And yet again we have another video that according to many SMEs in the training community never happens. An entangled fight with weapons involving only private citizens.
This one is particularly good for a few reasons, and I post it to illustrate some interesting aspects.
- Note the actions of the good guy in the foreground. This is a guy who is either really lucky, or has some training. As soon as the interaction happens, he squares up to the unknown contact and pay attention to how he sets himself up to move to the guy’s back. Also, there is zero hesitation – he recognizes what is happening and that action is needed. I would love to know his story because it is picture perfect in how to deal with this.
- Watch how the good guy takes the robber’s back, and controls the limbs, and by doing so, he owns the weapon, not the guy who brought it to the fight. Hmm. I have seen this before. Where could it be? Oh yeah, in everything that Craig Douglas, Paul Sharp, Larry Lindenman, Chris Fry, myself, or a handful of others like John Valentine and Ben from Redbeard Combatives have been teaching all this time. Weird, it is almost like we have worked this problem…..
- Also ponder how this is BJJ 101 – control the position and the limbs, and you dictate what happens in the fight.
- Look and see where the fight goes – straight to the ground. For all those people who screech about “not going to the ground because you will get killed”, how do they answer this? Going to the ground here was an incredibly awesome end state. It allowed the good guys to completely control what the bad guy did, and it minimized the options the bad guy had to fight back. In short, going to the ground was an absolute win, and probably an easier win than if they had tried to keep the bad guy upright.
- The final point I would like to make is the absurdity that many people in the training community like to proselytize about – “Always carry your gun”. That sounds great, and for LE, ex-LE, .mil or .gov guys on duty it works fine. For the average person, not so much. The fact is that there are many situations where regardless of what you want to do, you cannot carry a firearm. The reason I hate this trope so much is that it essentially says the only way to defend yourself is with a gun, and facing a weapon without one is a death sentence. Well, yeah, if you have not trained it under realistic pressure, you most likely will fail. But with some training and some basic awareness and acceptance of how the world is, you can always have a chance to defend yourself. After all, you can never be disarmed of skill. Certainly carrying a firearm is good, and in an ideal world we can use it when necessary. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. I, for one, refuse to accept that I am helpless without gun. And here is a shining example of how well that concept works for real.