Low Ready Position with a Long Gun

Here comes another important tip from the Personal Defense Network. Let's talk about ready positions with our long gun. If we have a defensive carbine, shotgun, any kinda long gun, we wanna be in a ready position that keeps the muzzle low, Especially if we're in a close-quarters environment. If ya think about it, the rifle starts on a sling pointed down. We're gonna know that we need to use it, at this point, we're gonna put the gun up here.

We've got three of our four points of contact. If I wanna come up and shoot, I'm gonna move up to my fourth point of contact which obviously is my cheek well, take the safety off and be able to take the shot. If I'm in a close-quarters environment, one other big advantage besides just that consistency and ease of coming up to my shooting position, as opposed to any kind of a muzzle up kind of ready situation, where if I'm here now I have to push the gun out, bring it up, back in, and then to my face. Much less consistent than it is from just rolling up here. I also have an issue with close-quarters of a bad guy trying to get control of the gun.

The world's a complicated place, There's a lot of distractions, there's a lot going on, whether it's home defense or military, law enforcement situation. I'm gonna go around this truck and we'll just assume, maybe I'm responding to an active shooter as a patrol officer. Maybe I'm inside of my house with a long gun in this corner, and there's a bad guy that's gonna be sneaking around the corner. And then, as he's coming around that corner and I don't know he's there, I'm gonna be looking around. Maybe I looked to the left, as the bad guy comes out past this tire.

Again, pretend this is any kinda corner. If my gun is low and he grabs the end of it, I can turn towards him. I can use my body weight to orient that muzzle towards him. Even if he grabs it with both hands, at this point, I can turn this way and start at least effecting his ability to hurt me low. He pulls the gun into himself, that's fine, that helps me out even more.

I can turn with my whole body, I can wrestle with this gun very effectively if it's low. On the other hand, Brian resets, and I'm moving forward with the gun up high. As I'm coming by this corner and he comes out and grabs it and gets under it, now I'm really kinda stuck. There isn't much I can do. I have to be a lot faster, a lot stronger, a lot more skilled, probably even bigger with Brian to be able to push this muzzle back down.

Certainly, I can let go of my gun, transition to pistol, I can do something unarmed. There's things I can do. But I've lost complete control of this rifle, because I had that muzzle high. It was much easier for him to get under it, and now I'm really stuck. So when ya think about the low ready versus the high ready, there really shouldn't be much question.

Low ready is far a superior of both for the shooting situations, and for the extreme close-quarters situations in the unlikely and horrible event that someone gets their hands on your rifle. Be sure to check out the Personal Defense Network for more important tips, just like that one.