration, again take note of the top guy’s control. Bottom guy’s right arm is completely out of the game and is killed. His left arm is being underhooked which means he has little freedom to move or reach, and even if he does, the top guy is looking right towards where that gun will appear and is in a much superior place to dictate the end result. And again, the top guy even in a straight BJJ situation will look in that direction because he has to determine if he can go to a better position (i.e. mount or knee on belly) as well as seeing where he can adjust if he decides to attack the arm or neck. All standard stuff that puts him in the perfect place to deal with a weapon being deployed. None of this is being done because he knows a weapon is in play, but rather because this is how you deal with someone in BJJ.
One possible scenario I did not illustrate but it is easy to imagine is the idea of you being on the ground and you attacker standing above you. Someone may say “there Cecil! That is where I will be able to access my ankle gun and go to work!” No, it isn’t. Take the example of the pictures and note how easy it is for the top guy to interfere or block the in-fight weapons accesss. Now extrapolate that to where he is standing above you with compelte freedom of movement plus he can see everything you are trying to do. How are possibly going to bring that gun into action without the attacker being able to stop you, or even take the gun away and use it on you?
So let’s dispense with the demonstrably incorrect argument that the grappler will be easy prey for a trained person carrying on the ankle. It won’t happen, and only serves to delude someone and leaves them defenseless should they find themselves in that situation. Gear will not fix the problem. Software (skill set) will.
And as I said, this is not a categorical indictment of ankle carry. I have already stated I use it for myself at times. It has a definite place of purpose for many people. It has a definite place of purpose for many people. In that niche, there are not a lot of other carry options that are better. However, that does not mean it solves all problems. It may make some things worse. But there is nothing wrong with that as long as we understand the pros and cons of a particular method or concept and can plan accordingly. Fantasy does not help any of us in the world of self-defense.
This comes up again and again, especially with people who are relatively new to jiujitsu. It is extremely prevalent with those who come from another field of study where they have achieved some semblance of success such as the firearms community. They are used to seeing a very quick demonstration that they have either improved or not, simply by shooting a drill that takes all of a few seconds.
It does not work that way where there is physical opposition from another person.
Any time we are training in a physical activity where there is oppositional force such as in any of the combat sports, we run into the problem of measurement, specifically in a regular measuring of our performance and whether we are getting better or not.
If we are lifting weights, doing cardio or yoga, or shooting on a range, performance tracking is easy. With strength training, all we have to determine is are we lifting more weight, or more often? With cardio, are we going longer and/or faster? With yoga, are we stretching more, or hitting poses more solidly for longer periods of time. Shooting may be the easiest to track. Are we more accurate/faster than we were the last time we shot? All easily measured and even more easily understood.
But when working against the variable and almost endless possibilities that occur going against someone else, all that measurement becomes more like guesswork and a lot of “well, maybe”. Nothing is more frustrating that working really hard at getting better at a particular move, being able to do it perfectly well in isolation, but never pulling it off when there is resistance. We wonder if it is the move, or us. Actually, there is something more frustrating – when sometimes a move works, but other times, against the same opponent, it does not, and we can’t figure out why! That can border on heartbreaking.
The solution? I don’t know that there is one! Comforting, right? What we can do though is re-orient how we view progress, especially in the macro sense.
One of the things that it is easy to forget is that the person we are training against is working too, and may very well be working as hard and as much as you. We have to remember that while we are getting better, so are they and that can skew our relative view of our performance. Take my personal case as an example. I have 4 regular black belt training partners that are truly my peers. We are all within 10 years of each other in age, close in weight, and have been doing BJJ for close to the same amount of time, and we all train around the same number of hours in a week. When any of us roll against each other, the chance that one of us is going to dominate the other is remote. Occasionally, one of us might pull off someone cool, and be able to fully control the round, or even get the other person to tap. More often, like 98% of the time, the rolls are pretty even. If we were scoring them like a tournament, the typically result is either a close victory 3-2, 5-3, or pretty much a tie 0-0 where one or the other may have gotten an advantage (i.e. “almost a point”). If I focus on how I do with them, I could easily get discouraged. No matter how much I train, unless they stop training totally, I am not going to leap past them.
Instead, the person to focus our measurement against is the newer person, the less experienced guy. Can we get a move on him that we have not gotten before at all? If the answer is yes, more often than not, it means you are getting better. Especially if we are focused on self-defense, then the more accurate gauge anyway is against a person how knows little if any about BJJ, so the newer trainee is more precise in letting us know whether we are better or not.
Another way to look is against someone much superior to us. If that guy for example typically taps us five times in a six minute round, but then we consistently only get tapped two times, then we are better. Is that as much of an ego boost as being able to do something offensive back to them? Well, no, but it is realistic.
To sum up, don’t view your performance on a day to day measure, but rather over a longer period of time, say a month, and focus on what you did against people who you can do stuff against
So we have another installment of the visual proof that not only does entangled fighting happen with weapons involved, ground grappling also happens. Much to the chagrin of those who prefer to be lazy or scared of doing any such training.
This video is of a very recent (4-25-22 to be precise) robbery in NYC.
I won’t go into extreme detail because I have made the overarching point over and over again, so I will focus on a few specific details for this incident.
Entanglement happens, even when it does not have to. Note that it looks like the victims were cooperating (or at least not resisting) but still two robbers initiated the attachment. In both instances, the robber in the black jacket knocks one victim to the ground, and then takes back control of the other victim, after the weapons have already come out. Both victims ended up on the ground when they obviously did not want to, but that was irrelevant. They did not have the skill set to prevent it, and the bad guys were willing to do it. Those two points get lost when the anti-grappling in the street people start pontificating on something that they have no experience in or understanding of.
Note that even on the ground and not resisting, there was physical attachment between victim and robber, even with a weapon in play. The bad guys did not stand off at a distance but rather made contact with both victims to take what they wanted.
Look at how close the handgun in the hands of black hoodie robber is to the victim on the ground on the left of the video at about the :12 second mark. This is a classic starting point in an ECQC evolution that every student goes through. What was that about this stuff never happening????
My favorite part of this video is the environment. Where does robbery occur? In a closed space? Nope. An open and fairly broad sidewalk. Plenty of room to move, and yet it still becomes an entangled fight. Again, this is overlooked by those who try desperately to argue against these scenarios as anything plausible.
I know I should be much more pleasant and professional with these articles, but I keep finding it harder and harder to act that way. When you have prominent members of the training community screeching over and over again how entangled fights with weapons never happens to private citizens (to the point one of them even specifically said after watching thousands of videos he’s NEVER seen them go to the ground!), it becomes very difficult to play nice. When I keep reading/hearing/seeing this kind of either willful ignorance or willful lying, I admit to my blood pressure spiking.
And this has nothing to do with any personal offense. I quite literally don’t care when people say the material I teach is not applicable. It is something I have dealt with publicly for 25 years. When you have well known instructors actually go behind your back to spread lies about you, you learn to just shrug it off and keep going.
What does get me angry is that by saying these insipid and provably wrong statements like “grappling does not happen in the street”, these “experts” are setting the stage for good people to get hurt or even killed. THAT bothers me, and yes, I can get overly worked up about it.
This was brought home to me a couple of days ago when I was sent the following video. A perfect illustration of if you don’t know and have not trained for this scenario, the only way you will survive is entirely based on whether the bad guy kills you or not. It is totally at his discretion, not yours.
Watch the video and take note of the following points:
Note how the victim had no idea of what to do to stop the attack. He held on to the attacker’s body all while the bad guy was hammering him on the head with the pistol. THIS is why I get so angry at the idiots who insist these kinds of scenarios never happen. Anyone with just a small bit of grappling understands how to look to control the arms of the other person. Not just conceptually, but with proven and easily applied high percentage techniques. Even if the attacker started the fight with surprise, the good guy had plenty of time to control the attacking arms. It is not hard, it just takes a bit of knowledge first, and then a bit of practice.
Look at how the attacker proceeded with his assault. He had a gun, and he still closed the distance to grab onto the victim. This is the common action. Even with a gun, the bad guy has to get close enough to the victim to get the profitable thing the bad guy wants. How realistic is that he will stand 20 yards away, wave a gun, and say “drop your wallet there”?
Where did the good guy end up? ON THE GROUND! Did he want to be there? Almost certainly not. Did the bad guy intend to put him on the ground? Most likely not, but he does not care. As long as he can maintain control and get what he wants, where the situation goes is not relevant to him. He does not need to be a trained grappler; he just needs to apply force against someone who has zero idea of how to counter it. Why did it go to the ground? Because the victim’s head was forced back past his tailbone, which is the main reason we fall down in these circumstances. Regardless of how you desire the fight to go, it easily will go to the ground if you don’t have the slightest idea of how to prevent it. Just having the idea in your head to “not go to the ground” (because some moronic internet expert said it is a bad idea) has nothing to do with actually being successful at not going there. You need a physical action to stop that, not well wishes.
For those non-grapplers who advocate foul tactics as a way to combat grapplers, please point out where the victim could have employed any of them? Not standing because the bad guy was completely free to pistol whip the good guy. And once on the ground, the bad guy had control not only of his arms, but of the space and position as well. Even if the victim had any notion of eye gouging, biting, hair pulling, etc. it was irrelevant because he had no opportunity to utilize them. A basic tenet of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is the position trumps submission, and this is a perfect encapsulation of that. The only way for the good guy to have won this scenario was to have an actual grappling skill set. Period.
I know this might come across heavy handed in my attitude, but trying to help good people be safer is important to me, and when “experts” give stupid advice that contributes to them possibly getting hurt or killed, I get angry. And for that, I will not apologize for my advocacy.
