Sensei Jeff gets you shot in the face

Our favorite TKD black belt, Sensei Jeff is back and this time his lesson is how to get yourself SHOT IN THE F***ING FACE.  Here’s Sensei Jeff now on what to do if you’re attacked in a suburban TKD dojo by a gi-wearing red belt pointing a (hopefully) unloaded Kimber at your face.  Here’s our time index commentary, a little bit shorter this time.

  • 1:10 – Sweet Buddha on a bicycle, there is a magazine in that gun.  I..I…I just don’t know what to say any more.
  • 2:04 – What is it with this guy and assuming that the bad guy’s gun might be booby-trapped?  Is this common in Miami?  Muggers running around with booby-trapped guns waiting for TKD masters to just take them away then blow up or something?
  • 2:09 – Oh, at least this time he said “pack the clip”.  We’re getting closer, I think.

Once again, general comments.  If someone is pointing a gun at you with the intention to relieve you of your property, it is a REALLY GOOD BET that they’re not going to stand there and let you take the gun out of their hands.  They’ll react.  They’ll move.  They’ll fight back.  And more than likely, they’ll shoot you in face if you try what Sensei Jeff is showing you.  You are not Jet Li.

Now, there is a lesson in here for gun owners and CCW holders.  Getting close enough to a person that you’re covering with your firearm so that they can grab it is a bad idea.  A gun is not a contact weapon.  However, we have methods of dealing with that, such as “shooting with retention”.  I’d really like to see one of these done with an airsoft gun, so Sensei Jeff can demonstrate the part where you get shot 6 or 7 times while trying this.

9 Comments

  1. Good god…. My gut got all tight watching that. I thought for sure that guy was about to have an ND right there on film.

  2. Yeah he’s gonna get shot in the face.

    I never learned “gun takeaways”, I learned “gun defenses”; i.e., change the line of fire and disable the attacker, *then* take away the gun (if possible). The FIRST movement of any gun defense, as I was taught, is not to grab or wrestle with the gun but to literally smack it away. THEN grab it, kick the guy in the nuts, whatever. Otherwise you get shot in the face.

    Also the guns we practiced with were OBVIOUS FAKES. So yeah.

  3. I haven’t watched the video because I’m on a low-bandwidth connection–I’m sure, from your description, he’s doing it wrong.

    LEOs in my state are taught, however, the basics of taking away a firearm within reach. The assumption seems to be that if you’re a LEO, and someone has a gun to your head or COM, then you’re probably already dead, and you might as well give it a try. It’s usually taught in tandem with gun retention, where the statistic is that in something like 87% of gun grabs, the officer ends up dead. So you do everything you can to keep your firearm, and if he gets it, you try to take it back.

    They teach several variations of the same move: rotate out of the line of fire and closer to the attacker, while pushing the gun arm past yourself with your own arm; then grab the wrist and the gun, pulling one and pushing the other. One officer teaching this remarked that he successfully used this move, many moons ago, to recover his revolver after a suspect grabbed it from his holster while he walked through a doorway. (In those days they didn’t use retention holsters.)

    That said, like any self-defense situation there’s a difficult judgment call to make. If your attacker definitely intends to shoot you, and has a weapon on you while yours is holstered, then taking his gun might not prevent him killing you, but it’s probably the best choice in that last resort. If he only wants your wallet, grabbing his gun will probably turn a mugging into a murder–most likely, yours.

  4. “[R]otate out of the line of fire and closer to the attacker, while pushing the gun arm past yourself with your own arm; then grab the wrist and the gun, pulling one and pushing the other.”

    Sensei Jeff grabs the gun, then rotates the attacker’s wrist to take it away. All of this is performed at arm’s length, and the gun is pointed at Sensei Jeff pretty much the entire time. /facepalm

  5. Ignoring, for a moment, the stupidity of using a real weapon for this demo…

    Sensei Jeff is doing something that looks like what you’d come up with if you watched someone do an FBI disarm, but didn’t capture the details.

    I started to make a list of things he’s got wrong, seriously wrong. It got too long to type up.

    For folks who are actually interested in learning handgun retention and disarms (I would suggest that ought to be *everyone* serious about self-defense) I recommend taking a real class from a real instructor, not watching junk on youtube. Junk on youtube will get someone killed.

    I’ve taken the handgun retention/disarm class from Marty Hayes at Firearms Academy of Seattle, and highly recommend it. When you get the class, buy the DVD, because you’ll want to review every few months.

    And for the love of all that’s holy, practice with a dummy gun. Wear gloves. Keep fingers out of the trigger guard. And take a real class.

  6. It “COULD” work.
    I wouldnt try it except as a last resort if you believe you are gonna be killed.

    The big thing is Speed. If you can do it fast enough the gun will be at least pointed away from you if it goes off.
    This means you would have to practice it quite a bit!

    1. Oh, and since I didn’t notice his finger in the triggerguard in the video as it probably would be in real life I’d assume that the gun would go off at some point. Hopefully not at me!

  7. I’m an orange belt in Shotokan Karate, a very traditional style that stays away from “specific” weapon take-aways. First and foremost you have to disable your opponents ability to use a weapon, then disable the weapon. Now you have an advantage, since your opponent most likely doesn’t have the hand to hand skills you do. This applies to ANY weapon be it a gun, knife, sword, axe or even just a large stick. Hell it applies to your opponents legs and arms.

    Notice I said I’m an orange belt, not very high up. But this very basic idea of always finding an advantage over your opponent is BEATEN into students heads from day one.

    I’m seriously tempted to post a video response titled “Common Sense from an Orange Belt” In which I demonstrate how “Sensei Jeffs” techniques will get you killed. I wouldn’t bother trying to demonstrate the correct techniques because I’m man enough to admit I’m not at the skill level to instruct others.

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