Faster than a speeding bullet? Doubt it

So here's the scenario: Somehow you wind up in the very delicate situation of having a person standing in front of you holding a pistol just inches from your face and pointed right between your eyes. What do you do? The first thing most of us would do is crap our pants. So, more importantly, what's the second thing you would do? Most people would comply with the gunman's demands: give up money, get in a car ... whatever they say. This is the scenario we worked on in last night's FIGHT class (5/7). FIGHT training conditions us to have the mindset of "I'm taking that gun out of that guy's hand." This doesn't mean that we are taught to be faster than a bullet. That's impossible. But you can become faster than the gunman's trigger finger.

Having a pistol held inches from your
face is not a very comfortable situation to be in. However,
FIGHT training teaches us that it's better for the pistol to be
only inches away, rather than feet away. When it's inches
away it's within range for us to snatch from the gunman. 

The primary danger is this scenario is being in the line of fire of the gun. So, the first thing you do is remove yourself from the line of fire. Two moves accomplish this: your hands thrust upward to grab the pistol and push it higher than your head while at the same time you are "dropping base," or quickly dropping your height. The two moves are done simultaneously.

Usually we train this scenario with dummy pistols, but last night one of the instructors was using his Glock. After going through the process of clearing the weapon (this is a very systematic method we are taught that ensures there is no way a round is chambered) we used the Glock in place of the dummy. This gave us a glimpse of how fast we actually need to be to get out of the line of fire because the gunman was pulling the trigger in response to our moves. This was a great training aid because it added realism to the scenario. Three us were practicing with the Glock and all three of us would have taken a bullet to the head, or at least have been partially scalped by the bullet grazing our skulls.

Using the real pistol and hearing the pull of the trigger taught us all how critical it is for your hands thrusting upwards to be complemented by dropping your height. Actually, dropping your height is probably even more critical to getting out of the line of fire and the best part of that is gravity does all the work.

The only way to more accurately train this scenario would be to use a loaded BB gun. One of the instructors said he has done that. That's pretty realistic training, but even that falls short of what the real thing would be like because with the BB gun there is no bang, no fire coming out of the barrel, no powder coming out of the barrel. I'm not suggesting we throw firecrackers into each other's faces to prepare for those conditions. I'm just saying keep it in mind that if a gun goes off in front of your face, be prepared to be temporarily blinded and deaf.