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The gunfighter's dilemma

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Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#31

Post by novas0x2a »

flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

I have to second nfnaaron here. The gun is always loaded. I don't care if you just unloaded it. It's still loaded. That's one of the most fundamental gun safety rules. Violating that rule, in my view, means you are not responsible enough to own a gun. I mean, there are really only three safety rules; it's not like there's a huge list.

There are plenty of ways to simulate the exercise with no risk. If you want to do stress exercises, you need to come up with a different way. This[1] is one of the standard ways. Notice that at no point does a real gun get pointed at a human being? That's by design.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#32

Post by dmv »

philwelch wrote: post #23
ErrantX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend who does Aikido says it's not explicitly taught quite like that - but that he does train to watch, for example, an attackers shoulders for slight movement prior to their attack.

Which implies that you could probably throw off someone like that just by, for instance, feinting the shoulder movement.

Having the body control to produce false, seemingly involuntary signals - while suppressing true involuntary signals - implies a level of physical mastery to the extent that you, likely, already possess a substantial advantage in the bout. This is like selling a fake tell in poker while not actually having a tell - even James Bond would tell you that's hard.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#33

Post by nkurz »

nfnaaron wrote: post #26
flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

"(After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head." Fail. Absolute fail. We say "the gun is always loaded" even when we "know" it is not, because if we never, ever point a gun at something that we don't want to destroy, we will never make that one in a million mistake. Fail. Sorry for the forcefulness, but this kind of gun "play" always deserves to be called out and dis…

I think you are wrong. I agree with you, in the sense that I would not feel comfortable doing this. "The gun is always loaded" is great rule, as is "Never point a gun at something you don't want to shoot". But it has its limits, and context is important.

Assume that you're a hostage negotiator, or someone in the police or military that otherwise expects to end up in a situation where someone is pointing a presumably loaded weapon at you at close range. I think there's a good argument to be made that you should train for this circumstance under the most realistic conditions you can muster, rather than hoping that your first live experience will go just the way it did on paper. If having a real gun pointed at you helps to simulate and train your real life response, this might be a good strategy.

Personally, as someone not in such a field, I'll spend the bulk of my efforts on figuring out how to avoid such situations. But for a professional training for a situation they expect to encounter, this is not 'play'.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#34

Post by nfnaaron »

nkurz wrote: post #33
nfnaaron wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head." Fail. Absolute fail. We say "the gun is always loaded" even when we "know" it is not, because if we never, ever point a gun at something that we don't want to destroy, we will never make that one in a million mistake. Fail. Sorry for the forcefulness, but this kind of gun "play" always deserves to be called out and dis…

I think you are wrong. I agree with you, in the sense that I would not feel comfortable doing this. "The gun is always loaded" is great rule, as is "Never point a gun at something you don't want to shoot". But it has its limits, and context is important. Assume that you're a hostage negotiator, or someone in the police or military that otherwise expects to end up in a situation where someone is pointing a presumably…

Agreed that there are a small percentage of people who are professionals, for whom the risk of live practice is probably worth the risk, also considering the likelihood that they would have to deploy their skills in this way.

For the rest of us (and I didn't see anything to suggest that these two martial artists were practicing in a professional context), the likelihood of needing to deploy this skill in a real attack is small, and if you want to practice such a skill as self defence you should be doing it with a fake gun, or at most in a way described by novas0x2a's link to the Tueller drill.

To invoke a programming saying, "you ain't gonna need it."

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#35

Post by hedgehog »

flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

Dude, slide immobilized it will still go bang.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#36

Post by blasdel »

hedgehog wrote: post #35
flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

Dude, slide immobilized it will still go bang.

Not if the hammer is immobilized by the slide being held racked back

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#37

Post by blasdel »

bwhite wrote: post #21
flatline wrote: post #10

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger…

A Glock will certainly fire with the slide immobilized. If the slide cannot move with respect to the frame the current round will not be ejected and the next round will not be chambered, but it will certainly fire the chambered round. It is not clear from "grab the whole barrel" what you were doing. Glock is like many (most?) semiautos in that the trigger cannot be pulled when the slide is not all the way forward, is…

It's pretty clear he meant that he was holding the slide back, preventing the hammer from moving forward.

But would that always work on a Glock, which has an odd striker arrangement instead of a traditional exposed hammer, and doesn't have a way to decock it without pulling the trigger?

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#38

Post by ajuc »

ErrantX wrote: post #15
Super_Jambo wrote: post #12

So optimally you want to be startled into action by something other than your opponent drawing. Then you get the speed advantage & a head start... Wonder if anyones done any research on training this for martial arts.

A friend who does Aikido says it's not explicitly taught quite like that - but that he does train to watch, for example, an attackers shoulders for slight movement prior to their attack.

I don't know any martial arts, but it reminds me of basketball - dribbling is exactly the same - every second you decide to start or not, you can make fake moves, and your oponent has to guess and react faster. And if his guess is wrong he allows you to pass him.

Sometimes you can just feel the rythm in which oponent will react, and then passing him is easy and pleasurable at the same time. And looks cool. That's why I love basketball :)

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#39

Post by ajuc »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #4

There are existing studies which show that people react faster when startled than when not. There's a nifty little online test to check your own response times: http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/reaction-time.html As far as I know this is the first test to show that startle response extends beyond reaction time, it's an interesting piece of data. It's worth noting that it's possible to force yourself into a state of mi…

Strange, I had 0.267 with normal measures, and over 0.5 with surprise measure.

Re: The gunfighter's dilemma

#40

Post by gaius »

nkurz wrote: post #33
nfnaaron wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head." Fail. Absolute fail. We say "the gun is always loaded" even when we "know" it is not, because if we never, ever point a gun at something that we don't want to destroy, we will never make that one in a million mistake. Fail. Sorry for the forcefulness, but this kind of gun "play" always deserves to be called out and dis…

I think you are wrong. I agree with you, in the sense that I would not feel comfortable doing this. "The gun is always loaded" is great rule, as is "Never point a gun at something you don't want to shoot". But it has its limits, and context is important. Assume that you're a hostage negotiator, or someone in the police or military that otherwise expects to end up in a situation where someone is pointing a presumably…

Google "operant conditioning".
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