Over ten years ago, I wrote an article about why I don’t teach as a default, tapping and racking a short barreled firearm after performing a gun disarm; something I still see a lot of people doing in videos that are posted on social media – it can be difficult when watching such videos to know if what is being performed is a tactic or part of a “story”/demonstration, which is why I rarely comment on such posts e.g., an instructor might show someone tapping and racking, and putting a bead on a person they’ve just disarmed not because they practice this but from a video/story point of view it “ends the scene” in a clean way; the gun was in one person’s hands, and now it is clearly in another’s. Also, the person making the video may be thinking about contextual factors, where it would be necessary to try to “control” someone via a threat of force, using their own firearm. I have always been an “it depends” type of person rather than someone who rigidly prescribes absolutes etc. However, what is displayed as a technique, may not necessarily be a solution e.g., whilst after being disarmed in such videos individuals are presented as being compliant and obeying orders and commands to “stay down” etc., in reality they may not, and the “clean ending” presented may actually not be the ending e.g., the person may run away, may charge the person holding the gun, and/or pull another weapon etc. Simple situations and scenarios that are created in the training environment where everyone is working to a script – the person being disarmed complying with an order to get on the ground – may not play out that way in reality etc. In this article I want to look at some other reasons that I didn’t explain in my original article - not due to oversight, but because I try and keep my articles to around 1000 words, which is a 5-minute read, and there’s not always room to explain everything etc., why I prefer – by default - to use the weapon cold (after disarming) as an impact weapon, and then disengage etc.
If you ever find yourself having to make a legal claim of self-defense, to explain/”defend” your actions you should understand that a fight may not be viewed as one single incident but instead be broken up into many different events e.g., whilst you were facing an aggressor with a firearm, you were in imminent danger, but once you performed a disarm, and pointed the firearm at your assailant they were now in imminent danger etc. Whilst there may be reasons to stay at an incident scene (training a weapon on someone), after you are no longer in imminent danger you will have to be able to both articulate and demonstrate this, possibly to a jury. You may have to explain to twelve people – who may never have experienced violence – why after escaping danger you didn’t leave/disengage. This will be in a court of law, not on social media, and trying to explain that you are a “sheepdog” who protects the innocents etc., is going to just sound weird and unrealistic; it may be interpreted that you saw yourself as an “enforcer” rather than as someone who was victimized and was doing what you needed to escape etc. Whilst I get the sheepdog protecting the sheep from the wolf analogy, it is limited and should not form the basis of a legal defense except in some very extreme and contextualized situations where there was a need to protect others – not because you thought others may have been at risk but because you knew they were. Using the firearm cold as an impact weapon to facilitate your escape/disengagement is a much more believable narrative, as well as being simpler than staying and trying to control an assailant’s actions and behaviors with their own weapon etc.
In my original article I didn’t address the issue of “optics” and how others including law-enforcement may interpret the scene of you standing with a weapon and pointing it at another person. Whilst you may think you are the only sheepdog in your town, city or vicinity, there will be those who believe that they are the un-deputized “good cop” who is keeping the neighborhood safe etc. If/when they come across you “pinning” someone down with a weapon their first thought is probably going to be that you are the “bad guy”, acting unlawfully etc. They may, if they carry a weapon, believe that it is their job to take control of the scene and pull their weapon, pointing it at you; now you will have two people at the scene you will need to control. The concerned citizen who is pointing a weapon at you may well be experiencing the negative effects of adrenaline, losing auditory control, and not able to think rationally etc., and it is this person you may need to convince that you are the “good guy” and the person you are pointing a firearm at is the “bad guy”. That’s a lot of moving parts to manage in a high-stress situation. If you’d disengaged and weren’t there this wouldn’t be an issue. Now you’re in a stand-off between two “sheepdogs”, with a “wolf” that may have noticed that this is a situation they can exploit.
In just about every scenario you are likely to face, your responsibility for safety will first be to yourself, and the most effective response in almost every scenario is to disengage; few incidents will require you to control a person with a firearm – whether it is theirs or your own (if your own, you drawing it should have meant that you needed to use it – from a legal perspective). In almost all cases you want to remove yourself from the scene, both for legal and practical reasons. It may look cool on YouTube to tap and rack, and it may be a great visual for a video for everything to end at this point, but the potential realities may be somewhat different. Disengaging/running is rarely “sexy” but it is usually safer.