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Old 05-20-2008, 07:17 PM   #51
mwible
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Re: Gungrabs

That video was great! And damn, that was an amazing koshi-nage!
Haha, just my 2 cents.
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Old 05-20-2008, 09:22 PM   #52
KIT
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Re: Gungrabs

David

Are you actually a police officer?
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Old 05-20-2008, 09:44 PM   #53
senshincenter
 
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Re: Gungrabs

Deputy Sheriff - Santa Barbara County. :-) How about you? Where are you out of? Stay safe. d

Feel free to PM me if you'd like.

David M. Valadez
Visit our web site for articles and videos. Senshin Center - A Place for Traditional Martial Arts in Santa Barbara.
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Old 05-20-2008, 09:47 PM   #54
KIT
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Re: Gungrabs

Well, since we don't seem to be developing another thread but staying with this one, I'll stay here too. I hope to answer Josh's question here, and demonstrate why I think David is making a fundamental mistaken assumption.

Let me preface by saying that I am not anti-traditional Budo-as-combative-LE practice. I am not an aikido practitioner, spending my time in Judo, modern grappling, and koryu methods. I have found BOTH to have a great deal of contextual relevance in life and death circumstances, indeed, in one instance it was a combination of conditioning and mindset that literally saved my life in allowing me to walk away from an incident with a critical injury. I used no "techniques" that day, but mindset - and I came to the understanding that you cannot "set things up in your favor," and to think that you can do so is supremely complacent. Instead, you must rely on your training and mindset to carry you through when things are very much NOT in your favor.

Folks not prepared to do so, who presuppose even unconsciously that they will always be smooth, always be in control, always dominate, and always have things in their favor tend to panic and falter the first time things don't cooperate with them.

Quote:
David Valadez wrote: View Post

You get the technique, kote gaeshi, for example, against a gun. In these combative sequences, you just find yourself standing there and this guy is right in front of you pointing a gun at you. You don't know how you got there or how this person got there - you are both just there. As a result, it appears all you have to work on to survive an attack against a gun is getting off the line of attack quickly and fully and then perform kote-gaeshi in a powerful enough manner.

I say, "bull."
I find this incredible. While I understand what you are trying to say, to believe that you will not come across such a situation is incredible complacency.

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David Valadez wrote: View Post

Rather, all the stuff that is left out of these types of training drills is what is really involved with whether or not you can survive this type of encounter or not. The same goes for empty-hand fighting, which one should never assume on the street.
Yet you are making an equally dangerous assumption. You appear to have half the coin - a problem typical of police defensive tactics - everything is done from a position of foreknowledge, fore-warnedness, and preparedness - you maintain reactionary gap and control the encounter. All standard police teaching, and what occurs in the vast majority of encounters police face - only further cementing the mistaken assumption that this is what will "be."

Cops don't get killed in these kinds of incidents. Please tell me you are familiar with studies such as Violent Encounters and the circumstances under which officers are seriously injured or murdered. Please tell me that you don't think you are immune to such things because you are a "martial artist."

Martial arts gives you an extra edge, that is all.

Quote:
David Valadez wrote: View Post

It's all this other stuff, stuff like awareness, relating weapons to conditions and conditions to weapons, not needing off times, etc., that first make it so that you probably won't get stuck in these situations, and, second, if you do, don't have your efforts be last ditch efforts.

In other words, you keep the odds in your favor - which is all you can hope for and all you can ever achieve. Doesn't mean you won't get killed/lose, but you got the better chance that you won't.

Thus, in my mind, when you talk about any type of self-defense or urban combat situation, you are by default always going to have to talk about much more than what technique you opted to use. Why? Because the success of the technique opted for is entirely supported by how viable your system of strategy is and how well you are at operating at high levels of awareness.
Again, huge assumptions. If you are actually a working officer, I would recommend a re-evaluation of your approach. You are partly right, but I would argue that you don't know why.

How well does your "system of strategy" (again, a red flag in my point of view) when your awareness ISN'T at such a high level?

Quote:
David Valadez wrote: View Post
So, a viable gun defense, for me looks something like this:

1. You are "on" - because you are always "on" - because you have learned how to achieve an "on" that is based in relaxation and groundedness (both physically and spiritually).

2. You sense someone up the road, in front of you. You observe they are walking on a line that is on the same line as yours, "Strange" - you think. You make a choice, based upon a myriad of subjective things (is your family with you, are you armed, are you injured, how far away is your home/car, are the numbers against you in terms of opponents, etc.): Do you just leave - opting to default the "strange" feeling as "not good"? or, Do you test your "strange" feeling - seeing if you are right in your initial assessment?

,,,,and so on
I could beat the complacency and lack of self-awareness horse to death. In short, and so no one misinterprets this - you are basing all of this on the assumption that you will "always" be on, you will not be working from an initiative or positional deficit, etc. etc.

And that could be fatal. Hopefully it won't be, for you, but especially for your students.
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Old 05-20-2008, 09:49 PM   #55
KIT
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Re: Gungrabs

Quote:
David Valadez wrote: View Post
Deputy Sheriff - Santa Barbara County. :-) How about you? Where are you out of? Stay safe. d

Feel free to PM me if you'd like.
Pacific NW, Vancouver, just outside of Portland.

Nah, this is a useful debate in public. As you can see, we are on relatively opposite ends of the spectrum.

And you stay safe as well, we are still brothers, even if we don't agree. Plenty of guys I respect hardly train at all, at least in any kind of DT/martial arts stuff. Any training is better than none. There are just layers that need to be addressed that aren't in martial arts training.

Last edited by KIT : 05-20-2008 at 09:51 PM.
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Old 05-20-2008, 10:14 PM   #56
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Re: Gungrabs

Quote:
David Valadez wrote: View Post
Deputy Sheriff - Santa Barbara County.
David, I remember when you were applying for that position (by chance -- because it happened to interrupt our discussion at the time). As I recall, it happened quite recently (less than two years ago, if memory serves). Were you a law enforcement officer previously?

Please do not read anything into this other than the factual question. I find the topic you are discussing with Kit to be an interesting one, and since you are arguing the perspective of law enforcement, the question of your tenure is relevant. In particular, since you are arguing for an 'always on' state of mind, it is important to know whether and for how long you have tested this philosophy in practice. Again, I recognize that this question could be interpreted as argumentative or as a personal attack -- so please simply accept at face value my explanation of its bearing on my (and others') evaluation of the discussion at hand.

Regards,
Chhi'mèd
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Old 05-20-2008, 11:11 PM   #57
senshincenter
 
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Re: Gungrabs

Quote:
Chhi'mèd Künzang wrote: View Post
David, I remember when you were applying for that position (by chance -- because it happened to interrupt our discussion at the time). As I recall, it happened quite recently (less than two years ago, if memory serves). Were you a law enforcement officer previously?

Please do not read anything into this other than the factual question. I find the topic you are discussing with Kit to be an interesting one, and since you are arguing the perspective of law enforcement, the question of your tenure is relevant. In particular, since you are arguing for an 'always on' state of mind, it is important to know whether and for how long you have tested this philosophy in practice. Again, I recognize that this question could be interpreted as argumentative or as a personal attack -- so please simply accept at face value my explanation of its bearing on my (and others') evaluation of the discussion at hand.

Regards,
Chhi'mèd
No worries. I have been an officer for under a year.

But, please, don't get me wrong, I am not trying to speak from the perspective of law enforcement as much as how this mindset is possible and very relevant to law enforcement - something Robert rightly addressed. There's a difference for me between what I am saying and what you feel I'm saying. For that reason, I think Chris, and Kevin, etc., who have also talked about being "on" always, have some very important things to say, etc., though they are not currently in law enforcement. It's not a new concept, this being "on" and it is hardly monopolized by professional combatants.

As for how long I have employed this mindset, I have sought to develop it over the length of my training - over 20 years. I do not look to employ it only in combative situations, but because it is based in awareness it is more often than not employed in more constructive forms of intimacy - with friends, family, strangers, etc. - on the job, off the job, in the dojo, out of the dojo, etc. As for how it has faired, it has tested very well.

If I didn't answer your questions, let me know.
thanks,
d

David M. Valadez
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Old 05-20-2008, 11:37 PM   #58
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Re: Gungrabs

Thanks for the clarification, David.

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David Valadez wrote: View Post
There's a difference for me between what I am saying and what you feel I'm saying.

<snip>

As for how long I have employed this mindset, I have sought to develop it over the length of my training - over 20 years.
No problem. I am specifically not voicing an opinion. I think I do actually understand what you are saying, and I didn't mean to mischaracterize your position by glossing it in my question. My point was only that there is a component to the discussion which hinges on specific experience. That is one reason I am not voicing an opinion.

You may not feel that your occupation is relevant to the position you espouse, but somehow (perhaps accidentally?) the two have become associated in the discussion here. It is therefore helpful that you have cleared up where you are coming from. Thank you for your response.

Regards,
Chhi'mèd
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Old 05-20-2008, 11:55 PM   #59
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Re: Gungrabs

Kit wrote: “I used no "techniques" that day, but mindset - and I came to the understanding that you cannot "set things up in your favor," and to think that you can do so is supremely complacent. Instead, you must rely on your training and mindset to carry you through when things are very much NOT in your favor.”

I am not trying to draw a distinction between setting things up in one’s favor and not being able to. For me, you do the best you can to set things up in your favor. That is basic to any kind of self-defense situation, in my opinion – whether that be in law enforcement, military application, or civilian life. Are you saying it’s not basic? Of course, if you can’t, you can’t, but attempting to do so, knowing how to, being skilled at returning things toward your favor should they not be, etc., all of that is very relevant to how much the odds are in one’s favor and thus to survivability. This is what I am saying. If you are saying anything akin to that – I don’t see the disagreement. If you are saying one can never set things up in one’s favor – then you are right: we do not agree.

If, however, you are saying, that there are still times when no matter what you do, things are against you, then I can agree with that. For me though, this does not mean that the value of understanding strategy, for example, is irrelevant or a moot point. Additionally, it does not mean that strategy is not relevant to the viability of one’s tactical applications. If you are saying anything akin to this – again, I don’t see the disagreement. If, however, you are saying that strategy plays no part in the viability of tactics, then you are right – we disagree.

Trying to have things in one’s favor, understanding how things are or are not in one’s favor, and being able to move and do what you got to do when they are not, does not at all presuppose that one only looks to smooth applications existing or that one can only survive smooth applications. In fact, the very reason you’d even want to participate in things like strategy is because things like ambushes, for example, exist. Strategy is not a denial of things like ambush but a testament to things like ambush. Strategy does not assume cooperation, it assumes conflict. I wouldn’t say we disagree on this point as much as you have not understood mine.

I hope you understand that my “bull” comment was referring to my position – explained later in the post – stating there is more to surviving these situations than technique. If you are saying you are disagreeing with me on that, are you saying, “All you need to survive these things is technique.” I don’t think you are, since you already mentioned the benefit you gained from a mindset. So, again, I’m not sure what you are disagreeing with – if you can explain further, please do so.

I believe you may come across the type of situation in the video, but where I differ is in the position that I do not believe that you got there on accident (i.e. that one was part of all that went into manifesting that situation). No matter how much that setup has one believing you just got there, you in fact didn’t. There was a whole lot of things you did and did not do, and that’s how you got there. If you want to say, “Well, sometimes, no matter what you do, you just get ambushed,” I want to say, “Sometimes you do and/or don’t do things that just get you ambushed.” From there, I’m interested in those things I did or didn’t do that led to an ambush. I don’t myself as saying ambushes do not exist. I see myself saying one should be as interested in techniques as much as in the strategies or failures at strategies that make any technique viable or not in its given situation.

To me, acknowledging that one always contributes (consciously or unconsciously, by ignorance or by some sort of butterfly effect, etc.) to his own ambush, no matter what, is the exact opposite of complacency. Complacency holds no room for responsibility and what I’m saying is the exact opposite of that.

To sum it up: I gather that you hold your position opposite to mine, but I’m not sure why, in that I do not understand your position beyond this statement you make. I see that you call this “assumption” or that as well, but I’m not sure what your own position is or is not outside of that. I feel I will have to leave it to others to explain better what you are trying to say – or you.

Right now, all I’m understanding is that you hold that there are situations where you just end up in, no matter what you do. By that then, you go on to suggest that there is nothing you can do – so trying to is complacent. If I’m missing something, again, please let me know.

If I’m not, then we may have to disagree to disagree.

Thanks for the post,
d

David M. Valadez
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Old 05-21-2008, 04:27 AM   #60
Kevin Leavitt
 
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Re: Gungrabs

To me the concept of "always On" is sort of like flying a plane on a transatlantic flight. You have a certain amount of appropriate super vigiliance and awareness at take off...then a long period of monitoring..your not "off" but you are also not as "on" when you were taking off. If something comes up that doesn't look quite right, you go back to "on" again. Once you are on final for landing, well your zero'd back in on that process.

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Old 05-21-2008, 06:44 AM   #61
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Gungrabs

Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote: View Post
To me the concept of "always On" is sort of like flying a plane on a transatlantic flight. You have a certain amount of appropriate super vigiliance and awareness at take off...then a long period of monitoring..your not "off" but you are also not as "on" when you were taking off. If something comes up that doesn't look quite right, you go back to "on" again. Once you are on final for landing, well your zero'd back in on that process.
I have to admit that I learned to relax while being "on" most all of the time when I was in law enforcement. I was stationed in a small town in South Texas where "smuggling" for many people was a way of life and went back many generations. I ended up putting a lot of my neighbors and/or their relatives in jail. I ended up with 150 felony arrests in 5 years.

At orientation, I was warned that my wife would be the only blond in town. They were right and the first week I was there, some local smugglers played a cat-and-mouse game that ended up with my wife running into the post office while my car faced theirs nose-to- nose and my Smith and Wesson Model 60 on the dash board.... a stare down contest. They knew who I was before I even graduated from the Border Patrol Academy.

After making a reputation for catching dope smugglers I ended up becoming a narcotics dog handler. I was in the news a lot as well as Criminal investigator Magazine and Calibre Press' book on Drug Tactics. The dogs had a $35,000 bounty on them and two had been killed in the first two years of the program in Texas alone. My dog was quartered at my house. I had to take it for walks every day without back-up. Just going to the store for groceries made me think about tactics and strategy.... about protecting my wife and dog.

Upon leaving the Fed, my first bodyguard job was a 2 year contract protecting a businessman whose had just survived an attempted car bombing. Again, always "on", as the bomber was a member of a hostile group and my client would not back down from them.

For several years, I managed bodyguard teams employed by Japanese Corporations who had production plants in in Tijuana, N. Laredo, Mexicali, Mexico City, and Juarez. We had no sidearms. Our threats were kidnap, robbery, carjack, intentional vehicle accidents designed to extort money, and extortions designed to steal large quantities of product. If anyone remembers the Mamuro Kono (Sanyo Plant President) kidnapping outfit had placed two key individuals inside the company. It was an inside job.

If you believed in pro-active avoidance, you were always "on" looking for the initial bad guys that were assigned to learn about your client's movements, operations and vulnerabilities.

I believe that learning and deploying "strategy" is the real win in martial arts training. The second win is obtaining a knowledge of "the principles of movement" and "how the body works". Techniques flow from these studies when you are in the crucible of a hostile encounter.
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Old 05-21-2008, 09:50 AM   #62
KIT
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Re: Gungrabs

David

Ah, much more clear now. For me, that wasn't coming across. The videos distracted me.

We are in agreement.

I think we would all agree that one can be perfectly well adjusted and spend their waking life in "Condition Yellow," to use the Color Codes someone mentioned before. For some people that work in LE and similar professions where the expectation of violence exists (certainly not all), this becomes much more finely tuned.

If this is what you and Chris (and Kevin) mean by "always on" then again, agreed. That is a baseline level of functioning for any professional. Your description regarding doing ones best to set oneself up to prevail, even against the odds is a good one that includes not only awareness, but tactical skills, weapons skills, and physical conditioning all rolled into one.

I was reading what you were saying as always on meant you could always prevent things like the Courtroom video example, you could always avoid those mistakes or lapses in awareness that lead to such things.

Are they preventable? Yes. Were mistakes made? Most certainly. Were they avoidable? Maybe...

Anyone is capable of making those mistakes or having those lapses in awareness, no matter how finely tuned the mind and the mechanisms are to avoid it.

And, many criminals and combatants are also finely tuned to take advantage of those lapses when they see an opening, creating those deficits that mean the difference between life and death, or serious injury and death.

Some people do think they are "always on" in this sense, that they make no mistakes and no one will be able to get the drop on them, and in so thinking are dangerously complacent, because when it happens they face an additional shock, and more dangerous a lack of preparedness, for someone having capitalized on their mistakes and gotten the drop on them. Cops die in that gap.

If I lumped you in with that mindset, my apologies.

It would be interesting hearing your take on things once you get a little more time on the job. I think very differently now than I did with one or two years on. The basic framework is the same, but other shades of meaning and understanding developed. Shades that no training in the dojo offers.
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Old 05-21-2008, 10:04 AM   #63
KIT
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Re: Gungrabs

To continue,

This is why there also needs to be a recognition in training that things can go horribly wrong. Often in LE training, the vast majority of work done is in "ideal" circumstances, where the officer is the pre-determined "winner" if he does things exactly as his instructors teach. Training is with cooperative bad guys who tank for him, while ideal initiative, position, distance, etc. are ingrained.

That isn't reality. Now at least, officer survival schools are recognizing that we need to teach cops to fight, say, from their backs, against multiple opponents, while one guy is grabbing their gun. Because that stuff happens, and the ideal, arrest and control based training fails miserably in that realm.

We could train weapon retention at distance, with the officer aware of and challenging the threat, able to maintain distance on an unobstructed mat, and the bad guy may never even get to touch his gun.

Is that really good training?

A mental technique that has helped me a great deal over the years, and one I try to remember to do after every contact, is to think:

"How Could He Have Had Me?'

I critique what I did not based on the outcome, but what could have happened. Done correctly, this can be a humbling practice, because you have to admit that you make sometimes pretty rookie mistakes in leaving gaps or taking paths that could have been very dangerous. Having this in mind is also a great practice to avoid the same mistakes the "next" time, where it might actually make a difference.

That, to me is zanshin. Not being impervious, but having a constant awareness that you are NOT impervious, you are NOT incapable of having moments of Condition White, because you are after all, human. A highly trained human that has hopefully minimized those gaps, but human nonetheless.

Last edited by KIT : 05-21-2008 at 10:08 AM.
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Old 05-21-2008, 10:35 AM   #64
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Gungrabs

Kit Leblanc wrote:

Quote:
Some people do think they are "always on" in this sense, that they make no mistakes and no one will be able to get the drop on them, and in so thinking are dangerously complacent, because when it happens they face an additional shock, and more dangerous a lack of preparedness, for someone having capitalized on their mistakes and gotten the drop on them. Cops die in that gap.
Wow, supermen I guess. IMO complacency also visits the officer around year 4-5.

Quote:
This is why there also needs to be a recognition in training that things can go horribly wrong. Often in LE training, the vast majority of work done is in "ideal" circumstances, where the officer is the pre-determined "winner" if he does things exactly as his instructors teach. Training is with cooperative bad guys who tank for him, while ideal initiative, position, distance, etc. are ingrained.
Boy isn't that the truth. And if you are working for an agency that is paying for the instruction, you better keep your mouth shut.

I continued to attend DT courses at the highest "instructor level" after I left LE. I paid for it myself. It has been a while and tactics and teaching style might have changed but here was my experience.

I decided to ask tough questions. Often the top dogs did not have vconvincing answers.

For instance, if you try a handcuff wrist clamp take down, what happens if the guy doesn't go down? If you let go of the cuff, you have given him a "slung" to use against you. If you have to close, what do you do with the grip on the cuff? Why cuff in a standing position in the first place (unless you have command of stability and balance)?

Similarly, if you use a come-along using the traditional left side of your body in order to keep your gun side away from the perpetrator, when he closes, won't he be in the perfect gun-grab position? Why not do come-alongs with your gun side close to the technique? Isn't that the safer place? It is his other arm that is not controlled.

Similarly, why place intermediate tools (capsicum and baton) on the same primary (gun) side? When you escalate force, you have to secure each tool to move to the next. Is there an opportunity to do that in real-time encounters that escalate quickly? Why not train capsicum and baton on the support side?

I was asking these question in theearly 1990's at ISLET.
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Old 05-21-2008, 10:36 AM   #65
Keith Larman
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Re: Gungrabs

Just as a gigantic FWIW...

I had long been very uncomfortable with how we had been doing tanjutori in our dojo. I came from a family that hunted and since my grandfather had homesteaded out in the boonies of Alaska guns were around. My dad was a marksman in the military and my brother and i were taught early on about gun safety. So when I saw big swirling movements with guns basically pointing them at every unfortunate innocent bystander, I'd cringe.

Anyway, a very good friend of mine was given the task of reworking the gun takeaway techniques taught to a few of the local PD's. Gabe was a long time policeman, trainer, and martial artist and had a lot of years under his belt both on the street and in training officers.

There were a couple problems he faced on a practical level. One was that not all officers train as much as they probably should. Police officers often have grueling schedules and if they're lucky they also have a family life to deal with. So finding time for training, let alone extra training, is sometimes near impossible.

The second problem was one that has been discussed here. By definition if someone is in a gun takeaway scenario a situation has gone very bad indeed. *Why* it went bad is an important discussion, but as they say, poop happens. Sometimes it is just complacency. But sometimes it is a "domino effect" of tiny things that suddenly become a very large, bad scenario. Just as an extreme example, years ago I was in North Hollywood running an errand in the morning. I had just gotten out of my car and heard loud "popping". I turned and voila, about a block away that big North Hollywood Bank shootout was starting. Why was I there? How did I get into this mess? Luckily I was far enough away where after crouching behind my car for a while I decided I'd better slide back into my car and got the heck out of Dodge... Sometimes you just find yourself knee deep. All that awareness is great, but sometimes trouble finds you whether you like it or not.

So, obviously, I think the whole notion of how or why a scenario goes bad is an interesting topic. The reality is that it happens. And it can happen to anyone. Certain mental states can certainly help someone *not* get into a bad situation, but none of us are in total control of circumstance. To quote chaos theory, sometimes the flutter of a butterfly's wings in australia can start the ball rolling for a hurricane in Texas...

So back to the topic of the gun takeaway itself. Gabe decided the priority would be on developing something that would be as simple as possible with as few "moves" as possible. And something where there is no need to think "do I go right or left" "which hand is holding the gun" "Oh, this is a two-handed grab so I have to...". Etc. So he wanted them to have something that didn't require decision making in a moment of high stress apart from deciding to act. And hopefully it would be something easy enough to remember even if they didn't get a lot of hours on the mat training in it.

Anyway, I took the technique to my dojo and showed our chief instructor at our headquarters the technique. We worked on it for a while and he made a few changes to make things fit into our "way" of doing things to make it more "natural" for those of us who train the way we do. Then he started teaching it and stopped much of what we had been doing.

Interestingly we had one fella stop training with us due to the technique. He thought it was too violent and not "aiki" enough for a variety of reasons. But that's another issue I suppose... Strikes me as odd in the extreme, however.

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Old 05-21-2008, 10:48 AM   #66
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Gungrabs

Keith Larman wrote:

Quote:
Gabe decided the priority would be on developing something that would be as simple as possible with as few "moves" as possible. And something where there is no need to think "do I go right or left" "which hand is holding the gun" "Oh, this is a two-handed grab so I have to...". Etc. So he wanted them to have something that didn't require decision making in a moment of high stress apart from deciding to act. And hopefully it would be something easy enough to remember even if they didn't get a lot of hours on the mat training in it.

Anyway, I took the technique to my dojo and showed our chief instructor at our headquarters the technique. We worked on it for a while and he made a few changes to make things fit into our "way" of doing things to make it more "natural" for those of us who train the way we do. Then he started teaching it and stopped much of what we had been doing.

Interestingly we had one fella stop training with us due to the technique. He thought it was too violent and not "aiki" enough for a variety of reasons. But that's another issue I suppose... Strikes me as odd in the extreme, however.
Can you PM me a video of it. I will show you Colonel Mile's approach by PM in exchange. I love those kind of approaches.

The military, I am told, use a thing called the "combat efficiency value (CEV)". In essence, you teach a technique to say 100 people and test them on it under duress. You end up with a percentage of successful actions. That is the CEV.

IMO, we would all do well to look at DT instruction similarly.
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Old 05-21-2008, 04:35 PM   #67
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Re: Gungrabs

I think it may be warranted to start another thread on this latest stuff - as I have run into very similar problems to those mentioned by Kit and Chris and I would love to hear more and share more on the topic(s). It would be cool if we could get that other thread going with videos included - again, I always think it is way better to have a discussion where you can refer to visually shared topics/elements.

But, on with this topic...

Stating up front that sometimes you just end up in the crapper, while stating up front that one's overall strategies and awareness levels are relevant to the odds of your overall tactical viability, here's my problem with the teaching of these techniques:

When they are taught, when they were taught to me, they never came with any disclaimers - especially not originally. They were lumped in with other empty-handed scenarios. As such, you didn't hear things about awareness, the warrior mindset, and/or the relationship between strategies and tactics as these things pertain to firearms, and as a result, you almost never studied these things (i.e. not much time was dedicated to them).

For example, these techniques were never accompanied by statements like, "Here's something you can do when against your best intentions everything just went wrong - now you are in a situation where you are probably going to get shot, and depending upon where you get shot, how many times you got shot, and/or how far away you are from a medical attention when you got shot, you will probably die - Okay, let's practice!"

I think if instructors passed on this disclaimer, some of the more experienced practitioners, the ones that have stopped romanticizing violence a long time ago, are going to ask: "Hey, wouldn't it be easier to just give the guy my wallet?" "When should I run?" "What do I do about my family if they are present?" etc. How many instructors that teach these techniques know the answers to these questions? In my experience, none of them ever knew, or they just didn't bother to answer them.

What I was trying to say, without discounting the possibility that sometimes everything goes wrong, is these techniques, the way they are most often taught across the globe, are in most cases being passed down from teacher to student from what has to be called either a romantic or an ignorant point of view - because of how much is going unsaid, untaught, etc., when you are just shown the technique and you just do it.

In our dojo, we do not practice these techniques, nor do we do tanto dori. For me, what they teach and what they seek to apply can be better transmitted through empty handed applications - ones that are not so based in an unsaid romanticism. I would feel it a huge disservice to even hint to my students that this is one way to survive a gun/knife attack. Since I can only say, "This is one way to not go down without a fight when you are attacked by a gun, and you've tried to satisfy the perp materially, and you are willing to risk your present family members getting shot," I feel much more inclined to work on strategy, awareness, family plans, countering weapons with weapons, etc.

Again, don't get me wrong, one might very well end up in this type of situation, but since the odds are better with training in things like strategy, awareness, family plans, countering weapons with weapons, etc., I'd rather spend my training time there and leave the training in the surviving of these situations to things like drills aimed at observing oneself within non-victorious scenarios. (which is important training, to be sure)

For me, we don't teach techniques when you are being covered by two machine guns - this is the same thing in principle from where I'm standing, even if the occurrence is different in terms of rarity. We do not have classes or seminars dedicated to serpentining. Again, it's that we don't teach this because it's impossible to end up in this type of situation, but rather we don't teach serpentining because the best way of actually dealing with the problem of being covered by two machine guns (and by "best" I mean "increasing your odds of surviving") is to put your effort into learning how not to have two machine guns leveled at you.

I feel when nothing accompanies these techniques, now is the time for voices to be very loud against the long held silence that only echoes Hollywood's understandings of violence (e.g. that second set of videos I posted from Experience Village). This is why I am where I am, though I can concede that some sort of balance is definitely in order.

dmv

David M. Valadez
Visit our web site for articles and videos. Senshin Center - A Place for Traditional Martial Arts in Santa Barbara.
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Old 05-21-2008, 05:52 PM   #68
KIT
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Re: Gungrabs

Hmmm.

I think thats a little extreme. Your "covered by two machine guns/serpentining" example is kind of odd, and it is not at all the same thing as having a gun screwed into your jaw, feeling you are about to be shot, and acting upon that.

Your point regarding dojo martial arts and martial arts teachers teaching what they have no idea of is well taken.

But certainly for police officers and soldiers, such weapons based training is critical. If only because their own weapons may be taken from them and the weapon they are defending against is theirs!

They are ill prepared without such practice, and unfortunately, ill served by the martial arts-cum-combatives/defensive tactics methods which are often taught by the very same dojo martial artists who don't know what they don't know - including some current and former professionals who should know better!

Countering weapons with weapons does begin with strategy and tactics, but at close range, empty hand skills. Indeed the empty hand counter may make more sense than attempting to deploy a weapon without the initiative or position to do so.

There are critical differences as well, that make it imperative that you do not simply believe you can transfer empty hand skills and principles over, (or the Way of the Sword to the Way of the Gun), you must learn to function with/operate the specific weapons system you are addressing in order to fully integrate the skills.

The latter area is where the dojo-ists tend to fall down.
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Old 05-21-2008, 07:12 PM   #69
Chris Parkerson
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Re: Gungrabs

Kit,

Oddly enough, I have come to the conclusion that everything in modern as well as traditional self defense is truly based on Riai. But such a thing is much to deep and involved to attempt to teach police or in a civilian DT seminar.
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Old 05-21-2008, 07:15 PM   #70
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Re: Gungrabs

Kit Wrote:

Quote:
Countering weapons with weapons does begin with strategy and tactics, but at close range, empty hand skills. Indeed the empty hand counter may make more sense than attempting to deploy a weapon without the initiative or position to do so.
Yes, which is why we spend so much time on teaching positional dominance. Pulling a weapon without positional dominance typically compounds the problem for you, especially handguns.

What was a struggle to gain dominance now becomes a struggle to gain control over the weapon.

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Old 05-21-2008, 08:58 PM   #71
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Re: Gungrabs

Just out of interest,

If you were in a two-way shooting range (say for instance 15 yards apart) with no cover or concealment, where would positional dominance be?
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Old 05-21-2008, 09:51 PM   #72
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Re: Gungrabs

The guy that is the fastest draw or is the best shot wins.

at 15 Yards in the open, with no Cover, (concealment doesn't matter at that point) I would be drawing, shooting, and continuing to move forward...closing distance until he down.

What you also have to dissect, is what led to the 15 yard showdown?

If I were assaulting or conducting a room clearing, weapon drawn, I am not going to slow down but continue to press into the fight until I achieve dominance.

Stopping allows him to have time to gain Cover or to fix me, then I or my guys have to "start over" and regain what we started. Translated, "more guys hurt just to get back to where you were!"

I am trying to think of a situation in which I would be in a "high noon" situation in which we both had equal knowledge of what the other was about to do. I can't.

If he had the jump on me, well I may be SOL and dead, or I may be back pedaling and looking for a way to regain dominance. I like some of the things that David showed a few months ago in his videos...it depends.

Too many variables I think.

But typically I am of the school of thought of "if your in the fight, get into the fight and always move forward, never backwards"

Forward may not me straight...it could be spiraling on a decreasing radius like Dave's videos, or it could be clinching, or it could be irimi.

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Old 05-21-2008, 10:11 PM   #73
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Re: Gungrabs

Quote:
Chris Parkerson wrote: View Post
Just out of interest,

If you were in a two-way shooting range (say for instance 15 yards apart) with no cover or concealment, where would positional dominance be?
Well, at three feet, the best place to be is behind the hostage....

Not SOL and dead Kev. Maybe SOL, but never, ever dead.

RE: Riai.

Depends. Some people think that is all you need. Stand by, another sacred cow about to be skewered here:

Principles mean nothing without technique. I have watched respected practitioners of "principle based" methods flounder when caught in a place they had no technique with which to solve the problem. They know what to do, but not how to do it. Technique is principle applied. Without technique, all you have is theory.

By the same token, plenty of folks out there with technique and no principles. That is I am sure what Chris is referring to regarding teaching many(most) officers.

Then there are the "body" guys - physical attributes is all they have, no technical skill to speak of - they rely on brute force or a high level of conditioning to get by. Or a low level of body fat to convince themselves they are "combat conditioned."

It is shin-gi-tai. A balance of these things.

The Mind - including principles, heiho, tactics, awareness, study, knowledge of relevant patterns, intuition, etc.,

Technique - the physical expression of principle through effective fighting technique and having a base to work from across the armed and unarmed spectrum (for our purposes here - long gun, hand gun, contact weapon, empty hand striking, clinch, and ground - integrated for seamless transition);

and the Body - physical conditioning that allows one to train hard in force on force on a regular basis, that is inured to pain and can accept injury and continue fighting, that has the appropriate body weight to height ratio and strength ratio (for effective functioning wearing typical kit of body armor, weapons, ammo, etc.), ability to withstand repeat adrenal dumps without debilitating physical effects, and so on.

Far too many folks put all their eggs in one basket - or too much in one and not enough in the others.

Last edited by KIT : 05-21-2008 at 10:13 PM.
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Old 05-22-2008, 03:54 AM   #74
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Re: Gungrabs

Quote:
Chris Parkerson wrote: View Post
Kit,

Oddly enough, I have come to the conclusion that everything in modern as well as traditional self defense is truly based on Riai. But such a thing is much to deep and involved to attempt to teach police or in a civilian DT seminar.
I agree with you on both accounts there.
as for you 15 yard question
my answer would be droping to one knee to the left or the right if possible forward as I deploy the weapon.
and as soon as i can, shoot with both eyes open (ie into the brown) and hoping for the best and for the gun I have to be autimatic (or at least semi auto) with a large clip.
and swearing to myself that i will not let that happen to me again should I survice that one?

phil

Last edited by philippe willaume : 05-22-2008 at 03:56 AM.

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Old 05-22-2008, 04:19 AM   #75
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Re: Gungrabs

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Philippe Willaume wrote: View Post
I agree with you on both accounts there.
as for you 15 yard question
my answer would be droping to one knee to the left or the right if possible forward as I deploy the weapon.
and as soon as i can, shoot with both eyes open (ie into the brown) and hoping for the best and for the gun I have to be autimatic (or at least semi auto) with a large clip.
and swearing to myself that i will not let that happen to me again should I survice that one?

phil
phil

I forgot to had that I am assuming that we both have ranged weapons and they are holstered or to the port.
buy shooting with both eyes open, i mean with both eyes and a shouldred weapon (tir au jeté as it is called in the french military)

If the opposition has a bladed weapon in hand (machete combat knife, messer smatchet), I would say that 13 metres is possibly too close for comfort
If the guy is already in motion and our weapons is holstered I would go for open hand
If our weapon is at the port and he is standing still, I would stay standing and have a pop (shooting into the brown without shouldering) and go for to hand to hand.
phil

Last edited by philippe willaume : 05-22-2008 at 04:22 AM.

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