Tog,that's possibly the worst advice you can give about unarmed defense against a gun.All this nonsense about tying up a gun by dropping the magazine or grabbing the cylinder is virtually impossible,that's for Hollyweird movies.Do you know what'll happen if the gun goes off while someone's grabbing it? (and trust me,if you're trying to grab my gun I'm gonna pull the trigger) At the least you'll lose skin from the muzzle blast & at worst some hand bones along with the skin.There's a phenomonen called "flame cutting that happen to revolvers,it's the result of the hot gasses actually cutting into the metal.You wanna grab that?
Yeah,I know,Jet Li takes the slide off Gibson's gun in Lethal Weapon,but in real life the slide on a Beretta 92 cannot be removed while the magazine is in the gun.
Yes,it's still a good idea to fight if there's no other alternative,you might succeed.

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

A man walks into a neighborhood bar and in a loud voice asks if the owner of the dog tied up out front is there. A large man at the bar stands up and says, "Yeah, that's my dog. What of it?"

"Well," says the first man rather sheepishly, "I should tell you that my dog just killed your dog."

"What! How is that possible!? My dog is a Rottweiler, a trained attack dog, perhaps the most lethal dog on the face of the earth! What kind of dog do you have?"

"A Chihuahua."

"You're telling me that your Chihuahua just killed my Rottweiler? How?"

"Your dog choked to death trying to swallow him."

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Well, first he approaches his opponent in a threatening manner, stands toe-to-toe with him, looks him square in the eye while muttering a sarcastic comment...

Then he gets the heck out of the way and lets the stunt double finish him off.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

FUNNY ...

My Parents Have a Lab Mix, That is Exactly What I Describe in My Post ...

She Only Weighs 50 Pounds, But she's Very Loud!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

Smith ans Wesson auto's won't fire if the magazine is not in place, even with a live round in the chamber. This was billed as a safety feature of the pistol for law enforcement. If a bad guy wrestled for the gun the officer was supposed to drop the magazine to prevent it from firing. For other types it cuts the numbr of chanced from a possible 18 rounds to 1. If that oen round can be fired in a safe direction, all the better. Even the mag can't be dropped, pressure of the hand on the slide may cause it to not cycle enough to pick up the next round which means it will have to be cleared. Yeah, that will be bad for your hand, but it still beats letting a free shot in. As for a revolver, it doesn't take a whole lot of pressure from a palm against the cylinder to prevent the cylinder from turning when the trigger is pulled. If the cylinder can't turn, the gun can't fire unless it was already cocked. See the Jack Ruby shooting of LHO for an example of this.

Yes, I agree that unarmed vs. a gun has an incredibly low chance of success, but if the guy is close enough to grab, I still feel that will be more effective than trying to Van Damme kick it out of his hand, especially for a person that has never studied any form of martial arts. I also implied that this would be a last resort type of thing. If you are sure your going to be killed anyway, may as well die with their neck in your hand. I'd rather loose some skin off of my hand than take two in the chest regardless.

The skill of the shooter would come into play here as well. Someone that knows what they're doing will not give the unarmed person a chance to get anywhere near them. In that case, the gun is too far away and if they want to shoot you, you're pretty much shot.

One of the gun magazines did an article explaining how to use a gun to defend yourself from a martial artist (no that's not backwards). We passed it around the studio and every single thing in that article assumed that the MA user would kick the gun out of the person's hand. As a 15 year vet of MA and a 30+ year shooter, I can only hope that if I ever find myslef in a situation where I have to face a gun, the other guy read that article and practiced everything they told him.

So in the end I stand by what I said, but I guess I should have been more clear. Going unarmed against a gun is a last resort sort of thing. Without a good deal of practice, trying to knock the gun away will most likely fail due to the timing issues involved. Grabbing the gun or the gun arm will give a person a small chance of getting lucky and getting hit with something less deadly than the bullet. Especially if the person has no unarmed training. When it comes to chances, I'll take hoplessly slim over none.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

And that's why I'll stick with my 1911s,I don't like magazine disconnects.


And as you jerk your hand back,an experienced shooter'll have that jam cleared in a second or 2.

Lets hope it's not already cocked.

Not tryin' to give you a hard time,I'm on your side,but I've had some pretty inane conversations with people who thought they could go up against an armed man,mostly based on what they see in the movies."I'll just kick it out of his hand",no,you won't,you'll get shot.

Running away is a viable defense against a gun,your average crook can't shoot worth beans & a moving target is much harder to hit.

I agree with your earlier comment about learning self-defense in some place that smells,rather than a fancy place with awards.I personally know of 2 incidents where a guy said "I know karate!",went into a stance,then proceeded to have the snot beat out of him by the experienced street fighter he decided to take on.

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

From what I've seen, Steven Seagal breathes out his lines rather than even muttering them.

"do you want it in cash, or in plastic"

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

And that's why I'll stick with my 1911s,I don't like magazine disconnects.

I don't care for them either.

And as you jerk your hand back,an experienced shooter'll have that jam cleared in a second or 2.

But then, an experienced shooter will probably not let you get close enough for it to be a concern.

Lets hope it's not already cocked.

That is a valid point, but I can only see two common reasons why they would. An experienced shooter might do it to make a more accurate shot on a target further out. Any shooter might do it for intimidation. Something about that noise just gets your attention.

Not tryin' to give you a hard time,I'm on your side,but I've had some pretty inane conversations with people who thought they could go up against an armed man,mostly based on what they see in the movies."I'll just kick it out of his hand",no,you won't,you'll get shot.

I have too, but from both sides. I've talked to people who thought that merely owning a gun made them invincible. They never bothered to practice with it or anything, they just assume that having it is enough. I've also talked to people that thought they were fast enough to take the gun away.

Running away is a viable defense against a gun,your average crook can't shoot worth beans & a moving target is much harder to hit.

Agreed, to a point. If there is a bit of distance between you already and you can run some way other than straight away, it might work. Starting from arms length, they don't have to be that good. One night at the range we tried a set "gangster style"; tiping the gun on it's side. At 5 yards, nearly every shooter (about 30) missed the target a foot or more to the left, for right handed shooters.

I agree with your earlier comment about learning self-defense in some place that smells,rather than a fancy place with awards.I personally know of 2 incidents where a guy said "I know karate!",went into a stance,then proceeded to have the snot beat out of him by the experienced street fighter he decided to take on.

I watched a private lesson at one school where the student asked where a particular kick should be aimed. The "instructor" said to the head. She said she made all of her kicks the head beacasue the judges like high kicks. I really hate tournament schools.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

The good martial arts instructor I had took a trip to Napa Valley to see a vineyard. He was told that if he'd gotten there just an hour sooner he could have met Johnny Carson and Steven Segal. He said, "Oh that sucks. I would have like to have met Carson." Segal was not well thought of at any studio I attended.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

I can't really judge his martial arts as I know too little about MA or his skills (though I do see his movies are totally unrealistic, one against 20 and not being beaten to fruit juice within 10 seconds). I do see however that his acting isn't parcticularly marvelous and his voice is just ridiculously whispering. Sometimes he says a whole line without making a sound. Good thing weve got subtitles .

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I feel the same way about Van Damme. Oh he's loud, he just needs subtitles. I think Segal is just using his "scary voice".

In an early interview, he said that he was up for the lead in My Left Foot and hinted that it was a political motive rather than an acting ability one that lost him the role. Pfft. There aren't really any martial arts actors that can actually act. Well Jackie Chan sort of. Brandon Lee may have been good, but we'll never know. Segal also made a number of claims about his past that were debunked in a few magazines. If you can stomach The Glimmer Man for anout 30 minutes, there is one of the most obvious "stunt kicker" scenes ever. It was so bad that it might have been out of a Benny Hill episode. The one where he was in a coma for several years has a great example of why he used a stunt kicker in the other film. His Aikido is decent and he could probably use it, but nowhere near as well as he does on screen. Heck, if Hawking had those stunt men he would look unbeatable too.

Aikido does deal a lot with mass attack, and it's possible to hold off quite a few unarmed people with it, until you get tired. Basically, any more than three just get in each other's way. My instructor went against 5 of us one day and all 5 of us ended up pressed into a corner gettig mauled. The other cool thing about aikido, real aikido, is there are no attacks. It's wrong to hit. And you can't really understand it until you are too old to use force. It's all about timing and momentum.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Somebody once explained Aikido to me as "that what makes your attacker end up in bad shape against a wall or down the stairs and you trying to convince the police of the fact that you barely touched him"

I know very little of self defence (3 karate lessons, 2 judo...) and nothing about Aikido, but from one experience I do know that there are some very nifty transformations of energy that give the attacker quite a disadvantage. Once when I was really young (10 or less) I heard a conversation of 2 guys behind me. The larger one of them (he was a bit large for his age) had taken some self defence lessons and was bragging about it with his mate. I had my back to them, and was standing a few meters further. I heard him saying he was going to demonstrate by taking me down. I did not turn around and continued looking at the football as I had been doing all the time (what a demonstration btw, taking down somebody who doesn't even see you ).

I heard and felt him running towards me (on the grass you can feel the bounces of even light threaded runs), and somewhere between the moment he jumped up and put his hand on my upper back, I bent 2/3rd forward. I felt his hand on my back, which much aginst his intentions only served to keep separation between his body and mine during his ballistic path over me. He smacked onto the grass ahead of me, and I was still standing. Sheer luck in timing and effect from my side, but somebody who knows a range of this tricks through practice has a very strong non-weapon against an attacker. Of course there's still the part of explaining he basically threw himself down the stairs and you didn't push him.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Wiring a house:::

Simple house voltage wired to the window bars and to the door locks with a switch that energizes these only when the owner wants it energized(good idea to put a rubber sleeve and a warning light inside the doorways though)

Energize the windows at all times(anyone coming in that way is up to no good) but remember to deactivate them when the wife tells you to clean the outside of the windows.
Energize the door handles at 10 pm, anyone coming to the door is gloing to knock first anyway and if they don't they are up to no good.

You might have to set a metal plate or grid in front of the doors and ground them and you can put in a current limiter to say 750 milliamps. that will have people dancing and shouting but they will probably still be able to let go of the energized item and live.

edited to add: I did not see the multiple pages in this thread. If anyone already suggested exactly this,,, my bad- D'oh

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"Man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than learn the multiplication table." - Somerset Maugham

Dunno about up there in the Great White North,but booby-traps are highly illegal in the US.

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

I managed to get one belt above white in Judo(yellow belt). I remember the first time I actually threw an opponent and it all clicked just right. It was effortless and the guy who was a little taller and a little heavier went sailing over my head onto the mat. Later on the Sensai had us all practice on him.(Shoulder throw classic throw, I forget the Japanese name for it) He was 6 foot tall and 300 pounds if he was an ounce. Granted he assisted us all in throwing him but you knew right away if you were doing it wrong when suddenly you were trying to support a 300 pound man on your back!

Other less involved self defense moves are available though of course, punch to the throat, grabbing just the front of the throat and squeezing (as opposed to trying to put your fingers around a throat this is more akin to trying to pull a windpipe out), eye pokes, knee breakers(ram(kick) the inside of a knee pushing it 90 degrees to the normal direction of a knee's bend), ankle breaker(step on the outside of the foot and shove the attacker in the same direction, the foot stays level while the leg and body tip over in the 90 opposite direction of normal ankle bend) and the old standby for male attackers(need I say more?)

However all of these may serve to hurt the attacker just enough to make him literraly mad(as opposed to simply angry). If one is going to use a move on an attacker it is only to buy time in order to get away. If you stick around you are committed to completely incapacitating the attacker or even killing him. Only in martial arts films does the good guy extend a an arm and motion the attacker to come and get some more.

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"Man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than learn the multiplication table." - Somerset Maugham

Yes, they are illegal here too. Better take out the current limiter so that you can drag the corpse away and dispose of it near a hydro pole somewhere.

All tongue in cheek , I assure you.

In fact keeping a loaded gun in the house is illegal in Canada. The firearm and ammo must be locked in separate compartments. Need to confront a burglar in your house, keep a 7-iron handy.

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"Man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than learn the multiplication table." - Somerset Maugham