HAnDgun-retention tActics: Grabs From ccording to FBI statistics, firearms were used in 63 of the 72 felonious deaths of law enforcement officers in 2011. Four of these officers, or approximately 6 percent of those killed by gunfire, were killed with their own weapons. Although there are no detailed statistics on criminal attempts to grab officers’ guns, it is by no means an uncommon event. And while the increasing use of retention holsters has helped make officers safer, criminals are devious. Many of them are very familiar with the mechanisms of the most pop24 Gun A Behind ular retention holsters and have developed methods to defeat them. Retention holsters are most effective against front and side grabs because the ergonomics of the retention mechanism is made to conform to the user’s hand. Someone grabbing the gun from a different angle will have a very different grip, making it difficult if not impossible to release the mechanism. Logically, the closer a perpetrator can get to replicating an officer’s normal grip on the holstered gun, the easier it will be for him to operate the release mechanism and get control of the weapon. For this reason, the most MicHAel JAnicH dangerous and potentially successful gun grabs are those coming from behind the officer. This is also why a good system of weapon-retention tactics must include sound techniques for defending against gun grabs from behind. Structural Strength Weapon-retention tactics, by nature, involve close-quarter, gross-motor-skill struggles. The most effective weapongrab counters are those that are simple, logical and make the best use of your body’s structural strength instead of muscular strength. Structural strength uses the body’s skeletal system, weight, WWW.AMERICANCOPMAGAZINE.COM • JANUARY2013
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