shen -FatBuddha -shen -I certainly never have had a real gun trained on me. I have however taken many different "defense against the armed assailant classes", taught by all sorts of instructors, a couple well known handgun teachers, a couple well known Krav Maga teachers, a few Jujutsu instructors, one crazy Aikido/ Self Defense teacher, a WWII era combatives/ Kali instructor, a SWAT trainer, former Special Forces/Aikido guy, a Combat Sambo instructor (work paid for me to train in person with multiple different instructors to see what's is out there). I believe I have a pretty solid sense of what is being taught by various people. And of course I've done a lot of adrenal stress scenarios on this topic. There is a LOT of commonailty among the better stuff.
The Gracies defenses I have seen are not the absolute worst --they are on par with the traditional jiu jitsu ones I was taught-- but they do not rank up there, IMO, because: 1) They are too complicated; they add an "extra" unnecessary layer of technique and that's NOT a good thing under extreme stress and 2) they are too specific; they do the typical TMA thing where you have x number of different defenses for x number different attacks. Under such extreme stress, the brain is less likely to effectively recall what to do when given so much choice. The best defenses I have seen can be learned in a few minutes. They need to be absurdly simple and easy to generalize to a wide number of attacks. The actual "techinque" itself should not pose any sort of hurdle because the psychological and physiological hurdles will already be huge.
Common sense should tell us that survival should be the only goal of a gun defense. Stuff like RUNNING away should be factored into the decision making tree. Things like putting the assailant in a "goose neck wristlock" should NOT factor into to. All evidence says that it needs to be a SIMPLE, GROSS MOTOR action and you should train it under adrenal stress with the understanding that your window of opportunity to do such a thing is usually very small, if there even is one.
<br /> <span class="User-114832" id="userPost52440478">Shen - which instuctor did you like the best? Can you point me to any websites/videos/training camps? I personally like the Gracie gun defenses but I want to keep an open mind to try to see your point.</span></blockquote>
I can't pick one. They all have something to offer, but I'll narrow it...
InSights Training Center in Bellview ,WA (trained with John Holschen). Excellent training all aound. http://www.insightstraining.com/ Guy was just a true pro.
(Mark Worland, exceptional private instructor in the Los Angles area (no website/DVDs). Everything with him is word of mouth; he flies completely under the radar, but has trained with EVERYONE and trained all sorts of people and groups. Among other things, we did drills that included basically "tactical running"; which direction to run, if you have a choice, that makes it harder to track, shoveing and running. But, this name is probably not helpful to you).
Richard Dimitri (Senshido) is awesome, thoughful and simple http://senshido.com/
Moni Aizik (Commando Krav Maga) Now this guy IS all about making instructors and franchizing, making $$$ etc. Very commerical, I know. BUT I took a gun defense seminar and it was just really good. I haven't seen his DVDs though http://commandokravmaga.com/html/. Also did a weekend long intensive Weapon defense seminar with the Krav Maga World Wide Organization and I liked his stuff more.
I've never trained with Kelly McCann (aka "Jim Grover"), but I like his gun stuff. I like his DVDs. http://www.paladin-press.com/category/Kelly_McCann_aka_Jim_Grover But really there's a lot of overlap between Fairbairn style WWII era combatives --which McCann basically teaches an updated version of-- and old school Krav Maga.
thanks Shen, appreciate it, I'll check those out