Before we leave the topic of self-defense moves, and how they should be used before, during and even after using or choosing not to use your sidearm, I want to cover the scary situation of what to do if you are going to pull your weapon, or have already pulled it out, but the attacker grabs your gun.
As always, our goal is to use the most effective techniques, but organize, teach and learn it in the most simplistic way. Therefore, we’re going to separate this scenario into two situations: The attacker grabbing the weapon if it is still in our holster, and the attacker is grabbing it if it is outside of the holster.
When the grab it when it is still inside our holster, we use a “Trap, wrap and attack” defense. Whether the attacker grabs the weapon itself or grabs our hand which is on our weapon, we simply use our other hand to trap our weapon or their hand on our weapon, wrap their arm with our other arm and attack back with arm breaks, kicks and head butts. This situation can happen from the front or back, but ideally follows the same defensive reply. Please see the illustrations to further understand.
The second version of this scenario is if our weapon is already pulled and the assailant puts their hands on the weapon. We once again have a three step defensive process for getting back our weapon, which is: “push, twist and rip”. As seen in the pictures, anytime an attacker puts their hands on a weapon, that is a potential deadly situation, therefore pulling the trigger is an option. However, if the weapon is offline, and not sighted on the target, we push the weapon back into the attacker, twist it and then rip it back to our torso. Please see the video for some added positional options.
There is no doubt that this situation is scary, and many law enforcement officers have come in contact with it. However, having a simple, direct and effective strategy is what is needed to combat it and come out successful. Playing around with this positions and options will help you adapt quickly as the situation will take you by surprise.