The Handgun Threat: The problems and the solutions

By Nathan Lundstrom, Self Protection Specialist

Handguns are used in more murders in this country than every other weapon combined. Not most. Combined. And the same thing that makes it the most used weapon makes it the hardest one to control. It is small. Small moves fast, and small hides close. Gaining control is harder here, and keeping it is harder still.

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 the four principle articles carry the four letters. This article starts the second half of the series. From here forward, you know the sequence. What changes is what each weapon does to it.

The handgun does more to it than anything else you will face. The problems have names. The solutions are trainable. Both are why this article exists.

Why Small Is the Problem

The weapons in this series share more problems than they own. Small and fast describes a knife as much as a handgun. Every weapon crosses over with the others somewhere, and every weapon still brings a problem that is its own.

Here is the handgun’s own. Distance.

A knife you cannot reach cannot cut you. A hammer outside arm’s length cannot touch you. Against a blade or a bat, range protects you. A firearm turns that upside down. It hurts you from across the room, which means the distance you cannot control is the major issue. The long gun reaches the same way, and it gets its own article next. What no other weapon does is carry that reach hidden in one hand, small enough to disappear until the moment it is out. Out of reach is not safe. Out of reach is where it works best.

That flips the commitment on its head too. Against a blunt object, space is an answer. Against a handgun, the commitment is get in, stay in. You do not disengage until you have one hundred percent control of the weapon on the take away. Not most of it. All of it.

Stacked on top of that are three problems that make the getting and the staying hard.

It gives your hands less to hold. Fewer points of control, and smaller ones, than anything else he could bring. You are fighting for inches, and so is he.

It moves on more than three joints. His wrist, his elbow, and his shoulder are all in play, and they are moving a small object. That is speed and angle your grip has to answer every second you are connected to it. And under all of it, his feet are moving too. Remember what distance means to this weapon. He does not need to beat your grip to win. He needs room. So expect the step back, the shove, the strike, anything that buys him the space where the gun works and your hands do not. Every foot he creates is his survival, not yours.

It comes back faster than anything else. A handgun can be brought back on you faster than any other weapon. The line you moved it off of is short, and the trip back is shorter.

Put those together and you get the control standard for this entire weapon: close, tight, and two-handed. You do not hold a handgun away from you. You bury it in control and leave it nothing. And one rule rides on top of all of it: stay off the line of the muzzle. Where that barrel points changes every second of the fight, and keeping your body off that line is trained into every rep, right alongside your grip.

The First Problem: Flinching Retention

Watch what happens the instant your hands land on the gun. Before he forms any plan, before he fights back on purpose, he flinches. He steps back and pulls the arm back, elbow driving behind him, and the gun goes with it.

That retraction is the biggest problem weapon defense has. Not just ours. Every martial art that trains against weapons breaks on the same thing: the defense looks clean against an arm that stays put, and falls apart the moment he steps back and pulls the elbow away. And nothing triggers that flinch more than a handgun, especially one held in a single hand. One arm, three joints, one small object. Nothing he can carry retracts faster.

Understand what you are looking at. It is not a technique he trained. It is retention as a reflex, and that reflex beats more defenses than any counterattack ever will. It is also the first thing you will see in handgun defense, so it is the first problem your training has to answer. When your hands should account for it, whether you ride the retraction or beat it to the pull, is an answer built on the mat, rep by rep, with the flinch coming at you live.

Body Shielding: Where the Flinch Ends Up

If the flinch is the first problem, body shielding is where it goes next. He keeps stepping back, and he pulls the gun in tight against his own body. Now his frame sits between your hands and the weapon, shielding your ability to grab it or defend against it. The small weapon just got smaller. Half hidden, pinned close, and wrapped in a man who is fighting you for it.

And body shielding does not only happen on your feet. If the fight hits the wall, he can pin the gun between his body and the surface. If the fight goes to the ground, he can bury it under himself. Anywhere the fight goes, his body can go between your hands and the weapon, hiding it from the disarm. The position changes. The problem is the same one.

Look at what he actually did. You learned in Control: What Is It Really and How to Get It Quickly why a weapon pinned to a body is a weapon with almost no room to work. Body shielding is that same truth running against you. He is using his own frame the way you were trained to use it.

Now the moment that matters most. A shielded gun is a quiet gun, but it is not a finished one. The threat re-enters the fight the instant he pushes that muzzle straight back at you. That turn, from hiding the gun to pointing it, is the single moment your awareness exists to catch.

Which is why the real demand of body shielding is not on your hands. It is on your head. Your head must be in the fight, reading it as it happens, not consumed with fear and not fixed on getting out. Consumed is the fight lost. In the fight, you have to know:

• where you are
• where your pressure is
• where your attacker is
• where he is trying to go
• where the gun is
• what he is trying to do with the gun
• whether he is turning it offensive or just keeping it tight to him

That last question is the whole read. A man keeping the gun tight is retaining. A man turning the muzzle is attacking. Your answer changes with his, second by second, and you can only answer what you are watching.

The answer to both problems is the same commitment, and there is no secret grip that replaces it. No move opens a shielded gun in one beat, and no grip stops a flinch that has already fired. The answer is maintain the fight. Stay connected. Stay tight. When the arm retracts, go with it and take more of the limb. Keep fighting for the weapon, or the limb that runs it, and improvise how you do that second by second. You improvise how. You never improvise whether.

The Control Ladder

Every handgun drill we run stands on the same four rungs, and so does this article.

1. Get control.
2. Maintain control.
3. Create damage.
4. Keep control until a take away is possible.

The ladder is not a new sequence. It is what the last three letters of RCAT feel like inside a handgun fight. And notice where the weight sits. Two of the four rungs are keeping what you already have. That is the handgun difference in one picture. With this weapon, control is not a thing you get. It is a thing you hold while he does everything he can to take it back.

And he will. You learned his natural reactions in the control article: the press off his own body, the pull, the elbow driving back, the free hand coming in to strike. With a handgun, that free hand has one more option. It can join the gun. Two hands on the weapon is a different problem than one, and how the ladder answers it is drilled live, on the mat. With a handgun those reactions cost you more, because you are holding less and he is moving it on three joints with his feet under him. Expect them. Your answer does not change: more weight, less air, more of the limb.

Rung three is the attack, and it obeys everything from Attack: See It, Break It, Change the Odds in Your Favor. Take the target that is open. Never send an attack that risks your control of the weapon or the limb. Every hit has one job, and that job is more control.

Rung four is patience. The opening shows when control is complete. Not before. The skills that deepen each rung get built on the mat, with an instructor’s hands correcting yours. What this article carries is the ladder those skills serve.

A Mistake Is Not a Verdict

The most common failure in handgun training is not a grip or an angle. It is a decision. A student loses position, feels the mistake, and mentally declares the fight over.

The handgun invites that decision more than any weapon we train, because it punishes faster. Small and quick means position can change hands in a blink, and the student who was winning a moment ago suddenly is not.

Hear this plainly. A mistake is information, not a verdict. The fight is over when you have won it, and not one second before. What we train for is an incessant need to improvise and maintain the fight until you win. Lose a grip, fight for the next one. If his movement takes a surface from you, take the next one and rebuild. He gets no vote on your commitment.

The Distance Questions

Not every handgun problem starts inside your arms. Some start at ten feet, and those get answered with questions you ask long before anything happens.

What is too close? What is too far? How far can I move, in every direction? Do I engage? Do I look for cover?

The answers come from an honest understanding of your own capabilities, and your capabilities are exactly what training builds. You answer these questions on the mat first, so that if the day ever comes, they are already answered.

The Take Away Is Never Optional

Take Away: Do You Even Have to Take the Weapon Away? gave you the judgment call, and for this weapon the judgment is already made. A gun is the weapon you always take. There is no walking away from a man who still holds one.

So with a handgun, rung four always completes. You hold control until the opening shows, and when it shows, you take the weapon. On your terms, at your speed, the way the fourth letter always works.

The take away is the first moment disengaging becomes an option. One hundred percent control of the weapon, in your hands, is what buys it. Until then you are in, and the moment it is yours, stay switched on, because he may not be done wanting it back. One more thing belongs here, because it belongs to this weapon. Some of you carry. If you carry a firearm, holstered or drawn, retaining your own weapon is as vital as defending against his, and it adds a complexity all its own to every principle in this series. That complexity is real and it is trainable. The deep material lives in Armed Citizen Tactics, not in a blog article. Know that it exists.

The Hardest Weapon to Control

Here is what changes the next time a training gun comes off the line and your hands land on it. Stop thinking of control as a moment. With a handgun, control is a fight of its own, and now you have the frame for it. Get control. Maintain it through everything he does. Create damage that buys you more. Hold it until the take away shows, and take it, because with this weapon you always take it.

Small. Fast. Close. The handgun is the hardest weapon to control, and that is exactly why you train it until control is yours.

Train More…Fear Less.