From my NHA instructor's blog...

“Martial art” is not the same as “self-defense.”

There seems to be a common belief among martial artists that martial arts training makes you “know self-defense.” And on the other side, many non-martial artists who specialize in other tools seem to think that you can learn effective self-defense without learning any bare-hand technique used in martial arts classes.

It is amazing how wrong both of these people are.

Awhile ago, the NHA held a Close Quarters Tactics – Firearms (CQT) course at the dojang, working on defensive tactics at close quarters with an emphasis on the use of a firearm as a self-defense tool.

Students worked under assumptions of lethal force situations, distances of 5 feet or less (in many cases, from the clinch), and often versus weapons at these close ranges. Partner drills included passive and active resistance techniques, and the class ended with force-on-force training with AirSoft weapons. (First time you get shot 3 times in the torso and twice in the face mask of your helmet wakes you right up, particularly since the torso shots hurt.)

As students progressed, they quickly learned that many CQT situations aren’t “gun-solvable”---quite the contrary. Under these close quarters, immediately going for a weapon consequently immediately gets you killed. Throughout, the concept was taught that self-defense for this case means giving yourself space to access a better self-defense tool safely—which for this meant causing your attacker to either give you space in distance, or space in time, so you could access your firearm and apply it without getting killed in the meantime. Mostly, this means that CQT tactics often start with a serious amount of bare-hand technique, because you must create that space to work in.

For most people, it takes easily over one second to access and engage a target with a firearm from concealment. If you are 3 feet from an attacker who is actively engaging you, one second is about 0.8 seconds too long. Trying it means that your attacker (or attackers) gets in their first several attacks relatively unopposed—and if this is a lethal force situation, that means you are dead.

At these close quarters, it is necessary for the defender to stop/stun/off-balance/turn/jam/move their opponent in some way. Either creating enough space through distance (so the attacker can’t reach you before you access your firearm) or creating enough space in time (you have stunned/turned your attacker, and are currently jamming their weapon hand so they are temporarily unable to attack you) gives you the ability to access a better tool for lethal-force levels of self-defense.

Trying to access it without that space—gets you killed.

So how does this all relate to the beginning of this post?

I was discussing my CQT class with a fellow shooter after a competition one day, and it was interesting. When I first mentioned to fellow shooters that I was going to teach a CQT class, a number of people volunteered to help teach it—and I wondered what experience made them qualified to help teach?

This fellow shooter was one of them, and when we discussed what had actually occurred in the class, he stopped then said, “Oh, well, I didn’t think it was going to be a martial arts class, I thought it was going to be a shooting class.”

I had no idea what to say.

The entire point of the course was defensive tactics at close quarters—and while we assumed that we would have access to a concealed firearm, that was merely one of the tools that we had available to use. The entire point was to learn how to stay alive in close quarters lethal force situations—and thus knowing when the gun wasn’t the right initial choice was important.

It wasn’t a “martial arts class,” nor was it a “shooting class” – because describing it in that fashion loses the point completely!

Self-defense means doing what is necessary to keep yourself safe. Having tools to better enable you to do this is handy—but you have to be careful that you don’t turn every situation into a “this is a hammer, so everything is a nail” reaction. Thinking that a self-defense class is a martial arts class OR a shooting class means that the student isn’t thinking about realistic self-defense tactics, they are thinking about drills for specific tools. There isn’t anything wrong with this, UNLESS thinking in this fashion makes you practice drills that are unrealistic. At close quarters, if you don’t stop the attacker and create space, you will get killed. In most cases you can’t do that by starting off with drawing the gun.

Our CQT class is about tactics to keep you alive in lethal force situations. You will learn plenty of drills to help you access your firearm quickly, and engage targets accurately. But that certainly isn’t what the class is about, and if you ignore the parts of training that keep you alive until you can access your firearm—then it doesn’t matter how much you drill the “shooting part”.

CQT Classes...

Been awhile. And I’m not even going to talk about my shooting, other than to say the DoubleTap Championship WOULD have been fun had it been 30 degrees warmer. In other news, my shooting is better, but my reloading is much, much worse. Went to a class with Manny Bragg, and learned lots, which hopefully will start to show in increased shooting ability over the next several months.

On to the real topic---I’m teaching a CQT class this Saturday, and what has been interesting is that when I posted on my Facebook that I was doing so, more than one person (in various ways) offered to come and help me teach it.

While I appreciate the offers, I wonder why they think they are qualified? (Of course, some people probably are wondering why I think I’m qualified.) The class I’m going to teach is armed civilian self-defense at close quarters. This isn’t room-clearing, battle tactics, or teamwork training---this is arms-length defense tactics and practice versus single/multiple/armed attackers. So I wonder what kinds of training these other people have had?

I was also interested to find out that a local firearms trainer has gone to a training class of his own, and now that he is back, is going to teach a force-on-force class for students. I’ve been to one of his classes, and while I like the guy (and he is certainly a good shooter), his grasp of hand-to-hand defensive tactics is very similar to most of what I’ve seen from shooters---which is minimal, and slanted based on whatever training class they attended last. So force-on-force from him should be interesting—will it be good scenario-based self-defense training, or will it be law-enforcement distance shooting tactics? Two very different things…one of which will cause people to break the first rule of self-defense.

Anyway---several months back I told my shooter students we were going to do the non-range portion of a CQT course, to include both practice drills, and later force-on-force scenarios. Several of them got interested, so I put together a short, 3-hour curriculum to work on. (We will do the range portion later. Quite frankly, since most CQT shootings are at 3 feet or less, while it is important to get range time, practicing dry-fire is actually more useful, particularly when done safely with a partner.)

So what important things should my students get out of this? That’s the real question, isn’t it? At close range, what circumstances will result in a lethal force response? Large disparity of force, weapons, or multiple attackers. (Or combinations thereof.) So---CQT for civilian self-defense needs to deal with how to keep yourself safe under those conditions. Oddly enough, going for the gun is almost always NOT what you should do first. Matter of fact, sometimes going for the gun means you lose control of the situation, and you get dead.

First rule of self-defense: Don’t get dead. Don't break the first rule of self-defense.

So this is always what interests me when I see other firearms instructors teaching “CQT” courses. Often (granted, I’ve only seen a small sample of instructors) the response is movement and draw/engage. The problem is, force-on-force training that mimics reality will show you right away that for many SD cases, this doesn’t work. (Many other CQT courses are designed after military CQB, and close-quarter battle tactics is a completely different animal. Interesting stuff, but really not the same.)

We will do some movement/draw/engage practice. After all, given 10 feet and some awareness, as long as the person isn’t already on the run at you with a weapon, you can (given practice) move back and offline, draw, and engage your attacker in sufficient safety to make it a viable choice.

But really, civilian CQT isn’t about 10 feet---it is about 3-5 feet, and that is a whole ‘nother situation. Starting to move back and putting your hands down to draw (or even keeping one up to guard your head) as an initial reaction to an attack is just a good way to make sure you are beaten before your gun gets out. Worse yet, if you get the gun halfway out and then get dropped, they’ll know you have a gun—and they’ll have access to it.

This is a SD class, not a “gun” class. We use tools, sure. But the weapon is the mind, and the mind should be telling you that you need to create space (both in distance and in time) so you can access and use your tools. If that space isn’t there, you have to make it—so CQT courses should show how to stop attackers, how to redirect attacks, and how to jam movement to give you that time and space. Without it---you break the first rule of self-defense.

Don’t get dead.