Combat Mindset and Self Defense #5

In this 5^th installment of my posts on Combat Mindset and Self Defense I am going to cover a scenario with you that should show you why having situational awareness and a tactical posture all the time is so important and this scenario can be modified to fit pretty much anywhere along with a corresponding pistol shooting drill that I developed while training in a Protective Services Detachment (protection of important people like movie stars, state governors, and even musicians) course in Kuwait to go along with it.

            The scenario is as follows: You are exiting a building with your wife, the building could be a grocery store, your house, or pretty much anywhere, she is walking on your weak side (i.e. the side of your body that you don’t use to write with), probably holding your hand or your arm (because hopefully you are still in love and normal people in love do these things) ;). And you notice upon  exiting the building and walking for about 5-10 meters, that there are 3-4 young males quickly approaching you and you begin to feel a little uncomfortable with the fact that they are all staring at you and your wife as they close the distance with you. When they are approximately 20-25 feet away from you they begin to pull weapons of varying types from under their jackets and you realize that their intent is to rob or hurt you and your wife. WHAT DO YOU DO!?!?!?! The weapons can vary with the scenario but the purpose of this scenario is to get back inside the building under some form of cover and to protect your wife or other person with you at all costs.

The first thing to usually happen unless you train her otherwise is that your wife will panic and unintentionally cling to your arm, which is why it is so important that she always walk on your weak side of your body so your gun arm is free to complete your draw stroke. (it would probably be a race between me and my wife as to who can get their gun out first and as she is a better shot than me I really have to hurry to get it out and get a couple of hits before she does).

            There are several ways that you can take here and the first being you use your weak hand to grab the front of your wife’s shirt and pull her behind you while you draw and engage while simultaneously back peddling towards the door. This is the least preferred as it just makes the two of you a nice big target and rounds that hit you can still pass through with enough velocity to kill her as well. Also it is a lot of movement and many chances to trip and fall.

            The second method and more preferred is to push your wife away from you and sidestep away from her at the same time to open up distance between you and hopefully draw the attention to you and away from her (at this point she should be running back inside to get cover and call the police). As your sidestepping away you should be drawing your weapon and engaging the threats in order of the precedence of the threats imposed by their various weapons (i.e. a knife at 30 feet is not as much of a threat as a pistol or a shotgun that is closer) take the biggest threats first and shoot until you know you scored a good hit and then shift. You can always come back to re-engage the threats if you see that they were not totally incapacitated by your hit. Speed and accuracy are both very important here but accuracy is always more important. Remember that typically the bad guys will most likely try to run away once they see you are armed and ready to defend yourself, however this is not always the case. Also never stop moving once you have committed to action as a moving target causes anyone shooting at it to constantly shift their aim to hit you. It is also necessary to point out that you should be practicing drawing and shooting on the move.  

            Remember that once you commit to action there is no turning back and whether you live or die will depend on your violence of action. You never rise to the occasion you simply fall back to your level of training.