Self-defense: things happen so fast!

Something few instructors emphasize sufficiently when teaching defensive skills in firearms, unarmed combat, situational awareness, etc. is to demonstrate just how fast things can go pear-shaped in a defensive confrontation. The reason many defensive encounters end badly for the victim is that they don't (or can't) react fast enough to stop the attacker getting to them and injuring them - perhaps worse.

A police sergeant, Dennis Tueller, wrote about this as far back as 1983. In the March edition of SWAT Magazine that year, he published an article titled 'How Close is Too Close?' This led to the development of what's come to be called the 'Tueller Drill', where an attacker armed with a training knife runs at a student while they attempt to draw a training gun from their holster to 'engage' the onrushing assailant. It's usually reckoned that a typical person of average fitness can cover 21 feet - 7 yards - from a standing start, armed with a knife or club, in under 2 seconds. That means you have to be able to draw your weapon, aim and fire it, and stop your attacker, in less than that time if you're to successfully defend yourself against them.

Here's a video clip of two students practicing the Tueller Drill.

That gives you some idea of how fast you have to react at close range. A video interview with Dennis Tueller, discussing the Tueller Drill among other matters, may be found here.

What brought this to mind was a link on Irons In The Fire to a video embedded at The Gun Free Zone. It shows a crazed attacker armed with a bayonet who attacks several policemen in Nicaragua. The attacker was eventually shot, and died in hospital, but not before he'd killed at least one policeman and injured at least two more (some accounts speak of two dead and two injured). The video is bloody and gruesome, and is NOT safe for work. Don't watch it if you're at all squeamish. It shows in graphic detail how even policemen, who are accustomed to criminal violence, sometimes fail to react in time to save themselves. Click over to the Gun Free Zone to see it for yourselves, but be warned - you're going to watch men die, bloodily. It's not for the faint of heart.

Let this article, and the video over at the Gun Free Zone, be a reminder to you . . . you probably won't have the luxury of enough time to defend yourself at your leisure. If you're only training on a traditional range, without incorporating reactive training such as the Tueller Drill, and practicing drawing your weapon from beneath concealment clothing in response to a short-range, high-speed attack, and moving away from the attacker (both backwards and to one side or the other) at the same time as you fire at him, then your training is inadequate. Remedy the situation now, while you can, before real life teaches you that lesson the hard way.

Peter