Using a Dropped Gun to Stop an Attacker

If you know someone who isn't likely to go train with the firearm or is dead set against training with a firearm and yet you wanna be able to provide some information for how they might be able to defend themselves or others in the middle of an active shooter situation, this might be the most important information you can share with them. If we think about that active shooter environment, we think about, let's say a school. We have a school full of teachers, full of kids full of people who aren't armed. There may even be a school resource officer there though who is armed, or there may be a police officer who actually responds to the initial reports of shooting and shows up with a firearm. If that person is injured, that person is taken out of the fight by the threat and that firearm ends up on the ground even that person who has never fired a gun before who's refused to have firearms in their life who won't go to the range with you and practice and train, could still use that firearm to defend themselves or those children in that school area. This is something I want to talk about for a second. You know, we sometimes overthink the complications of a firearm using a firearm for defense. Thousands of people use firearms to put bullets into other people, both to protect themselves and as bad guys, all the time with no formal training. They may have seen guns used in a movie. They may be watching some kind of an online video clip. We don't know what their training is but we know that they're not coming to formal classes and they're probably not putting as much time, effort and energy as you are into their training and preparation to use a firearm. And yet they can still pick up a firearm extend it fully in and parallel with their line of sight at the target, relatively smoothly press the trigger and get hits on that man's eyes target. And that's exactly what we're going to ask that teacher, that nurse, that husband, wife, family member whoever it is in that public environment to be prepared to do, if that school resource officers lying on the ground and he was using his firearm to try to stop the threat the firearm is now lying there. The teacher is standing there, the threats distracted over on another place that teacher can walk over to any of those firearms, pick it up and have a high degree of likelihood of being able to use it to defend themselves or the children in that room. And that's what we're trying to share. You don't have to be an expert. You don't even have to necessarily understand the physics of the gun or the operation of the gun. If the gun was being used by the police officer by the security agent, by the person who pulled the gun out of their holster, their concealed carry holster. If the gun was being used and it's now on the ground, chances are it can be used by the person that picks it up. If you look at the way I've got these guns staged on the ground, they're not exactly the way you would normally see me. Stage firearms. We've got guns that are cocked with the safety off. We've got a double action single action gun that's in single action, cocked mode. We've got guns on the ground exactly as they would be if I was in the middle of a string of fire and I got shot and the gun got dropped, all the person has to do is understand some very basic things. You wanna hold the gun as high as can without interfering with the operation of the gun. Don't grip the gun down low, where it's obviously unnatural given the counter of the grip. Hold the gun as high as you can. Keep your finger off the trigger until you've decided you want to shoot until this gun is gonna go bang. Very simple. So the minute I pick the gun up, I keep my finger off the trigger. Even with this single action, 1911 style firearm. Now we know as firearms enthusiasts the shooters that very little pressure on that trigger is going to make the gun go off. The person that's watching this has never touched a gun, never fired again. Doesn't really need to know the difference between pressing that trigger and pressing this long relatively heavy double action revolver trigger. All we need to know is hold the gun up high, make sure that you don't touch the trigger until you're ready to shoot. If that bad guy comes into that school room, comes into an office space you've got the kids behind you. Stick the gun out in, in parallel with your line of sight. Look at the person's chest, touch the trigger, and as smoothly as you can press that trigger. Under the stress in that environment, probably not going to be very smooth, but it probably in a close quarters environment is a lot better than standing there looking at the gun on the ground and hoping the bad guy doesn't shoot you. Again regardless of the type of gun, merely picking it up getting a decent grip, sticking it out at full extension touching and pressing the trigger is probably going to get the job done, if the gun was being used and then was dropped by someone when they were taken out of the fight by the threat. That'll work for just about any type of firearm. Of course, this type of firearm a simple striker fired firearm with no extra levers or buttons. This kind of gun can come out of a holster and be used exactly the same way. So one of the cues that we give to people who aren't firearms people if you don't see any big levers, don't worry about them. If you don't have anything exposed on the gun the gun's relatively smooth, you see the trigger, cool. Get a good grip on the gun. Make sure that you don't touch the trigger until you're ready for it to go bang. And again, if that school resource officer that security agent is taken out of the fight before they can even draw the gun from their holster that's okay, hit the snap, release the mechanism whatever it is you have to do pull the gun out of the holster. Now you've got a tool to defend yourself. On the other hand, if you've got this gun which has a lot of levers exposed, we see levers on there. We see that there's a hammer sticking out of the back of the gun. If someone who's not a shooter sees this type of gun on the ground, they can reach down and pick it up, push the lever down. Nothing bad is going to happen here. If you think about some of the types of guns that you know, as a shooter any of the levers that you push on a double action single action gun, they're not going to put the gun in a bad condition unless they turn the safety on. Now this particular SIG of course we know doesn't have a safety. I can push that lever. Nothing bad happens. On the other hand, if I were to push a lever and maybe the lever would be up here or maybe the lever would be down here. If I were to push a lever and cover up a red dot. in other words if I see red, I know the gun gonna go bang. If I move the lever into a position where I cover up the red dot, that was bad. Put the lever back where it was. If the lever is pushed in a position so that it exposes the red dot or the red mark, now I know that I can use that firearm to defend myself Again you don't have to be a gun expert to figure that out. Let's say that maybe there isn't a red dot on this particular gun. I expose it. A blue circle. I expose the marking here. There's an X now next to a little symbol of a bullet. The X next to the symbol of the bullet to us might mean no bullets. The little blue dot, it's not a red dot. So it's an abnormal marking. It's not a standard marking. We're just gonna simply sweep this down. If the lever moves and we can sweep it down and it's down on the bottom of the gun that's usually going to be the way to go, to get it to fire. The other thing we can look for is an F or an S. The F or the S is other things that we can look for. If we're in a situation where we find a gun and it's locked open, this is probably gonna to be now an empty gun or a gun that's malfunctioned. And the fact is, the person who's in novice, the person who hasn't trained probably isn't going to be able to use this gun. They can still pick it up and pointed at somebody. They can still hit somebody with it. They can throw it at somebody. They can do a lot of different things. But they're probably not gonna get the gun back in operation. This is the reason why we would encourage someone even who isn't going to carry a gun to know how to use a gun. Just like we educate people about vehicles just like we educate people about drugs, we educate people about, you know safe and unsafe sexual practices. We educate people in our environment when there are things they need to know to protect themselves or others. We also should be investing in educating people about firearms. This is the last type of firearm that someone might find dropped by a security guard or tucked into a holster. It's a revolver. Very simple. If you see this round bulges thing here in the middle of the gun, no big deal touch the trigger, press the trigger. Gun's going to go bang. We don't have to worry about anything else. Very unlikely to find what we would call a single action revolver in that active shooter environment. So ultimately the most important thing to understand is that just because someone isn't a shooter just because someone won't go out and train with a firearm doesn't mean they won't be able to use a firearm to defend themselves. If you have people in your life that you care about you have people in your life that won't go out and train, you should still be encouraging them to be able to look down at a pile of firearms and know exactly how they could use them to defend themselves or others. Extend touch, press, make sure the gun's operating make sure their grip is decent, but most importantly make sure they're not hesitating, just staring at it on the floor and not even considering it an option simply because they've never shot before or they've never trained.