Category: Gun Handling

Review: Combatives For Concealed Carry: Clinch Fighting Volume 1

I’m always looking to improve my grappling. I do my Jiu Jitsu and get together with training partners and integrate grappling with weapons whenever I can. However, it’s very difficult to find instructional media that deals with grappling in a weapons based environment. Justin White of Mad Science Defense has a series of DVDs about this topic.

In case you don’t have time to read this: I recommend this DVD.

Chapters and Topics:

  1. Introduction – An explanation of why we might need to deal with a standing contact range fight with weapons.
  2. Dummy Guns
  3. Weapons Access- Discussion of accessing a weapon while in an entangled fight. Discussion of a universal draw stroke.
  4. Posture/Angle/Level- A solid discussion of the fundamental requirements to have sharp grappling.
  5. Clinch from Strikes – Achieving the clinch from a Cover and Crash or off of a striking blast.
  6. Clinch from Grabs – Front, side, and back
  7. Offside Underhook – Options for when your weak arm has an underhook
  8. Strongside Underhook – Options for when your strong arm has an underhook
  9. Overhook – Options for when you can’t achieve an underhook.
  10. Skill Development – Drills to work at home. 1-2-3 dominance drill, slo-mo drill

Extras:

  • Choosing Dummy Weapons
  • Using a Training Dummy
  • Striking With a Handgun
  • Scenario Training

Things I loved:

Expert grappling instruction. It is obvious that Mr. White is a talented grappler and instructor. His teaching progression is logical and starts with the fundamentals of posture, angle, and level and he then introduces techniques that will allow you to close distance and achieve a clinch. He progresses from a solid clinch (underhook and far-side wrist control) to either a tie up, or taking the back of your opponent. He finishes the progression with accessing weapons from these dominant positions.

His details cleared up a few sticking points I have been having while standing. I’ll be taking them to our training group. His emphasis on doing the work was much appreciated. He urged the viewer to seek training and emphasized that this stuff won’t just happen if you don’t practice it. He even gives some exercises to work with a partner to get better at this stuff at home.

Good stuff.

Minor Gripes:

I don’t envy anyone who has to try to cram a topic as dense as standing weapon-based grappling into an hour presentation. There just isn’t enough time to mention all the details. For the person who hasn’t seen this material before, I would have loved to see a brief discussion on why the clinch is such a viable fighting platform for an extreme close range problem. Why we don’t want to get in a speed draw contest with our opponent at close range. Mentioning the importance of monitoring hands while in a clinch to prevent the other guy from getting his weapons, as well as a discussion of why underhooks are such a dominant position just in case the viewer doesn’t glean that from the instruction. But of course I understand why it was omitted, those ideas were inferred in the material and we only had an hour.

The other gripe I have is in one of his tie-up positions from an overhook. He advocates shooting from this position while pointing his gun at himself (43:00 of video). I know (from simunition experience) that it’s easy to shoot yourself if you’re not super careful about your muzzle-target line. I talked with Mr. White about this and he recognized that it was a bit of an oversight. This was the only flub like this I noticed.

In conclusion:

This DVD would be a solid buy whether you have experience grappling or not. If you have trained with any of the Shivworks collective, this will be a good reminder of your options in the clinch. If you haven’t, you’ll get an idea of what this topic is about. I hope I get to train with Justin one day, as he has a lot to teach. I need to pick up his ground fighting DVD next. Recommended.

Be Safe,

Mark

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Order of Operations: The Safest Unloading Procedure

One Simple Trick to Never have a Negligent Discharge when Unloading Your Gun!

(Why the Order of Operations Matters)

If you’re like me, you are regularly administratively loading and unloading your firearms. I usually discourage people from excessive administrative handling of guns (e.g. gun selfies, pocket dumps, moving gun from belt to some car holster contraption), however sometimes it’s necessary. Whether it’s for nightly storage, cleaning, or for daily dry practice, I seem to be constantly unloading/loading my guns.

Better at hashtags than guns.

There is no shortage of people who have had negligent discharges (ND) while unloading, usually while cleaning guns that require pulling the trigger to disassemble. It goes like this (or a similar variation):

  1. Be distracted
  2. Remove magazine to remove source of bullets
  3. Be about to rack the slide to clear the chamber when something interesting comes on the TV…
  4. Pull down take-down levers and try to remember if you racked the slide, decide you probably did.
  5.  press trigger…*ears ringing*…Whoops…

Order of Operation Matters

I never gave much thought to the process of unloading. I’d just take the magazine out, rack the slide a few times, then look for an empty chamber and empty magwell, and I was done. That had worked well for me for a long time because I try to not be complacent. Then Claude Werner asked me a question.

CW – “What is the source of ammo into the gun?”

Me – “the… magazine?”

CW -“Everyone thinks the magazine feeds the gun. It doesn’t. The chamber does. Until the chamber is rendered safe, the gun is loaded.”

Me – 

Unload and Show Clear

As a small aside, I have also adopted Claude’s method of marking the bottom of my chambered cartridges after unloading with a sharpie. A single line next to the primer. Rotate a cartridge with 5 marks to the bottom of the magazine. When the whole magazine has cartridges with 5 marks, shoot that magazine. This allows 80 unloadings in a 16 shot gun. This technique will prevent projectiles from pushing into the case from countless chamberings and keep your defensive ammo more reliable.

A small alteration in technique can pay dividends over the course of your shooting career. I’ve made the switch to this more robust and foolproof method.

Let me know what you think. Thank you for reading.

Be Safe,

Mark
If you find value in my posts, please consider subscribing and sharing. And please do your Amazon shopping through our affiliate link.


Technique: Draw from a fanny pack

The fanny pack is the universal sign that A) You just emerged from your mom’s basement because you’re out of cheetos, or B) You’re man enough to recognize the utility and comfort of a bag worn about the waist. I happen to be a combination of both.

If I weren’t married, I 100% would rock the fanny pack more often. As it stands, it is my dog walk, yard work, ruck walk, occasional around the house, and (if I’m not with my wife) grocery store companion. I think it’s a sign of maturity. At least that’s what I tell myself.

relaxed
No Ragrets.

My fanny pack serves as a holster, mag pouch, and trauma kit when I’m out and about.

Whatchu Got in that bag?

My cover story is it contains my insulin and blood sugar monitor. Pick a story that works for you. Especially if you wear it in a gym or somewhere where it could draw more than passing interest.

Set Up

max octa
My well loved Maxpedition Octa

My fanny pack is the Maxpedition Octa Versipack. While it’s not a purpose built gun bag, it holds a glock 19 easily in the main compartment. If you have a striker fired gun, consider a trigger guard holster like the MIC for protecting that trigger. Tie that holster through a grommet hole so it tears away when you draw. You should also consider cutting away all internal mesh/dividers in the intended gun compartment. No obstructions, nothing to hang on.

The front pockets can carry spare mag, a small LED light, TQ’s, dog poop bags, etc.

Only keep the pistol in the main pouch, with nothing else in that segment of the bag. It has 2 zipper pulls on the main pouch. I removed one, and on the other I hung a longer segment of green paracord as a pull. Consider also a bead or woven pull tab so you can distinguish the gun zipper from the others without looking.

The Draw-stroke is the Draw-stroke

That’s it. Are you man (or woman) enough to rock a fanny pack?

Here’s photos of the VERY GOOD KG Products BeltBag. I took mine to the range recently and put myself on the timer with it. I was working draws and 1,2, or 3 shots on a 6″ circle at 5 yards. I was getting draw times from 2.5 to 3.0 seconds (concealed from holster puts me at 1.5 seconds or so from beep to first shot). If I were buying a new one, I’d definitely get a KG Products.

There are tons of fanny pack options:

Thanks for reading.

 

Gear Featured:
Do The Work/Memento Mori Bracelet
Silicone Wedding Bands
Marathon TSAR watch
Beretta PX4C

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Technique: (Slide) Rack City, Rack Rack City

Though it might seem like minutia, and ultimately probably is, there is great debate in the firearms training community about how one should rack the slide of one’s pistol. The contention arises over the cost/benefits of each method with regards to speed, robustness, general applicability over wider set of circumstances, which pistol is used, left/right hand appropriate, fine/gross motor skills, hand strength, and a host of other points.

I have no intention of settling any debates. I want to show you several different methods and give you the pros and cons of each method. You’ll decide which to practice and implement.

As a general rule, all slide manipulations should be done in the 24″ or so sphere in front of our faces where we have extra dexterity, visual acuity, and where we can still see what is happening beyond the gun in the background.

Overhand Rack Behind Ejection Port

This one is the gold standard in many entry level (and advanced) fighting firearms training programs.

Pros:

  • This works on most guns for a wide array of issues that guns have. It works for a stoppages, for a reload at slide-lock or slide-forward if you happen to ride the slide stop lever.
  • Because it works for multiple problems, there’s less to think about. It’s more ROBUST.
  • It works when you’re muddy, bloody, sweaty because you get maximum skin contact on maximum slide grooves.
  • You can get a lot of racking force if your hands are weak by pulling with the slide hand, while punching with the gun hand. Creating force vectors in opposite directions.
  • Touted as ‘gross motor’ and easier to perform under stress because you grab a chunk of slide and then try to rip the slide off the gun. As opposed to hitting little buttons. (I take issue with that ‘gross motor’ argument, since the trigger and mag release are also little buttons we access under stress… but I digress.) Photo time!

Cons:

  • It’s demonstrably slower. Your hand has to move from the gun, to your chest, and back to the pistol to reestablish grip.
  • It can activate the safety on a slide-mounted-safety pistol (Berettas for instance)
  • Requires two hands

Slingshot Grip

This is the solution for slide-mounted safety guns.

Pros:

  • It really works on almost all semi-auto pistols.

Cons:

  • It requires more grip strength to pinch the slide with 2 fingers instead of the four finger clamp of your hand. When I was having grip issues a few years ago from chemotherapy, I couldn’t do this method.
  • Requires two hands.

C-Clamp Grip in front of Ejection Port

I saw Frank Proctor doing this method in a youtube clip. He talks about it in his ‘deliberate load’ video. Relevant info starts at 1:13

Pros:

  • It’s fast. Your hands only need to fold back together to a full firing grip
  • Can fix malfunctions and manipulate slide just like in the overhand and sling-shot method.
  • Allows good view of chamber for press-checking status of gun.

Cons:

  • The proximity of muzzle to shooters hand is a little close for comfort. I could see a non-dedicated person flagging themselves easily.
  • Requires a lot of hand strength. I DEFINITELY couldn’t do this method when I was grip-compromised. Forward cocking serrations are a plus.
  • Double action guns, where you must overcome the spring tension of the hammer, makes this technique a little more difficult. Try thumb-cocking the hammer before attempting this.
  • Requires two hands.

Slide-Stop/Release Button

I used to shun the use of the slide stop (or release) button to get the slide to go home after a slide-lock reload. I was being a Tactical Timmy. I was dumb. And slow.

Pros:

  • The fastest way to send the slide home from slide-lock
  • Can be done one-handed
  • Can be done with either strong or weak thumb (if you’re right handed) depending on your digit length.

Cons:

  • It’s only good for letting a locked slide go forward. It doesn’t solve any other pistol issues (stoppages, etc)
  • Some small framed guns with stiff recoil springs require an inordinate amount of thumb strength to release the slide with the button. My S&W shield is a culprit of this.
  • Left handed people will need to use their trigger finger for this. Or not at all. (H/T Steve W. for reminding me of lefties)

Off of a nearby surface

This is a method of necessity and extenuating circumstances. By catching the rear sight or ejection port on a nearby surface, you can safely run the slide. This is a last resort measure.

Pros:

  • Minimal hand strength required. All you need to do is catch a surface with your gun, and lean on it. Your body weight and gravity are on your side. This was literally my ONLY recourse for running a slide when I was at my weakest in early 2015.
  • Only needs one hand
  • Any Surface will do. e.g. Belt, Holster, Car Door, Table, Face of scumbag you’re shooting, etc.

Cons:

  • Benefits from a flat ledge on the rear sight to get good purchase on your chosen surface.
  • Muzzle direction can be an issue if you’re not careful. (Down and Away when racking off of your body/gear)
  • Possibility of malfunction if you don’t keep ejection port clear when performing.

Conclusion

While it really shouldn’t make a difference for your practice, I generally prefer the slingshot method for most slide manipulations when the slide is forward, the Proctor c-clamp method when press-checking the status of my gun, and the slide release/stop button for slide-lock reloads. But don’t take my word for it. Test it for yourself. Both on a timer, and then after many many repetitions under varying conditions to see how high percentage it is. If your preferred method works only 60% of the time, but it’s faster than another method that works 95% of the time, I’d probably go with the higher percentage move. But that’s me. I’m risk averse.

Thanks for reading.

Mark L.

If you find value in my ramblings, please subscribe, share, and shop through our amazon affiliate link.

Gear Featured:
Surefire X300U
Ameriglo .130 fiber front/ .130 black rear
Do The Work/Memento Mori Bracelet
Silicone Wedding Bands
Marathon TSAR watch
Glock 19
Beretta PX4C