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:

1. 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.
2. 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”?
3. 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.
4. 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.  

https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/video-man-pistol-whipped-robbed-on-queens-street

Once again, we have another edition of what should be beating a dead horse, but it’s not dead, because too many people keep trying to pretend it is still alive.

Here we see another entangled weapons fight completely involving private citizens that just happened in Oakland.

Take note that the bad guys closed to contact distance immediately to heighten their control. Also note that they were touching and grabbing the victims almost the entire time. Watch the robber on the right of the screen – he even at one point goes to a classic retention position with his handgun as he manhandles his victim and turns him completely around. He especially is focused on controlling his victim in what anyone familiar with grappling would see as clinch control.

Look as well at where the guns are pointed the entire time. The only time one of the guns was not pointed at the victims, the robber was physically controlling the good guy. For those folks who espouse the “if someone tries to wrassle me, I will just shoot them” ethos, please explain at what point that was a viable option?

The other thing that stood out to me was how easy it would have been for the first victim to grab the gun and immediately work into a good control position. He would not even have had to lunge forward since the bad guy brought the gun (and himself) into the victim’s workspace. But that did not happen because he didn’t know how to do it, or that it was even a thing. A fact that the “grappling never happens with weapons” crowd just does not get.

Just because you think you understand what weapons grappling looks like or even what it is, does not mean that you actually do.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/a-closer-look-armed-robbery-outside-oakland-restaurant/2883137/

I recently heard a prominent member of the firearms community comment publicly that “we don’t see grappling happen on the street”.  I can only conclude from this that said person is either woefully dumb or willfully ignorant.

Trying to be positive on this, perhaps they are just looking at violence and criminal activity through a narrow lens of firearms, and the only thing of consequence is gun related. While this is understandable, it does not make it okay. Telling the public that grappling does not happen and they don’t need to worry about it will get good people hurt or even killed.

Just to show how foolish this attitude is, here is a video that just came past my feed, and just occurred in NYC. Take a look and tell me what you see.

No guns involved but there is still violence and it most assuredly is a grappling situation. It is even called that by the reporter. Not only is it from NYC where being able to carry a weapon as a private citizen is near impossible, I will be willing to bet that the company she is working at has a specific non-weapons policy. She has few options, and the job itself forces her to be at close range to customers, so it is no surprise to those who have a truly open minded approach to what actually occurs in the real world that when the bad guy wants to take what he wants, and goes to physically impose his threats on her, it becomes an entanglement, and more so a ground fight because those who don’t grapple are far more likely to go to the ground when they don’t want to.

The only thing that saved this woman from death or grave injury was that the criminal did not push it that far. He easily could have.

I would really like the internet expert have a face to face meeting with this woman so he could tell her why her scenario did not actually happen…….

https://nypost.com/2022/05/02/nyc-thief-wrestles-cell-phone-store-employee-video/?fbclid=IwAR39d1OXOIAgF60DR7NjFnd7bTL3NFxIak4XWkamBpHL1miHfqEQ6JKSAaI