The danger of retention and contact shooting

One of the sexiest topics in shooting in the last few years is retention shooting and SEVERAL of you emailed in last week asking about the topic. There are a few different definitions for retention shooting, but basically it’s holding your gun close to your body while engaging an attacker that’s within arm’s reach in a way that they can’t take your gun.

There are a few scenarios where this is a factor.

1. An attacker is within arm’s reach, your gun is holstered, and you draw and shoot. (standing, wrestling, etc.)
2. You’re maneuvering through a crowd or a building and have the gun in a compressed position instead of extended.
3. A bad guy gets their hands on your gun and you want to be the only one to use it.

There are times when retention shooting makes sense, and times when it doesn’t.

Let’s start off with the most popular way that I’ve seen it taught, which is to go straight to your holstered gun if a threat presents itself within arm’s reach. To be clear, friends, instructors I respect and schools I respect teach this way.

I’m glad that they’ve taught and are teaching the technique. But sometimes life experiences change your perspective. Drills, tactics, and techniques that make sense against paper or a compliant training partner sometimes don’t work quite so well against a non-compliant training partner or a determined attacker. It’s my hope that instructors and shooters will tweak the way they teach, train, and practice after reading this.

The typical way this technique is taught is to have the shooter touching a paper target or 2-3 feet away, blocking or striking with their left hand, and drawing and engaging with their right…often times with the butt of the gun against their ribs so that the slide doesn’t hit their clothing and cause a malfunction.

But you’ve got to ask yourself, if you’re in a situation where your gun is holstered and a threat presents itself and your first chance to respond is when the threat is within arm’s reach, what’s your goal? Is it:

1. Use your gun to stop the threat.
Or
2. Stop the threat as quickly as possible while taking a minimal amount of damage.

If you don’t realize that someone is a threat until they’re within arm’s reach, do you think you’d be surprised? I do. And that might affect the speed at which you can respond.

Former Army Ranger Sniper, Nick (Reaper) Irving, recently had an article on SOFREP where he talked about reaction times in relation to the Orlando shooting. He said that trained individuals on patrol expecting violence have a reaction time of .39-.58 seconds.

Having a holstered gun and not realizing that you’re facing a violent threat until it’s a couple feet away is different than being on patrol with a gun in your hands.

It’s safe to say that your reaction time will be AT LEAST as much as a trained individual on patrol…probably longer.

Next, how long does it take you to grip, unholster, rock, and press the trigger?

One-handed from concealment?

While being hands-on with an attacker with only 1 hand and divided attention?

In force on force work I’ve done, the time to get the gun into play varies from 1-4 seconds, depending on the type of concealment (if any), how compliant your training partner is, and if Mr. Murphy makes a visit during the process.

As soon as the attacker acts the part of someone who you could legitimately shoot, the technique doesn’t work anymore.

An untrained fighter can deliver 3-5 strikes per second or 1-3 “haymaker” “lights-out” strikes per second. Those strikes could be with their hands, a knife, golf club, tire iron, baseball bat, etc.

In a perfect world, you’re looking at 1-1.5 seconds to deliver the first shot from your gun…and it’s probably going to be a gut shot.

In a perfect world, that gut shot will INSTANTLY stop your attacker.

But that’s not the way it usually works.

Non-compliant attackers who are taking actions that justify you shooting them are probably going to be hitting, cutting, or shooting you during the time it takes you to get your gun into the fight.

There’s a good chance that they’ll try to go for your gun or hurt you to keep you from shooting them. And there’s a good chance that 1-2 pistol shots to the gut aren’t going to stop the fight before they do more damage to you…regardless of how lethal those shots may end up being.

Contact shooting just doesn’t work well in that context. Ask anyone who’s tried it with force on force training, and they’ll tell you the same thing: It only works with a compliant training partner.

So, what should you do?

There are a couple of approaches…

First, is to strike your attacker in the throat or eyes instead of going for your gun. Either strike will happen MUCH sooner than going for your gun, will get your attacker on the defense faster than going for your gun, and have a better chance of minimizing the damage that you’ll take.

Depending on the attacker and their level of druggedness, drunkenness, or derangement, the eye/throat strike may even stop the attack faster than a gut shot.

The best source that I know of for how to deliver strikes that have the effectiveness of a handgun is >HERE<

Second, is to do rapid-fire palm-heel strikes to the head/face until you shift your attacker’s center of mass backwards.

As soon as this shift happens, you can take a step back, draw your pistol with the use of both hands before they start advancing again, and engage that attacker or other attackers as needed. I learned this technique from working with the guys >HERE<

Both are effective. Both have strengths. And both are WAY more likely to work in a real-life situation than an all-gun-all-the-time approach.

What about other retention shooting situations?

There are absolutely reasons to practice retention shooting, including cornering, reacting and shooting from sul, being surprised by a 2nd attacker who’s got an angle on you while you are focused on engaging a primary attacker, and even in a situation where you’ve struck an attacker to the point where they give you space to effectively draw your weapon.

But, for the most part, this is 2-handed, close to the body shooting rather than having your left hand/elbow out in front of you and your muzzle, fighting off an attacker. A couple more general items on retention shooting…

First off, there are a LOT of schools and instructors (I was one of them) who teach that you should have the bottom of your magazine pressed against the side of your ribs and the gun laying horizontally so that you won’t have a malfunction from the slide hitting you or getting caught up in your clothing.

This becomes a big problem if you end up in a fight for the gun.

When you’re holding the gun like this, your palm is facing up. If someone pushes on the muzzle of the gun and you push back, the wrist will fold in.

In addition, your elbow is going to be at about a 45 degree angle. If you push towards an attacker and the attacker pushes back, the triceps are weak at this orientation and it’s likely that your arm will fold in as well. The combination of your wrist folding and your elbow folding gives you a situation where your muzzle is pointed at your head or chest. It may not be in battery by that time and may not be able to fire, but it’s going to be very distracting (best case) and easier for your attacker to take.

I shoot year-round with the summer/winter clothes that I wear all the time and I haven’t found a situation where I need to rotate my gun to keep it from getting caught in my clothing.

That’s unusual.

Many bulky/loose winter clothes will cause guns to malfunction unless you rotate your gun when doing retention shooting. If that’s the case for you, see if you can get your gun to run reliably by rotating the gun 45 degrees rather than a full 90.

Second, just assume that if you’re shooting at contact distance, your pistol is going to malfunction.

Don’t try to fix it with a malfunction drill while someone is attacking you…use the darn gun as an impact weapon.

It’s harder than the tiny bones in your hands and will focus your strikes better. As a bonus, striking your opponent with your pistol MAY take care of the malfunction.

If you’re interested in training that teaches shooters to seamlessly transition between using a pistol as a firearm and using a pistol as an impact weapon, click >HERE<

I know that most of my readers have gone through training that teaches this technique and there’s a good chance that I upset some people. I’m not interested in dogma…only what works, so if you think the points I made aren’t valid, let me know. What are your thoughts and experiences with it? If you still love it, have you tested the technique with force on force training? Have you made modifications to your technique as a result of force on force training? Please share by commenting below.

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