There’s a bunch of videos on YouTube demonstrating techniques for disarming someone of their firearm.
Is this even practical?
Has there ever been a documented case of someone using martial arts to Krav Maga a gun out of an attackers hands?
I mean it seems to depend a lot on someone engaging you at point blank range instead of the 500m effective range of an AR15. It also seems to require an attacker having an extremely slow trigger finger.
And say you do grab the barrel and deflect it away from you and the gun goes off. It seems like you would need have a lot of discipline to be cool holding the red-hot barrel of an assault rifle as it sprays rounds and shell casings everywhere.
I’m guessing so, the world is a big place. I don’t know a lot about police training but I thought they were trained to stay at least X feet away from a suspect when they had their guns on him. That way he can’t grab the gun. That video shows the guy standing a couple feet from the barrel, any trained military/police is likely not going to let someone they are trying to control get that close.
As noted above the world is a big place. Documented? Not sure.
But as someone who has spent some time in MA, a lot of that stuff is baloney. I know there are lots of KM fans here but in reality the moves in that video won’t hold up in practice. Also, I doubt a bad guy is going to let you cradle the gun barrel, begging or not.
As noted above. It has probably happened, but that does not necessarily mean it has been documented. I know that in Indiana University’s martial arts programs occasionally runs gun drills, where the “attacker” has either a spring loaded pellet gun or a training gun. I’ve seen gun grabs successfully executed in that regards. But never in a real-life situation.
Depends on the attacker, I guess, as much as on the defender. A friend of mine was really high and got robbed by a gunman, but not without first putting his finger over the gun barrel and saying, “Haha, can’t shoot me now!” Assumedly if an assailant would let you do that, you can do pretty much anything to his gun.
I heard a story about that kind of scenario in a biography written by a new york criminal. He pulled the trigger and blew the guys finger and part of his hand apart.
Hand to hand between a person with a rifle and a person with a pistol or less, will always be rare. The video you reference is a highly unlikely circumstance.
The best answer to your question would be to go to your local Krav Maga gym and have someone give you a demo.
presumably you’d only try the technique in the video if you think the person with the assault rifle is inexperienced and scared and doesn’t really want to shoot you. eg maybe some 19 year old recruit in africa thats themselves been drafted into a war they don’t care about it.
as others have said, anyone trained would never let you get close enough to grab the gun they’d keep you at 3 or 4 meters away minimum.
Yeah. Thanks for your condescending contribution to the thread, Master Pai Mei. Perhaps when I can snatch a marble out of your hand or catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks I will be ready.
Of course it’s “rare”. How often does ANYONE get held up by someone with an assault rifle? And people who fight with assault rifles for a living typically fight other people with similar weapons. But I’ve been running across a lot of these sort of training videos and seeing these moves in documentaries on gun control and whatnot.
Best case scenario, someone is trying to take you hostage and needs you alive or your happen to surprise a gun toting maniac as he comes around the corner. But other than that, I don’t plan on testing my reflexes against him moving his trigger finger a fraction of an inch.
Come to think of it a friend of mine did get mugged at gunpoint last year. I wasn’t there but apparently he did manage to disarm the mugger of what turned out to be a BB gun. He also managed to receive some stiches where he got pistol whipped in the head and a broken hand from where he punched one of the attackers in the head. But he kept is money and iPhone, so I guess there’s that.
A lot of it probably depends on how the person being held up looks, too. I’d imagine a criminal is going to be more cautious with a huge, tough-looking guy at gunpoint than someone who’s frail, small, female, looks like they’re intoxicated on sedatives, etc.
Hell, just looking like a challenge is going to make you drastically less likely to ever be held at gunpoint, anyway. The criminal/militant is going to either find a different victim or just shoot first. Your typical KM instructor might be the least likely type to ever successfully pull off those moves, because they look imposing enough to never be given the chance.
On 9/11 a guy named Daniel Lewin was on American Airlines flight 11. He was an ex-officer in the Israeli special forces unit Sayeret Matkal, so likely an expert in Krav Maga. Supposedly he tried to disarm one of the terrorists but was stabbed in the throat by another from behind. So that is a documented case of KM not working to disarm someone. Sad too.
Krav Magaing? I don’t know, but people have certainly disarmed gunmen before. cite
In general from watching those videos what I’ll say is the gunmen in those videos are perfectly behaving to allow such a thing to happen. Namely, despite having a lethal firearm they are rushing up to their “victim” so they are right on top of him. If you want to draw a gun on someone you want to do it at a distance, because why, when you have a gun, would you want to play the “reflex game”? Basically making a bet that you can react and pull a trigger faster than someone can grab the gun and push it away, or rip it out of your hands, or just brush past it and tackle you etc.
If someone is dumb enough to be physically that close to you and they’ve pulled a gun, you have a chance of disarming them just by taking them by surprise. You also have a chance of getting killed.
If someone has pulled a gun on you at a distance and you don’t think you’ll get out of the situation alive, I’d recommend sprinting at an “odd” angle to the gunman and zig-zagging as you run. It’s very, very difficult especially for someone who has probably never practice at it, to hit a person in mid-run with a pistol especially if they aren’t running straight away from you where you can take careful aim and fire.
