Contact Shooting in Context

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. What we've seen is a whole bunch of examples of people who were on top of officers inside of cars, next to cars, in houses rolling around the couches, on the ground trying to kill them. Whether that was through brute physical force, beating them. Whether that was through a knife, whether that was through a gun whether that was choking, crushing. Whatever the technique being used was kind of irrelevant because all of them end up being in contact like this, trying to control that knife.

Doing this and wrestling over the weapon and forgetting that you're actually in a fight. Being in a situation where you're here and there's no weapon involved. And this person's just on top of you beating the crap out of you and you're trying to survive. So this is the position that we're going to fight back from. Jump up.

This is where we're going to be. He's down here worrying about trying to maintain control of another person's body and not get hurt any more than we already are while shooting. All right. This is why we say when we talk about combat focus shooting, the idea that the shooting should be the simple part. The shooting should just be happening.

You shouldn't be thinking about trigger control when you're shooting. If you are, you're not going be able to shoot nearly as well under those types of circumstances. Under those conditions, right? The shooting should be the automatic part. Shootings should be easy.

Trigger control at this point should not be a big deal. So that's not really what we're worried about. When we get into these shooting positions the idea will be to go very slowly at first just like we would combat focus shooting; extend, touch, press. We're going to speed up. We're going to get you into realistic situations.

And eventually by end of the day you'll actually do this kind of stuff in a force on force scenario. You'll actually do this with the person who introduced SIM work and all that stuff. So give me your Glock. Clear? Clear.

Clear. Alright. So one thing we want to think about is the use of the pistol when it's up against our body. And orienting the muzzle obviously towards the threat. It's a very simple plain English command.

Get the gun up out of the holster and then orient towards the threat. All right. So if the threats in front of us. We're still going to orient towards the threat. What's important to understand is what we want to do with this.

Is make sure that we're keeping in, in contact with our body. All right, did you guys... when you went through the Academy you ever have the like the fight for life thing. 30 or 60 seconds where the one guy's a bad guy, one guy's a good guy. Somebody tries to cut the other guy and somebody tries to take the gun away.

I've never seen anybody get cuffed during those things. If one person especially someone who's just gone through a police Academy and is in officer survival week or whatever you guys call it, doesn't want to get cuffed. They're probably going have to fight their way out of it. But I seen a lot of guns taken away and more importantly I've seen a hell of a lot of guns fought over that shouldn't have been fought over. And when we think about it, if it's set up the way it usually is, you go into it knowing that the guy is going to try and take your gun.

But having to cuff the guy and that guy spins on you and you end up wrestling around with a gun in the holster and sooner or later it comes out or it doesn't come out either way. The first mistake that gets made is pulling the gun to here. In all of those positions that we're going to shoot in. Whether it's here. Whether it's here.

Whether it's here, the magazine well is going to be against our body. That's the number one fundamental rules. We come up, magazine well comes up against the body. Oriented here, oriented here where obviously we're going to be down against the thighs inside the legs. We're not going to be here straight up and down, floating around.

Okay? We don't want to turn it around this way and put the slide up against our body where we're going to have to worry about causing a malfunction something like that. Let's work with the first position which is just going to be I've controlled his gun. I'm hitting him. I'm trying to get this gun off line.

He starts shooting into the crowd. He's stronger than me. The guns coming back. I come up, orient the muzzle towards the threat. If I'm here, and had the gun in my holster.

The knife comes up out of the pocket. Knife comes up out of the pocket. If my reaction is, Hey, he's got a knife. I need to shoot him. And I go like this.

That's that bad tie we talked about yesterday. So I've got to stay in contact and actually move in. So that's one of the principles we will work with. If I'm within two arms reach, okay? I'm much better off.

If I see the knife coming out moving in to control that threat trying to control it and end it right here. But if I can't. if he's faster, smarter, stronger now I've got to switch that lethal response. But I can't let go of the knife while I do that. Most attacks are going to be right-handed.

Your defense is going to be left-handed. If he attacks with the other hand, right hand comes up I come in for the block. I'm doing this. Maybe I can get him against the wall, maybe not. Maybe he gets me against the wall, at this point if I want to shoot, I've got to transition the control to this hand Whatever control I can get.

So if I can control the transition with the off-hand come back down to the gun, pull it up, orient, touch breast. Check out more videos. Just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.