Long Guns: What is the difference, How do I Win?

By Nathan Lundstrom, Self Protection Specialist

A rifle in his hands looks like the worst version of the problem. Bigger weapon, bigger fear. Training tells you something different. The long gun hands you more to fight with than any weapon in this series, and knowing why is most of the win.

First, the recap. RCAT is the fixed sequence behind every weapon defense we train: Redirect, Control, Attack, Take Away, in that order, every time. The full doctrine lives in the pillar, Weapon Defense Isn’t a Technique. It’s an Algorithm, and this article carries the second firearm. The rifle. The shotgun. Anything built long.

What It Shares, and What It Owns

The weapons in this series share more problems than they own, and the long gun shares plenty. It is a firearm, so its dangerous part is the same line of fire you already know, and the same rule rides on it: stay off that line for every second of the fight. It reaches, the way the handgun reaches. And the man holding it will fight you for it like his life depends on it, because it does.

Now here is what it owns. Two things, and they pull in opposite directions.

The first is the sling. No other weapon in this series comes strapped to the man carrying it, and that strap changes the take away in a way you have to see coming. We will get there.

The second is length itself, and this is the one nobody expects. Length is leverage, and most of that leverage is yours.

The Distance Read

But the fight does not start at your hands. It starts wherever you are standing when you see it.

The handgun article named distance as that weapon’s own problem, and the long gun forces an honest word about the same territory: it reaches too. Distance against any firearm is a fight the firearm was built to win. The Handgun Threat: The Problems and the Solutions carried the questions. This weapon sharpens them.

So hear the doctrine plainly. You will not die doing nothing. If the threat of being shot is imminent, you take action.

At distance, the fight comes down to your capabilities and your ability to get offline. Not just moving the muzzle with your hands. Moving your body off the line of fire with your feet. So your eyes do the first work: how many explosive leaping steps would it take to reach that line and move it?

Within one large leaping step, you explode. Foot explosion, hand explosion, and body blading, all at once. If your right foot explodes forward, your right hand is reaching, your right shoulder is driving toward the weapon, and your left shoulder is blading back, out of the line of fire. You are not running at the gun. You are moving offline at an angle, exploding toward the moment your hands land and the redirect begins. It may take a couple of steps. The key is that action beats inaction.

Past that range, be honest about the count. If the explosive steps it would take are more than the moment gives you, you are at a significant disadvantage, and the answer is not to freeze there. The answer is cover. Run to cover and fight from there. That is not retreat. That is the same read you make everywhere in this system: an honest measure of your capabilities against the fight in front of you, answered on the mat long before it is ever asked for real.

Length Is the Difference

So the count worked, the explosion landed, and your hands are on the weapon. From here, everything starts paying you.

Put the handgun fight next to this one. The handgun gave your hands almost nothing to hold. The long gun gives you more points of control and more leverage than anything else he could bring. A barrel, a handguard, a stock. Real estate for both of your hands and your body weight behind them.

He cannot hide it, either. A handgun pulls into the body and nearly disappears. A long gun announces itself, and it keeps announcing itself for the whole fight. Easier to see is easier to redirect, and that is exactly why.

The redirect itself runs on everything you learned in Redirect: Take Urgent Action. Recognition starts it. Urgency beats precision. None of that changes here. What changes is the geometry. The weapon is longer, so the redirect is longer: hand forward, fingers forward, thumb up, driving the muzzle off the line and keeping it off. Same principle you drilled. More weapon to move, and more weapon to hold once you have moved it.

And length keeps paying. A long gun is easier to put to a surface, because there is so much of it to put there. In your hands, it can even become a control tool of its own, the way you would use a blunt object. His weapon, working your problem.

Length Wants a Wall

Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of our lives happen inside walls. Even outside, structures have walls. That matters here more than anywhere else in this series, because when a long gun attack happens inside a structure, the wall is your first point of control. Not a backup plan. The plan.

Here is why. Faster options exist, but nothing gives you more secure positioning for control than a long gun pinned to a wall. And the wall does something else that matters just as much: it forces early commitment out of you at a level nothing else brings out of a defender. There is no half version of driving a weapon to a wall. You are all the way in, early, and that is exactly where this fight wants you.

The principle is two beats, exactly the way we train it: urgent redirection, then commit to driving to the wall for control. Redirect the muzzle off of you, then push, push, push, until the muzzle and the attacker’s shoulder are pinned against the wall. This should feel like a collision. A car accident for the attacker. That impact is the commitment doing its job, and what it buys you is the most secure control available on this weapon, established control, with less movement and fewer mistakes. The weapon has nowhere to work. In an active shooter situation, that pin is significant, and it is built from the same two letters you already own: redirect, then control.

And do not picture only a flat wall. A counter. A cabinet. The corner of a wall. A door. It does not have to be flat, and a sharp surface creates damage while it controls. One caution rides with that: anything that can be used against him can be used against you. Know what surface you are driving toward.

When There Is No Wall

The wall is the plan inside a structure. When there is no wall or vertical surface to pin against, your hands and your body build the control instead. And nothing new enters your head here. This is still just RCAT. Redirect, then control, then attack. What follows is what those letters most commonly look like on a long gun.

Say your right hand makes the redirect. Your left hand scoops underneath the weapon for control, elbow deep, deeper than the redirect that came first. Your feet are working the whole time. You are leaping to your left as the hands do their jobs, right hand pushing the weapon left, left arm scooping, whole body driving offline in one direction. As the left arm scoops, it can grab your own shirt, the same positional control you built in Control: What Is It Really and How to Get It Quickly, pulling the air out of the hold.

Now watch what the scoop just did. The moment your left arm owns control, your redirect hand is out of a job. It just became your weapon hand, and attack is the next letter. Typically the first attack it throws is a number one elbow strike to the head and neck. Then it goes straight back to work on control, weaving underneath, elbow riding over the top of the stock. You now hold more of that weapon than he does.

One more thing you will see on the mat, maybe in your own hands: students often wrap over the weapon instead of scooping under it. That is fine. The scoop and the wrap are two shapes of the same job, and the job is immediate control. If your immediate control is a scoop, great. If it is a wrap, great. Get control and attack. The take away at the end is the same one either way, and getting there from a wrap just takes a small adjustment, a little bit of thinking about the angle you now own. Which is one more reason you never rush the fourth letter. You will be making that adjustment while fighting for your life, and patience is what gives you the room to make it right.

From there, control deepens at the ends. Take your leverage at the end points: the butt, the muzzle, the handguard. That is where the leverage lives on anything long. If his hands are inside, your hands go outside, on the ends, and the physics of the fight start working for you. He is holding a lever, and you own the long ends of it.

The reps that make this automatic get built on the mat. What this article carries is what the letters look like on this weapon. When you see a long gun, you are not remembering hand positions. You are running RCAT.

The Sling: The Problem That Is All Its Own

Now the strap.

A slung long gun is harder to disarm, plainly. The weapon is tied to him, so the take away you pictured, where the weapon leaves his hands and the fight changes, runs into a piece of nylon that will not let go. The moment you recognize a sling, a decision has to be made about your approach, because the sling just told you what kind of fight this is. A longer one. One that demands more commitment, not less.

Here is the answer, and it is blunt: against a slung weapon, the best take away is unconsciousness. You are not taking the weapon from the man. You are taking the man from the fight. Typically that means the fight goes to the ground through a sprawl, your hands on the weapon, pulling him down with it. Control the long gun to the ground and pin it there. His mobility collapses, and he opens up for strikes. The sling that made the disarm harder is now one more point of control, and it is working for you.

It adds complexity. It is all about commitment. And commitment is a trained thing, which is exactly why you train it.

Taking It Away

Take Away: Do You Even Have to Take the Weapon Away? gave you the judgment, and for this weapon the judgment is already made. It is a gun. You take it. Distance does not turn off a firearm, and that does not change because the firearm is long.

The take away runs on the same principle as the handgun and different geometry the whole way. Get your outside leverage on both ends, then pull the stock down, sharply, as you strike him with the muzzle of his own weapon. Leverage and core do the striking, not arm strength. Through leverage and attack after attack, the muzzle comes to 12:00 and the stock points down at 6:00. Lift his chin with the long gun, with the front sight, and rip that front sight down his body, clavicle to groin. That rip attacks the thumbs, and the thumbs are what hold a gun, pistol grip or not. He is being struck with his own weapon, and the weapon is coming out of his hands.

Nothing you learned about the fourth letter changes here. It is still slow, still deliberate, still yours to start only when the fight is already won. The sling may make unconsciousness the truer finish. The wall may finish it for you. Either way, patience spends what the first three letters earned.

The Difference Is the Win

So put the two pictures side by side one more time. The fear picture: the biggest weapon in the series, and the worst day of your life. The training picture: the most weapon your hands will ever have to work with. More to hold. Harder to hide. Easier to put to a wall, and 80 to 90 percent of your life happens near one.

The next time a training rifle comes off the line, run the fight in your head before your hands move. The count. The explosion. The ends. The wall. The pin. Length is leverage, and you now know whose.

Train More…Fear Less.