I feel bad for John when the “instructors” in the audience feel inclined to try to take over the class. He handles it well. Great information as always, John!
@@ASPextra I'm a fairly new concealed carrier and can't thank you enough for the work done here. I assure you I have supported your sponsors - Mantis, POM, MagTech - probably more than I should have. :)
This whole series has been great and hopefully eye-opening. I see a lot of fellow training junkies get tangled up in the "nice to know/have" instead of the "need to know/have"
John, 2 thoughts: I love the info. It's insightful and articulate and makes me challenge some of my own "programing". 2. People are dumb and make my head hurt. You are a better man than I.
I am absolutely amazed that all of this is free information. Some people have payed thousands of dollars to get this kind of a class, and instructor. Yet it's free here on RU-vid. I am grateful and hopefully it's all information I'll never have to use.
Great Information! I thought the internet was going to be butt hurt over those urban legends. Heck, there was a lot of Preparation-H needed in that classroom alone.
As a new gun owner with a CCW this series has been invaluable! It is easy to get sucked into thinking you need this, that and another thing or two. As I see it you need a gun, a good holster, a great instructor with YOU (and YOUR mission in mind) and a lot of practice . One side issue I see is that I'm worried that too many instructors want to teach a lot of extraneous stuff. I can't tell you how many videos I see with ninja like techniques being taught. I wish I could find an "advanced" class (beyond CCW) where I know the instructor is capable of pushing me along to improve basics and then a bit beyond. Rome wasn't built in a day.
I am so glad your closing three points were there. yes the majority of the class should be spent on the 80%, that makes a difference but it also has to be fun and everybody likes running and gunning and looking like a badass.. thanks for putting such great content
As a firearm instructor, I teach "real world" scenerios, and what they need to know. Of course we do some running and gunning because it's fun and people want to do that. But a line I have to use all the time is "we are not fighting John Wick. We are not fighting Ninjas. More than likely it's Ray Ray at the gas station looking to get easy money to get his fix for meth." So many "what-aboutisms" I have to constantly fight against. Good stuff John, I hope to beable to be an ASP certified instructor someday. I really appericate your stuff, and I use a lot of what you teach in my classes.
It’s fascinating to watch people cling to outdated or fantasy information. Some view it as an attack on what they believe rather than an opportunity to focus their trainings on the things that matter.
I train in a lot of things, not because I think it’s probable, but because I want to assume my opponent is as skilled as I am.. There are a lot of things you cannot control, but your training and your gear is something you can. Especially study medical gear.
On the RARE occasion I carry a second gun, I carry it in the cross draw at the 11 o’clock position on my left front thigh/belt. Then my main gun is either a standard right side hip holster or an appendix carry.
But bro I totally have seen like a million times a dude have their red dot break on them, followed by their strong hand getting shot, so they transitioned to their support hand and used their backup iron sights, went empty and had to reload support hand only, and they won their gun fights! Obviously those other skills are the most important! 🤣
40k gun fights is a lot of fights to watch so even if you can’t have concrete evidence you’ve seen enough repeatability to be pretty sure. But if you wanna train for the outlier events then you do you.
Not once did I hear you say don’t do this, you said you have never seen it and you don’t, not they shouldn’t. You gave statistics on why you don’t and information to help people make an educated decision but ultimately it’s up to them. I know it’s not your firearm of choice but it is mine and that’s ok, I carry a 1911 most of the time, a CCO in 45 acp. I also carry a spare mag due to capacity in the gun knowing full well I’ll probably never have to use it and have to admit it makes me feel better. 2 things though, 1. I shoot my carry gun the best of the guns I own, 2. It’s a quality gun (Nighthawk) with quality mags, so I have confidence in my abilities with the gun and confidence in the gun to go bang when I need it! Having said all that you have made me consider my carry choice and whether it’s best and I appreciate you for that. Rick
@@bwofficial1776 I do have a Wilson Combat Experior double stack in 9mm 18+1 with a Holosun that once I get more rounds through it I’m going to start carrying as well. Has that great 1911 trigger and no grip safety which I really like.
OMG!! That one guy is extremely annoying!! my experience is there’s ALWAYS one in every crowd. The “sighs” in the crowd scream “STFU, dude! Let John teach!”
John, where can I find the video where you talk about the draw time needed based on an assailants orientation to you? I believe you say 1.5 for the exposed ear and 2 for back of the head. Do you reference this in the lessons learned from 30k gunfight seminar video?
@@ASPextra yeah I was pretty confident those were the numbers. I was just curious if there was a place I could directly cite the source. I’m gonna use your reply here as that though.
Interesting how the guy at 4:05 had that question and struggles with that concept, even 20 or 30 min after you explained it fully. I’m wondering why he’s struggling with this concept. What perspective is keeping him from, that’s giving him trouble there?
What's missing here is a discussion of base rates. If you've never seen a broken-down Lamborghini on the side of the road, you shouldn't conclude that Lamborghinis are exceptionally reliable cars. Rather, the main reason you haven't seen a broken-down Lamborghini is that they comprise a very small percentage of cars on the road in the first place. The base rate is low. Similarly, if you've never seen someone reload in a gun fight, deploy a BUG, etc., you first have to consider what percentage of people are actually carrying a spare magazine or BUG. It also applies to skills, like knowing how to manipulate a pistol with one hand. If the base rate for any of those is low, then you would have to expect the real-world incidence of use cases to also be low, ***even if the tool/skill is useful.*** This doesn't mean that John's basic conclusions are wrong, but it's an important omission in how we ought to think about these things.
John's logic is still sound. What his evidence points to is that almost every single scenario he has seen, there was no need for a BUG, or off hand use, reload, etc. This in of itseld points to the idea all these things are not really necessary. After 40k videos, and only 1 time a reload was done by a CCW, or off hand was done once by a Cop, his evidence still points to those things not really being necessary.
@@romantressler4480 I'm not necessarily challenging his conclusions. I'm pointing out a definite problem in the logic of his argument. No matter how valuable X is, if only a small number of people have/know X, the actual incidence of people using X will be small. (And the observed/recorded fraction of that incidence will be even smaller.) To effectively argue that X isn't useful/important because X doesn't get used, you first need to establish what percentage of people actually have X. If it's low (i.e., low base rate), you wouldn't expect to see many uses of X, no matter how useful/valuable it is. What percentage of the civilians in the videos John has reviewed were actually carrying an accessible reload? If it was 50%, you'd have a good sample size and would expect to see some reloads, if reloads were actually important. If it was 5%, you might never see a reload (no matter how important the ability to reload is) because it wasn't even a possibility in 95% of the cases.
But again, the number of people whose gun ran dry who then lost the gunfight because of an empty gun would NOT fall under the low base rate, because it is a subset of all of the gunfights that everyone that HAS a gun is part of. So it's valid and is not a low base rate problem.
@@ASPextra You're assuming that having a reload only comes into the play if you actually run the gun dry. I don't think that's necessarily true. You can imagine all sorts of reasons why someone might behave/respond to threats differently depending on how much ammo they have available. E.g., limited ammo might cause someone to be too conservative/hesitant in his/her response. This is quite possibly one of the reasons why we see high round counts and frequent reloads in officer-involved shootings -- they always have extra mags available, and we often see them burn through their first mag ineffectually. Would we see that with as much frequency if officers didn't carry spare mags? I doubt it -- they'd probably be more conservative with their one-and-only mag (and that's a double-edged sword: sometimes good, sometimes disastrous). Of course that's speculative, but it does offer a plausible example of how availability of reloads can change response behavior, before and independent of actually depleting the first mag.
For the record, I rarely carry a reload or a BUG myself, and I'm not taking a position on whether people ought to. But how these questions are approached is important to me. Another good example would be carried fixed blades used in a defensive capacity. We probably have close to zero recorded instances of them being used by civilians in self defense. Does that mean they're useless for that purpose? Maybe, but if they're not even present in well over 99% of cases, you can't actually make that inference. If 70% of folks were carrying them and they were never being used effectively in self-defense, then yeah, you could reasonably infer that they're useless (setting aside the point I made earlier about behavior changes, of course). Tl/Dr I just want people to approach this stuff logically and thoughtfully.
I started to shoot back in 2001 because I was doing krav maga in Texas and we were doing gun disarms and I just wanted to know more about handguns. I started shooting and got really into that. I only write this because I used to think, hey if I could get my hand on the bad guy's gun how could I screw his gun up so he can't shoot me.
I think this is good, but there are limitations to this data. For example, John is a big proponent of keeping a first aid kit on your person, and I think that is good, but for example, how many times has John seen CCW holders use their on-person medical kit after a gunfight? But we would not say that's a reason not to carry one - in fact, probably the biggest reason we have not seen this more often is because very few people carry one. Many of these situations considered here are probably also due to how few people carry a BUG or an extra mag.
You’re off here. I see situations that need a medical kit multiple times a month. I have never, not once, seen a situation that a BUG would have done anything. I’ve seen maybe 6 or 8 ever where a reload could possibly have remotely affected the fight but only if the defender was world class at reloading. So you’re making false equivocations.
@@ASPextra Thank you for the reply. You are probably right - although I still think that it is difficult to anticipate what someone might have done with different equipment. How many cases where a gun was dropped (and not picked up) would have gone differently if the defender had a BUG? How many instances were affected by malfunctions which were not cleared in time which could have been improved by the use of a BUG? I don't carry a BUG but it is mainly on the basis of a cost/benefit calculation. Your evidence is part of this calculation but I think it is hard to summarize it as neatly as you are doing here without more details of each situation.
I've always thought the same thing(in regards to carrying a fighting/ defensive knife, or even a BUG.) I see so many instructors(and other people) carrying a defensive knive(actually, its more often a multi-purpose/every day use knife, _and_ a defensive knife, usually appendix or around the neck. I actually used to carry a freaking wicked 2 sided karambits with those wide serrations in an appendix holster so that the handle was(more or less) parralel to the ground. After a few months of carrying it(along with a seperate, more general use knife, a g19, and a spare mag in a mag holster in my left pocket), I was just like, "what the fuck am I doing? I'm not fucking Rambo." Not to mention getting pulled over by the cops, and having to explain all this shit. Lol. So I went back to 1 knife, the g19, and the spare mag(which I started carrying when my state passed its high cap mag ban.) However, two years ago I decided to make a change, and switched over to a p365xl, and no spare mag. I do still carry a sure fire stilleto and folding knife, but thats because I use those all the time. I couldn't be happier with the change. About t
@@ASPextra I agree--but there's always an exception. See Jeff Cooper's "Principles of Personal Defense" and the war story about a man who blasted at a hit team with his Browning P-35 pistol--26 shots so fast that the other guys left without firing a shot--but no indication that any bullet hit its mark.
Watch the fight scene between Sean Penn's character and the gangster in the kitchen and enough said about carrying ankle holsters. Also in personal, running after a burglary suspect and see and hear a 5 shot S&W sliding past me in the sidewalk. My partner's ankle holster failed. Just remember the gunfight is coming when you least expect it and try to keep things as simple as possible.
Great video! Thank you. So funny the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair when the sacred cows of training start getting slaughtered. Ya got to have a back up gun, a reload, ya got to be a expert marks man with your off hand, " I have never seen it" But, But , But, whaaa my cow.
Again, LOVE your lecture series. I have personally used a knife defensively to get to a gun, sort of. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there were no reciprocity laws. I was traveling between Columbus AFB in Mississippi and my mom's house in the Florida Panhandle. We needed gas so I stopped at a gas station in Montgomery AL at 0200. (Three rules of stupid btw.) I had my gun in the car, but it wasn't legal to have it on my person. It was legal to have my knife. While inside getting road snacks I saw two guys casing us. It was so obvious that it would have been comical had it not gotten as serious as it did. I told my wife about it and told her my plan. That was to have her on my right side with me between her and the two miscreants. IF they moved on us, the plan was for her to run to the car and get the gun. (She was a capable shooter.) My job was to delay or engage them. I had staged my knife in my right hand where they couldn't see it and she carried the stuff leaving my left hand clear. As soon as we walked out, the two dudes pushed off the wall and made a beeline for us asking if we could break a twenty. It was a ridiculous faux script considering they could walk into the store and get change. I replied that we had no cash and they should go into the store. Lead dude then says wait, I want to show you something. I said stop, that is close enough. My left hand made the up and stop motion, the right still concealed the knife. At that point my wife started to run to the now unlocked car. The dudes speed up. Lead guy has his right hand in his hoodie pocket and his face is showing all sorts preattack contortions and expressions. Lead guy commands me to come to him as the two, I assume carjackers, now start to split to flank me. Because I only had a knife on my person, I had to wait until they were bad breath distance to turn on them and specifically the lead guy. I briefly showed the knife as I moved into attack positioning myself and said BACK OFF MAN! I speak in a deliberate calm monotone when under stress and did that here. My plan was to jam his draw, slice his windpipe and carotid and then go for the second guy. My wife was in the car going for the gun at this point. As it turns out, the lead guy's eyes got as big as dinner plates and he vectored off at a 45 degree angle. His wingman took off in the opposite direction in a flat out run. Lead guy talked a lot of self soothing smack as he walked off but HE WALKED OFF. I understand that this is not exactly what you are talking about here but it is in the neighborhood. There were a metric crap ton of lessons to be learned that night. One that I take very seriously now that it is legal for me is to have my gun on me whenever I am awake and it isn't illegal and won't get me fired. I still carry a knife or two but the real value is in cutting up an apple or slicing a pie or as a mini crowbar.
I am so glad that you made it out safe! Also, you didn't have a gun on you, so it's not a defensive knife use by someone who had a gun. Because I betcha if you actually had that gun on you, you would have gone for the gun and not the knife. :)
What do you think about the emphasis on keeping a shotgun topped off? I believe that NYPD had long had a record of one shot per incident, of course LE engagements are a different dynamic. Any thoughts on this in defensive use?
The number of rounds of 00 buck required to make a person lay down and briefly regret their life decisions is 1. So with a modern shotgun with 7+1 in it, the chances of having a gang of ninja attack you requiring more than that is minuscule. That said, the manual of arms of a semi-auto or pump shotgun is unique and different than a pistol or rifle, so working on properly loading the gun isn't wrong per se. And knowing how to do a slug select might be a thing. Also, the use of a defensive shotgun is quite straightforward, so there's not TOO much to learn. And in a class you're going to be loading it a lot, so may as well learn it right. :)
A guy I know here saw a gang-banger gunfight and he claims he saw a bad guy reload a magazine and keep firing. I was not there. But that is what he told me. He was about 30 feet from this all, doing security at a club.
From where do the fudds get the arrogance? "WELL WHAT IF..." "We have literally never seen that happen even once, in over 40,000 different observed encounters." "BUT I..." Guys literally show up to hear a lecture from probably the leading expert in the world on the matter, and proceed to take minutes of the lecturer's valuable time to bloviate about why they disagree, based purely on imagined scenarios.
Thank you SO much for this I need to support this and I want to pay to come to this seminar, when/how can I pay to attend this seminar in it’s entirety??
One potential downside of carrying a defensive knife and a gun is it encourages the view that a knife is somehow less of a deadly weapon, and thus has a lower bar for justification. Not so. Given that there's no legal advantage to using a knife, why would you chose a less effective weapon?
It's hilarious hearing people trying to justify some of this stuff so hard. Do whatever the hell you want, lol. It's great to know how to switch hands, how to emergency reload, how to clear malfunctions, how to manipulate a gun one handed. Get trainer to teach you the proper techniques. But you don't need to waste time training reps on it more than 1% of your training time.
Radically rare does not mean that it should not be trained... To give an honest and realistic example, It's ACTUALLY statistically rare that you'll be robbed or assaulted at gun or knife point, but you train people for those "in case it happens" moments right?
I do not care for knives and would rather go against a gun than a knife any day. Where a bullet makes an instantaneous ~9mm tube through space (with limited tubes to make), any volume a knife can occupy is a danger zone or potential danger zone. I think proficiency and skill with and against blades are still highly important, but for my own purposes I shant be carrying a knife. Edit: I do carry a folding knife as a tool, but using it as such I've had plenty close on me and knick me good. Unless its a defensive designed, Folders are definitely not suited for self-defense.
One ENORMOUS failure among the gun community that must be addressed is the degree to which citizens illegally and irresponsibly draw, brandish, menace, and wield their weapons. Training needs to turn a laser focus to the disconnect between what their students leave their classes willing and believing they are entitled to do with their weapons versus what is reasonable, appropriate, and responsible. You always talk about law enforcement (in mostly negative terms and examples though I'm sure you might not realize it) it's almost always about how much they miss, how they fumble reloads, how their mission is different and yada yada yada, well with respects to the civilian population, let's start discussing how many times people point guns at each other because of being cut off in traffic, or being disrespected, or just plain out of fear in situations that don't rise to the level of needing to employ deadly force. You're right, the missions are different and maybe that's why officers (in general) display much more respect with their firearms... maybe CCW classes need to better train their students in that regard, currently it's a COMPLETE FAILURE, and it happens far more frequently than does a cop missing or dropping a reload for example.
9:20 In the fateful 1986 Miami-Dade incident, one of the cops resorted to a backup revolver carried on his ankle, and another won the fight with a shotgun operating it single handed. It was not caught on a video, but was thoroughly studied and re-enacted.
Enthusiasts are constantly conflating what's necessary for the vast majority of people and encounters, with what they personally want to do above and beyond to handle rare outlier situations. And don't you dare point it out or they'll get extremely offended and defensive. Then they pass off their garbled mess to new people, and the new people give up carrying entirely because it's just too much to carry.
These people's comments are hilarious because their feelings were hurt by what John said. They only say these things because that's what they were told and have never given it any thought of their own. They just repeat what other people have told them.
How are people not getting the idea for train for the most commons stuff first. Dont fall into Zebra syndrome. If you hear hooves, think horse not zebra. Sure one in 1:1,000,000 someone might need to do a back flip down some stairs while reloading their back up gun off hand and make a shot through a window slit. But probably not haha
The reasoning for A is not correct. You carry the knife in the event D happens, or you are in a place where you can't have your gun on you. The dagger I keep is just under 2", so it's legal to keep on your person anywhere aside from a court house or an airport. I work a job that requires me to walk alone at night and I've seen plenty of security guards get jumped from behind. Agreed it's super rare, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
40k gunfights over ten years is a lot and the observations shouldn't be ignored or applied haphazardly. However there are between 55k and 4 million defensive gun uses just in the US each year with most not caught on video. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use Considering the numbers not observed means realistic possibility that some issues happen and may happen with more frequency than believed or observed. I agree with ASP and focus on probable before possible.
