What To Do After Disarming A Firearm

For many instructors and students weapon disarming, is seen as the pinnacle of self-defense training, yet it is often practiced without any real understanding of the various factors which are at play in a violent situation where a weapon is involved. In the self-defense world we often operate from the mistaken belief that once we have disarmed an assailant of their primary weapon, they cease to be an aggressor anymore, and/or respect our position of being the weapon holder and themselves the target/victim – a position/role we obviously didn’t adopt when we were the one with the weapon pointed at us; it could be a major misjudgment to believe that an assailant won’t try and retrieve his/her weapon. Where firearm disarms are concerned, we seem to naturally assume that the person we have just disarmed, will naturally be subservient and comply with our requests/demands after the disarm – this is often coupled with a mistaken belief that just because we are in possession of a firearm we are naturally in the superior/dominant position. Dominance only exists where another accepts it, and not everyone will accept that because you hold a firearm you are in a dominant position.

I often see self-defense instructors “tap and rack” a firearm after performing a disarm - although I used to teach this, I believe it is a dangerous and incorrect protocol to follow. Living and working in the UK, I learnt to accept that although firearms are prevalent, ammunition is not. Not every gun that is used in a criminal act is loaded. The UK enacted a firearm ban in the late 1980’s, that saw many guns being deactivated, which later in the 1990’s and 2000’s saw them being reactivated and brought back into circulation. However because there was no legal firearm’s trade in the UK etc. ammunition was and is in short supply. Many guns that were and are used in crime, are not loaded, or in certain cases loaded with the wrong caliber ammunition. In the UK disarming a weapon and believing/trusting it could be used as a ballistic weapon would be a dangerous position to take. What this goes to illustrate is that even in countries where owning a firearm is legal there is no guarantee that it is loaded, even when it is pointed at you – if you are relying on its ability to protect you as a firearm, once you have disarmed an assailant, you may be pointing it at the one person who knows what its true capabilities are. If an assailant has a secondary weapon such as a knife, they may well pull it and attack you, whilst you stand there repeatedly pulling the trigger of an unloaded weapon.

Most Krav Maga disarms involve grabbing the barrel of the weapon. In most cases if the firearm in question is a semi-automatic, holding the barrel, when an assailant pulls the trigger will prevent the slide from moving, and in turn prevent the bullet’s casing from being ejected and so jamming the weapon. This jam will have to be cleared in order to make the weapon operational. Trying to clear a jammed weapon under stress and duress is a difficult operation for an individual, especially one who is relatively untrained, to perform. Just because an assailant has been disarmed of their weapon doesn’t mean they cease to be an attacker. The time and distance to clear a potential weapon jam is huge if you are dealing with someone who is extremely aggressive and committed to causing you harm.

When you do disarm someone of a firearm, you equip yourself with a heavy solid striking object which is capable of delivering extreme concussive force, whether it is loaded or jammed. Repeatedly hitting someone with this object will put them out of commission – this is the first thing you should do when disarming them of such a weapon; use it to turn off their lights, don’t use it in a capacity where it could turn out to fail or let you down e.g. it’s unloaded or jammed. Just because you are proficient at using a firearm, don’t presume somebody else’s weapon is operational – if you do carry your own weapon, de-cock the assailant’s, discard it, and pull your own.       

Most of us will have few moral restrictions in striking someone with their own weapon to knock them out however we might hesitate and shy away from shooting someone, even if we believed that was their intention towards us. Using another person’s firearm to deliver concussive force, means we don’t rely on the weapon or the individuals fear at us having the weapon. To be honest, even if you shoot someone center of mass, they may still keep on coming (this is not as uncommon as you may think, especially if highly motivated, aggressive and adrenalized - Ibragim Todashev, one of those suspected of being involved in the 2014 Boston Marathon Bombing quickly recovered from being shot several times by an FBI agent to launch a second attack), and if they are armed with a knife they may still be able to stab and kill you before they succumb to their own injuries. If you use the firearm to concussively knock them out, you need never have to experience the level, force or degree of their intent. Disarm somebody of a firearm, use it to knock them out and the fight can be finished there. If you truly believe in your marksmanship under pressure, shooting for the hip may mechanically disable a person and prevent them from moving towards you – a tactic used against suicide bombers who are intending to blow themselves up.

For most of the situations we are likely to find ourselves in time and distance will be restricted, and our environment may not afford us the luxury of an easy disengagement where we can either get to our own weapon or use our assailant’s as a firearm (even if it is loaded and isn’t jammed, and is a make/model we are familiar with). Having a default response of using a firearm as an impact weapon, when at close range – this can be extended to your own weapon, and doesn’t have to only be restricted to firearms you have disarmed – is a much simpler, more reliable, and effective use of the weapon than trusting it as a firearm.