The incident from this video just happened in the past few days and shows a great example of an entangled fight only involving private citizens (no LE presence at all) and weapons being produced.
What are the takeaways we should focus on?
- That it happened at all.
- The fight was already on and the people involved were already entangled when one of them attempted to produce a handgun (of the two that he was carrying). We must remember that just because it starts with empty hands and blows being thrown does not mean it will continue on that path. We cannot assume what goes on in the head of other people.
- The person trying to get the pistol into the fight had zero control of the entanglement. He did not have a good position in relation to the other person (and I would like other video commentators who have little to no actual grappling experience to try to explain why he was not in an optimal position. They won’t be able to because they don’t know. Please don’t listen to non-grapplers who pretend to be SMEs in grappling). He also failed to control the arms of his opponent, who then had complete freedom to counter as he saw fit. Letting the other person have that freedom puts the odds of being successful at your in-fight weapon access (IFWA to use Craig Douglas’ terminology) at about 50/50. It may still work, but there is an equal to greater chance it won’t. So you better have a bit of training and practice in understanding the entangled fight. And no, having years doing a traditional martial art that spends 99.9% of it’s time working stand up, ranged striking gives you no grasp at all of grappling.
- A lot of people fail to understand the above point about having arm control. They see those of us who do teach this sometimes teach bringing a weapon into play when you don’t have arm control, such as when you are underneath a bigger, stronger opponent – perhaps even face down – and you access a fixed bladed knife carried centerline on the belt. I have heard some non-experts try to say “see! You don’t need arm control! They are hypocrites in their teaching!” What these people fail to understand is that drawing a blade when you are on the bottom and pinned down is a worst case scenario. You have no other workable alternatives, and trying to get a blade out that was carried in an optimal position at least gives you a chance. But none of us who teach this material wil lever say it is unstoppable. It is easily stoppable by someone with just a little knowledge. In that scenario, we have no control over the bad guy and he is free to counter our knife draw. But that is the only chance we have. It is better to roll the dice and try instead of accepting death. But it is not optimal. People who have little training should refrain from publicly commenting on these things until they truly understand what it is they are saying.
- The other interesting take on this video is that almost always we view other unknown actors around as bad guys too. We never take into account that they may be good guys and can help. Certainly we should not count on it, but neither should we completely dismiss the possibility of others around being positive.