How to Pick Up a Dropped Gun
Rob PincusDescription
If you drop your gun, there are some important dos and don’ts for picking it up, from both safety and tactical standpoints. Rob Pincus demonstrates the best way to pick up your dropped gun.
DROP MY GUN?
During handgun training courses, Rob encourages shooters to drop their gun if they get a piece of hot brass down their shirt or behind their eyepro. Students may also drop their gun on a fumbled draw or if the gun becomes entangled with clothing.
This can happen off the range to concealed carry holders too, whether due to a holster problem, poor gun handling under stress, or other reasons.
STANDARD SAFETY PROTOCOLS
1. Do not try to catch a gun in midair. If you’ve dropped it, let it fall to the ground. This is so you won’t grab the gun, hit the trigger, and accidentally fire the gun.
2. Make sure your drop safety, your inertial safeties, are all intact. Don’t bypass or disconnect them. This way, when the gun does hit the ground, it won’t go off.
PROPER PICK UP
If you practice picking your gun up off the ground, you’ll be better prepared to do it if it happens during an incident.
1. Body position: Kneel or squat to pick up the gun. Do not bend at the waist and reach down—this is an unbalanced position, and it means your head and eyes are on the ground, not up and observing your environment. It also leads to swinging the gun up with an extended arm. If you squat or even place one knee on the ground, you can keep your head up and see what’s happening around you.
2. Hand position: Do not pick up the gun with your hand shaped like a claw. You may hit the trigger and set the gun off while it’s on the ground. Instead, grab it with a flat hand and open fingers, next move the hand into the grip you want, then lift the gun with a bent elbow and bring it into your ready position. At the same time, you can stand up—or stay down, depending on the circumstances.
Rob also demonstrates what to do if the gun hits the ground in a position that is not convenient for you to pick up.
Let's talk about picking up a dropped gun. Now, this isn't just a defensive training technique, the idea of you drop a gun and you need to retrieve it, but even on a range, if you have dropped a gun a couple of things. First of all, one of the standard safety protocols is don't try to catch a gun falling through mid-air. And that's obviously because we don't want you to grab at it and hit that trigger and have the gun actually go off while you're trying to keep it from hitting the ground. Another important safety note is that we want to make sure that your drop safety or inertial safeties are all intact. Don't bypass them. Don't disconnect them on your guns, because it is actually part of our safety briefing in our classes, if you have hot brass go down your shirt, if something crazy is going on and you need to get the gun out of your hand, to get the brass out of your shirt or out from behind your glasses or whatever your problem may be, we actually want you to drop the gun. So, having a gun with inertial safeties or drop safeties that are intact and remembering not to try to catch a gun that you just fumble on a draw or gets tangled up. Those are really important. But eventually, you might get to the point where the gun's on the ground or you might want to train and practice the idea that if a dropped gun is there, whether it's somebody else's dropped gun or yours, you might need it quickly. So let's talk about that. First thing I want to talk about is squatting or kneeling down to the gun. I don't want to see people bend at the waist like this and then just swing the gun up with an extended arm. You know, first of all this can be really an off-balance position. If you're not super flexible and you try to pick it up and then you stumble, well that's going to affect your ability to get the gun into the fight, to defend yourself all that. It also takes your eyes and your brain completely off of what's going on up here. So, if I'm in a dynamic critical incident, I've got stuff going on. Even if there's no immediate threat, I want to make sure that I'm looking to see what's going on. I might also if I were to just do something completely, just, you know, brain numb, I drop a gun in a convenience store or something for whatever I'm looking for, some change in my pocket, somebody knocked my gun out, bad holster, whatever your situation is. If this were to occur to you, you'd want to be watching to see what's going on, right? If the armed security guard sees the gun and sees you reaching for it, you may have a problem escalate very quickly. If they think you're a threat, right? So keeping your eyes up as much as you can and squatting or actually putting a knee down if you need to and kneeling to get down closer to the gun but still be able to keep your eyes up. That's gonna be important. The other thing I want you to think about is not picking the gun up with your hand like a claw to where you might hit the trigger. Again, setting the gun off while it's down on the ground and not in a proper grip. If I need this gun, I need to make sure that it's going to be in a good grip so I can keep it in battery. And it's gonna be reliable. So I'm gonna grab the gun with a flat hand, open fingers then get into the grip that I want on the gun. And then pick the gun up with a bent elbow. This way I'm not swinging the gun up to my face, my eyes, my eyeline. If I need to drive it out I'm either gonna come back into the ready position. Maybe I'm going to stand up, or I'm going to come into the ready position, stay down on the ground. Or maybe I'm going to drive the gun out into a shooting position. But I wanna do that as an extension. I wanna do that driving out, right? Whether it's while I'm standing up or staying down, I want to do that driving out and not have it be a swinging up motion. The other thing you need to remember is that the gun may not fall in a way that's convenient for you to pick up. So if I were to have the gun, even like this, remember now that gun's facing me. A flat hand, orient the gun into a position where I can get my fingers underneath, get it into a good grip. I might want to stand the gun up push down on the slide to get my good grip. And again, all of this happening when the gun comes off the ground with a bent elbow into my ready position or driving out to shoot, either way. Picking up a dropped gun might be something you have to do in the real world. It's something you should practice. Something to think about how to do safely and again always be prepared for the fact that you might drop a gun. You don't want to reach for it, snag for it. And don't de-activate those drop safeties.
It's not just the brain dead at a convenience store that results in dropped guns. My holster fell apart as I was walking across a parking lot. The actual holster rotated and dumped my gun on the ground. Fortunately it was 6:30 a.m. with no one around so I knelt down, picked up the pistol (just as Rob shows) and returned to the car to change holsters. I was fortunate that I had a spare holster with me.
Great video. You are actually teaching more than how to pick up a gun. The take away i got was how to be better alert in a fight. Also, no matter how mundane the task is, stay aware of you surroundings and never be complacent.
Great instruction! My question is: As a ccw bearer, what should my response be if I see a civilian drop his ccw? Do I just wait and see if he poses a threat AFTER he retrieves his weapon or should I at least put my hand to my ccw? What's the prudent thing to do without without causing a threat myself?
Great points! I am going to add that to mu CCW Classes that I teach! One thing for YOU to consider Rob, enjoy those limber knees while they still work great. There many of us whose knees have gotten very rusty. If we do manage to get knelt, it is often very hard to get back up again. Please give that some thought, as will I. Thank!
Good points all (especially the note about checking your surroundings in a public place before attempting retrieval), but what if mobility issues limit your ability to safely take a knee and/or return to a standing position? I'd opine that you should 1. Ask for help if you're on a populated shooting range and/or 2. Clearing and holstering the weapon before attempting to stand 3. After weapon is cleared and made safe, check the muzzle for any obstructions before resuming the course of fire. In actual defensive shooting (life on the line), you've got to consider issues of cover/concealment, etc. before deciding exactly what to do. Thanks for covering this important topic - more discussion and consideration is a good thing, and visualization of "what would you do?" can't be overemphasized.
Excellent video. Back in the day, I was a deputy sheriff in Arizona and we trained on this exact act as we often had to recover weapons that had been used in a suicide or homicide. Thanks for a clear concise video.