April 2008

SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE

"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"

"Dedicated to the need for soldiers, citizens and law enforcement to realistically consider

the physical, biological, physiological and psychological realities of human

performance when formulating doctrine and training for combat. "

30 April 2008: End of April

I had to leave this Flight or Fight Blog entry up at the top of this page for some extra time to handle some enquiries and buzz. This 15 to 20 year-old idea to include Flight in the SNS category is apparently revolutionary, startling and new to the majority of people in the military, police and martial writing and training business. It will have to go over to the articles page of the webpage. There is also some brand new research done with MRIs and blood flow to various brain centers that conjects that women do not have a fight, flight or freeze response! That's a another curveball to the stodgy SNS crowd!

I will be busting out with the new May CQC Dispatches within the next 72 hours as well as the May blog page. Stand by....

Adios, amigos - Hock

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23 April 2008: Fight or Flight - Is That All There is? Freeze that Question!

Fight or flight. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. Heard that tune before? Chances are you have. Chances are every instructor you’ve ever had has regurgitated that mantra before you. It is quick and catchy, almost like a song really and so easy to remember. A snappy alliteration. You probably have locked the three word, two-prong, catch-phrase deep into your “these truths we hold to be self-evident,” inner sanctorum. The special place things go that never get questioned. The doctors we quote here later call it, “ingrained assumptions.”

Since the early wars with stones, clubs, spears and swords, the militaries of the world have grappled with issues of bravery and fear on the battlefield, but the whole "fight or flight," catch-phrase really seemed to begin as a psychological category in the very early 20th century. The issue was rubber-stamped into posterity in 1929 by one Dr. Walter Canon with his original formulation of human threat response - the fight or flight.” I repeat 1929. Canon stated that when frightened, we flee or fight.

Fright - defined as fear excited by sudden danger, from something strange, sudden or shocking. Sudden ambush. Some the greatest armies of the world were defeated by ambush, as well as some of the best solo fighters. The University of Washington uses a popular “angry bear” example to explain this, an example dating back to the 1930s and copied by so many "downliners" to describe the shock/surprise event.

“It is a nice, sunny day. You are taking a nice walk in the park. Suddenly, an angry

bear appears in your path. Do you stay and fight OR do you turn and run away?”

Simple enough as one, two. But, somewhere lurking free in our understanding is yet another, vital, “F-word,” freeze. From the cave-men confronted by the saber-tooth tiger on the prehistoric veldt, to the soldier in Afghanistan, they, and we gathered here, all see and understand the...big freeze. We all intuitively know that the full equation must really be “Fight, Freeze or Flight,” in the first milliseconds of an ambush of any type. These three Fs are utterly and intrinsically connected. Okay, so what does the latest research show? Wait, there is more! Modern experts can now define and refine that not all freezing comes from fear or fright! You can also freeze when shocked for several biological reasons that have nothing to do with bravery, courage or lack thereof.

"Ambush" by Ernie Button

I began reading about these other two Fs - Fright and Freeze in the 1990s. I grew impatient with the constant repetition of Canon’s lonely two Flight or Fight. Without recognizing freeze and fright, the topic, the preparation training and post-treatment will be stunted and incomplete. A real recipe for wrong.

Also, impatient and tired with the over-simplistic Canon, two--prong Fs, in 2004, in an issue of Psychosomatics of the American Journal of Psychiatry, five doctors, specializing in psychiatry (see below list) petitioned the peers to change the flight or flight mantra. In an article entitled, “Does Flight or Fight Need Updating ” they begin a challenging, yet common sense dissertation on the subject:

“Walter Cannon's original formulation of the term for the human response to threat, "fight or flight," was coined exactly 75 years ago, in 1929.1 It is an easily remembered catch-phrase that seems to capture the essence of the phenomena it describes. It accurately evokes two key behaviors that we see occurring in response to threat. This phrase has led to certain ingrained assumptions about what to expect in our patients and, because of its broad usage, what they expect of themselves. It is a testament to the foundational significance of Cannon's work that the term he used continues to shape clinical understanding and to influence popular culture's understanding of stress as well. But the phrase has not been updated to incorporate important advances in the understanding of the acute response to extreme stress. Specifically, the term ignores major advances in stress research made since it was coined. Both human and animal research on the pan-mammalian response to stress has advanced considerably since 1929, and it may be time to formulate a new form of this catch-phrase that presents a more complete and nuanced picture of how we respond to danger."

They go on:
“The phrase "fight or flight" has influenced the understanding and expectations of both clinicians and patients; however, both the order and the completeness of Cannon's famous phrase are suspect. "Fight or flight" mis-characterizes the ordered sequence of responses that mammals exhibit as a threat escalates or approaches. In recent years, ethnologists working with nonhuman primates have clearly established four distinct fear responses that proceed sequentially in response to increasing threat. The order of these responses may have important implications for understanding and treating acute stress in humans.

The article reminds their peers that people freeze in place for reasons other than fear/fright. One might freeze form a hyper-vigilance, and/or by just being overwhelmed by surrounding stimuli, Not fear. Therefore, the act of freezing can be clinically different that fright. You can freeze from fright and you can freeze from being overwhelmed. Many specialists such as Dr. Jeffrey Allen Gray state we all freeze FIRST to some degree!

So the experts summarize:
“We propose the adoption of the expanded and reordered phrase "freeze, flight, fight, or fright" as a more complete and nuanced alternative to "fight or flight." While we cannot hope to compete with the legacy of Cannon's phrase in the culture at large, adoption of this alternative term within the clinical community may help keep clinicians aware of the relevant advances in understanding of the human stress response made since the original term "fight or flight" was coined three-quarters of a century ago.”

Medical professionals do use the full, four Fs now, in so many fields from speech therapy for stuttering to post traumatic stress treatment for combat vets. But that common “culture at large” the doctors mentioned, remains ignorant and still does love to sing the simple song of Flight or Fight. They sing on and on about the two Fs and the sympathetic nervous system and two F-shooting and Two F-fighting and two-F thinking and two-F training on and on. And, like so many blindly accepted principles spouted in martial, police and the military training dogma, ideas like the disproved Hicks Law, and the mis-quoted Startle Reflex, the “fight or flight” catch phrase has not been updated for most of us in 8 decades of steadily, advancing research.

In your humble correspondent's opinion here, a martial training doctrine might well function with just the three Fs of "Fight, Flight or Freeze. After all, a freeze is a freeze whether it be from a sudden fright or a sudden sensory overload. Just please explain it to your folks. The "Fourth F of Fright" may only be mandatory in the psychiatric world, in their post-event treatment world, where they grapple with traumatic stress syndromes.

There are also many small hairs to be split in this subject. Is just backing up just a few steps, officially called a "flight?" What is hypervigilance? Is the natural "stop-look-listen" considered a freeze? What is Tonic Immobility? Is there a natural progression to the Fs when you are confronted and does freeze come first? All things we review here in the blogs through time.

A training doctrine MUST at least include the element of Freeze!

Three Fs or four Fs, there is certainly more than just the two Fs. A training doctrine cannot function without the Freeze category in this equation. Why haven't we known this for years? We only have our lazy, unquestioning selves to blame. We have let ignorant, neophytes disguise themselves as medical experts and human combat factor tacticians and let them preach decade's old, deceased doctrine to our empty minds. Mindless reguritators then regurgitate and proliferate. We memorize the words, but never understand the music. Just before each teaching gig, before you take the podium, remember to request that sadly, unique song called:

"What Does the very Latest Research Show?"

The article doctors are:
H. Stefan Bracha, M.D., Tyler C. Ralston, M.A.,
Jennifer M. Matsukawa, M.A., National Center for PTSD,
Department of Veterans Affairs, Pacific Islands Health Care System,
Spark M. Matsunaga Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii,
Andrew E. Williams, M.A., Depart. of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii,
Adam S. Bracha, B.A., Biomedical-Research Consultant, Honolulu, Hawaii...
Please read their full article at http://psy.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/45/5/448

Adios, amigos - Hock

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21 April 2008: Thrust, Hook, Lunge, Pump – The 4 Prong Delivery System

(A much abbreviated version of this article appears in the April issue of CQC Dispatches and also in my column in the Use of Force police journal.)

    Thrust. Hook. Lunge. Pump. Four simple words, yet this simple quartet constitutes every hand, stick and knife attack and one of them –thrusting – even covers a speeding bullet. Close quarters and defensive tactics instructors would do well to make note of these four as a foundational concept when designing or revamping their courses. Identify the real problems. Identify the real solutions.

In the 1990s I freed myself from all the existing fighting system flavors and dogma and started chiseling away at the core, universal, essence of combat. I grew so weary of one-stop-shop solutions to being attacked. Or two-stop, programs like the “Two Ways to Defend Against the Knife.” Conversely, what about the programs with several thousand random and disjointed, options. I started to wonder, “there must be a logical compromise,” something not geared for a Neanderthal or a UFC, Olympic athlete. Something geared for most of us – the median.

One basic plank in the quest, was asking, just “how many ways can you really be attacked?” Outside of situational concerns, what constitutes the isolated, essential, attacking, physical strike? What about attacks with weapons? How are they the same? How are they different?  

    First I studied the open and closed-hand, hand strikes. I learned that from punch to palm, to the chopping “knife-edge” hand, they all hooked in at angles or thrust forward. And, they all came on target in two ways, one was a power, body-supported lunge or the second was a jabbing/pumping motion that hit and retracted, with less body commitment. Interesting. Thrust, hook, lunge, and pump. Next, I looked at all the kicks. I found the same deliveries. Thrust kicks or hook kicks that are delivered either with lasting pushing power or kicks that hit and quickly retract. More interesting.

What about weapons? I moved onto to the knife attacks. I realized that stabs either hook or thrust. Slashes usually hook in on angles. They either lunge deep and plant, or hit and retract in a pump. Same, simple geometry, again. Then onto the “stick” or impact weapon attacks. Since the impact weapon strikes with three surface areas - the tip, the shaft and the handle, all the strikes must thrust or hook. They also lunge in with power planted, lingering strikes, or pump back right after impact. (Firearms? As I said earlier, the bullet thrusts forward, even if on a ricochet or bounce. Only heat-seeking missiles “hook.”)

I discovered that they all shared the same deliveries. The universal strikes all thrust or hook in, via a committed lunge or a pumping hit and retract.

Delivery 1) Thurst: Any straight-line attacks.

Delivery 2) Hook: Any non-straight-line attacks.

Delivery 3) Lunge: Any powerful attack with a significant body commitment. It tends to stay out there "and linger" longer on target, since it was delivered with greater force and body synergy. Consider the Karate “one shot – one kill” example.

Delivery 4) Pump: This is "hit and retract" right away. It does not linger.  The pump snaps in and out with a better-balanced body. Consider the jab in boxing as an example.

This hooking stab could be a power lunge or a pump. You might pass and/or grab a lunge. Doing so versus a pumping attack is signifcantly harder and requires other stragegies. Be prepared for both the pump and the lunge attacks, no matter the weapon.

In order to accept these conclusions, you have to be free to see the big, martial picture. Police training would do well to be leary of martial arts systems disguised as defensive tactics programs. They are often full of thoughtless dogma, junk science and dance. Some martial arts systems never hook attack, believing that straight lines are the most efficient. Some systems never retract their punches, just deliver full body power lunges like the ever-debated karate, "one-shot, one-kill style. In a short while, the fighters in these bereft systems innocently forget that these other attacks even exist. Take modern, Japanese Aikido for one example. It really exists to fight against the power lunge attacks, feeds on the excessive energy and can do very little against the balanced, jabbing, pumping attacks of say - a boxer, or the Psycho-movie-style attack of the pumping stabber.

  It is an example of what I call the "Myth of the Duel" – and one aspect is spending too much time fighting the mirror image of yourself or your system of cloistered techniques. Innocent mistake, but a serious one. It is a cancer in survival fighting, and a disease not just found in the martial arts world where Kung Fu always fights Kung Fu, or Aikido vs. Aikido, et al.

Think of:

....a group of police officers gathered together to work on pistol disarming. Both groups are wearing their duty rigs and wind up grappling over pistols in holsters or opponent's drawing guns from holsters. Yet, we all know the vast majority of criminals do not use holsters! yet, they have then trained for events least likely to occur at the expense of those more likely to occur.

....the recent police, ground fighting craze and all the programs that rendered police officers into mind-numbed high, school wrestlers.

....joint lock systems that must solve almost all attack problems with the use of joint locks.

.... live fire, target range shooters who fail to do consistant, regular, simulated ammo training.

....the current, US Army Combatives program that really produces mixed-martial arts experts and not fighting, mixed-weapon, battlefield soldiers.

All are varied samples of wasted, training time with abstract benefits for real world survival. These systems are prone to ignore self-examination, prone to elevate system heads as near gods of hero-worship. Participants become experts in replicating the replicators. Innovation, evolution and change die off, or become shallow chants. In this era of rapid scientific and medical advancement, this trap is a trajedy.

Thrusts and hooks via lunges and pumps, the 4-prong delivery system of attack is universal to all combatives.   How and where will these four deliveries come at you? The points on the common, clock face are the attack “angles,” or directions. Thrusting, hooking, lunges and pumps come from the axis in the center, and then on out to the clock numbers, whether you are standing, seated or on the ground. When you understand this, you see that the Combat Clock concept is a training method bonanza, a chiseled, simple result of all the other complicated, attack angles used everywhere by everyone, but now rendered so simple and utterly unforgettable.

Adios, amigos - Hock

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18 April 2008: Chaos Dies and Lives

“Plan for Chaos! Train for Chaos! Thrive in Chaos” - Hock motto from 1994.

I awoke this morning with the news that Massachusetts Institute of Technology Profesor Edward Lorenz, the so-called “Father" of Chaos Theory, died yesterday at 90. Simply put, he came up the idea that - “the scientific concept that small effects lead to big changes, something that became known as the ‘butterfly effect.’ He explained how something as minuscule as a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil changes the constantly moving atmosphere in ways that could later trigger tornadoes in Texas.” Constrained randomness.

And Lorenz could prove it. But to simply sum his life’s work up with these few words would be a crime. His mathematics and ideas, his discovery of "deterministic chaos" brought about "one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton," said the committee that awarded Lorenz the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences. It was one of many scientific awards that Lorenz won.

From this concept, hundreds of supported theories have spawned, applying to life and nature. The chaotic, rebel gene is responsible for every disease and even supports the theory of evolution. Brace yourself, the whole thing is God’s big plan. You see, he/she put that rebel baby in there to keep the pot brewing and stewing. Else, it just wouldn’t be here would it? In the many Lorenz follow-up books, Chaos: Making a New Science by Dr. James Gleick, he says:

“Where chaos begins, classical science stops. For as long as the world has had physicists inquiring into the laws of nature, it has suffered a special ignorance about disorder in the atmosphere, in the turbulent sea, in the fluctuations of wildlife populations, in the oscillations of the heart and the brain. The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side--these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrosities."

Deterministic chaos! Hey! There’s a new name for martial arts schools to use! I have been using the “thrive in chaos motto” for 16 or so years now. I have probably spent over $300,00 in advertising it. If you count my old international CQC magazine, probably a million dollars is indirectly involved. As I became more and more known through the years, I have seen all kinds of Chaos-This or Chaos-That, arise. Effective Chaos. Controlled Chaos, Chaos-This. Chaos-That. Well, so many in fact, I can’t remember them all right now. All of these folks would of course claim they dreamed the chaos names up themselves and independent of little ol’ me. Remember if you really want to really, really be hand, stick, knife and gun, CQC me? You can’t quote me, can't mention me, cannot be certified under me. I must be triangulated around.

I personally like the Controlled Chaos one because it reminds me of the old TV show “Get Smart” where Maxwell Smart of Control, fought the enemy “Chaos,” Soon to be a major motion picture, by the way.

"Sorry about that, Chief!"

We will soon see, Billy Bob’s Karate School in Liverwurst, Hootgaria as the new international headquarters of the Deterministic Chaos CQC Group, Milky Way Galaxy. "Can anybody find a new silver knife with silver wings logo that hasn’t been used yet?" (one of the reasons I use my unique, angry, mastadon logo).

But the germ of the chaos idea for me, came from Mr. Lorenz. He and his followers explained a lot to me. He explained that the best laid plans of mice and men, may go astray for some unpredicted reason. The grunt called it Murphey's Law. Colonel Hackworth understood this and always had a "go-to-hell plan," for when his first and second plan failed. Lorenz explained a lot to me alright, much of the Milky Way Galaxy to me in fact, anyway. And, how people think and act in Hootgaria.

For more click here

Adios, amigos - Hock

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15 April 2008: Split Head or Dead Head?

With the recent subject looming here on pistol whipping, I have few received a few emails pro and con, and one police officer asked me when in the world would you ever strike someone with a pistol? I myself have not a lot, just a few times. Nor, have I hit a lot of people with my night stick or blackjack. And, I have seen others around do so a few times. But here is an example I have.

In the 1970s, I was on police patrol on the west side of town in the am hours one night and part of my beat was several, large parks. Inside these parks where some trouble spots “frequented" (a good cop word) by various groups of drunks, noise-makers and rowdy types. At some point in time, curfews were placed but I cannot recall when exactly.

This night from the main avenue I spotted near a water tower, a few cars congregated. One such car with its headlights still on, shot long, intertwined, jerky shadows across the rolling fields of the park. I turned off the main road and slowly wandered up there. My headlights were on, as sneaking up on a group here in a prowl car, was next to impossible. And if they were fighting as it looked, the sight of my car might calm them down before I even had to lift a pinky when I got there.

As I approached, I could hear arguing between men and women. Closer still, I could see that no one cared I was coming up. Some men were in a group moving about. Some women were yelling and I could see one or two pulling men away by the arms unsuccessfully from the center of confusion.

“I got some kind of disturbance, by the water tower at McKenna Park,” I told the dispatcher. Parked and got out.

Closer, I saw this mixed male/female group were all in their 20s (as I was at the time, so you have a tendency to consider them adults. Now I would call them "kids") Three, maybe four men were the core of the push and shove match. What's worse was, three maybe four of them had stuff in their hands. At first, I recall a shovel handle, a car jack. What were they arguing about? Can't remember, but that's not the point here.

I stepped in amongst them and asked what was going on and got a few, garbled answers. Some folks on the outer ring of this group tried to answer, but were too distracted.

I guess the armed guys assumed that their “head-splitting” time was getting limited with my arrival so they started swinging these weapons. I felt the need to pull my gun and order the men apart. I myself was just a good step and a swing away from them.

“Hey, hey, hey! Break it up! Drop those weapons!”

The guys dropped nothing from their hands, only dropped back from each other a bit, just a few more feet apart, still yelling and fixated on each other's faces, not me. I was mostly ignored. The others pleaded for them to stop.

Another guy rushed at me with a pleading face and grabbing arms. It seemed that he did not want me to shoot anyone. Adamently. Like "disarm" adamently. With my outstretched left hand and arm I caught him at this throat. This held him at bay. He grabbed my arm with both his hands.

So, in quick review, I had my pistol out, an angry guy by the throat that was hanging on my arm, all inside a cook-off crowd, way more near boil than simmer.

Everyone was yelling. “Don't shoot them.” “Stop fighting.” “Billy, please!” And, other things.

This was actually a good time to fire a nice .357 warning, “hello” wake-up, gunshot into the clear, dirt ground. The explosion probably would have rippled through the crowd, flapped some clothes and really gotten their attention. But now, the armed guys went at it again! And the others, fearing I guess, I would start shooting up the fighters, started toward me. Grab me? Disarm me? All of this created a very uncomfortable feeling for yours truly.

I hit the guy holding my arm in the head with the side of the barrel of my Colt Python (yes, my finger was off the trigger). It was a good silver, swack. He stood still for a second and then staggered down to a knee before a number two swack was needed. I yanked my arm free, shoved off another too close to me and marched near the fighters.

“Drop those weapons!” I hollered, all kinds of really pissed off now. They backed away from each other and slowly dropped their stuff. I remember seeing a folding knife hit the ground. The women and friends ran to their men and grabbed them. I kicked some of the weapons off into the grass and holstered my gun. In the distance, I saw a back up, car squad car driving up.

“WHAT in the hell is going on here?” Their story? Ohhhh, yet another redundant, repeat tale lost in the antiquity of time. Some kind of business the boys were starting. Some kind of money problem. Some kind of feud. Some kind of “we'll settle this outside,” from some inside place. Blah-blah-blah.

In the end I did not arrest anyone and pistol-whip boy was soon standing around, albeit rubbing a spot of blood-matted hair on his noggin. I guess, the old Bee gees style hairdos of the day did offer some layers of protection. That, and all those layers of hair spray. I told this kid I could arrest him for grabbing me, assault on a police ofifcer and interfering with my duties. The inference was, complain about your head boo-boo? And you'll do it from a jail cell wearing a felony wrist tag.

I took up the rusty knife and the splintered shovel handle (we let the tire iron guy keep his car jack set complete) and we ran everyone off with very, scary and serious warnings to cease and desist. Later that night I tossed the weapons in a dumpster (folding knives in the 70s were not at all like the folders of today.)

In a few seconds that whole scene could have turned full south on me. I could have seen a stabbing, a caved-in head from a stick or crowbar right in front of me, or any of these things could have befallen upon me. The ancillary crowd was none-to-pleased about seeing my pistol out and that too could have wound up a loose gun and as dynamite in this spicy recipe of this cook-off.

A warning shot into the ground with old King Colt Python would have been a good idea. But, the pistol whip worked fine too to free me up and not have to shoot someone.

Warning shots and pistol-shipping. Two tactical solutions - tactics that the daylight, next day, quarterbacks in pressed uniforms and business suits, ensconced in their temperature-controlled, lofty offices usually do not like. I liked them a whole lot at 2 am, inside a sweaty, angry, scared group with grabbing hands, a rusty knife, a stick and a jack. I think you just gotta' be there.

Pistol-whipping. Split-head or dead-head? Sometimes its your instantaneous choice in the middle of a cook-off. And the blue-ribbon judges in the morning might not like your brand of chili.

Adios, amigos - Hock

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11 April 2008: The Snake Thai Series

I am hard at work in Dallas these weekdays and this weekend working on the Snake Blocker Thai Boxing Series. Snake has fought in Mexico, USA and Thailand and has some 68 plus wins in some 85 fights. The material and his 10 level and 10 DVD set course is sanctioned in Thaliland. I have already seen excellent material and advice I have never seen or heard of before. We expect the series to be complete by early June.

Adios, amigos - Hock

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8 April, 2008: The Pistol Kosh - An Offer He Can't Refuse

The actual list of recognizable police advisors and instructors in the United States is really quite small. For years these people have been affectionately nicknamed the ‘Police Training Mafia” as satirical snide. Many of the "captains, lieutenants and button-men" seem to have originated in the Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiania beltway region! But whether snide, just fun, true or not, there are recognized, tribal standards that do tend to be widely accepted and co-dependent on group approval. There is such a police group. The group is actually shrinking and inter-connecting. Its hard to break the shell with a new idea or the revitalization of an old idea.

Some of the group trends are great and some not. At best, we have the wit and wisdom of people like ol' Dave Smith or ideas like simulated ammo training. We owe them many thanks and blessings. At worst, we have police training programs based on Hick's Law and the Startle Reflex.

Recently one of the renown, inner circle instructors issued an article about accidental discharges of firearms and on his main point, prevention check list was,

“...remember what the firearm is for. It is not an impact weapon.”

...or words to these effects. This expert is not alone. There are many police instructors, and civilian gun gods and anal-obsessed gun aficionados that go weak at the knees and gastric in the gut at the very thought of using their precious pistol as a tomahawk.

Using the handgun as an impact weapon has been around since...well, since handguns, and there haven't been very successful terms for the practice. “Pistol whipping” was one and it sounds kind of violent and outdated. “Pistol as a kosh,” was another old school jargon, but who knows what a kosh is? It sounds like the left side of tuxedo necktie, or the Vorlon ambassador to Babylon Five, but a kosh once meant an impact weapon, like a baton. Pistol as a kosh meant using your handgun as an impact weapon.

“Back in the day," my early days in Texas, the practice of pistol whipping was never much of an issue to defend or promote. It was just there. Once in a while somebody got a good cracking for a good reason. I have slugged just a few folks with the barrel of my Colt revolver. At the moment I probably might have shot some of them. Instead? I just knocked them down or out, or both. Believe it or not, in the olden days, we often tired to knock people out with a fist, a sap, a backjack or a pistol whip, rather than shoot them. That is the way it should be.

Then law enforcement got all kinds of dainty and professional. The practice just faded away, so it seemed. For many officers and some agencies the science of pistol whipping, or, “pistol striking” is making a modern comeback. Thanks to Steve Krystek of PFC shaking my shoulders in about 1999, I now also teach a module of the subject inside my Gun/Counter-Gun Level 8. Striking with a gun is also making a slow comeback in some inner combatives circles. You strike with the front, underside, sides and top of the barrel/frame, the handle and you flip the gun in your hand and use it like a hammer. Trigger finger out of the trigger guard of course.

Now before you lily-livers go all spastic, and you police chiefs faint, the dictum of "Thou shalt Never Use," commandment may get one of your people killed! Also, the occasional pistol whipping of an armed bad guy, or of a Suicide-by-Cop subject may save the lives of your suspects and you, your agency and your people a lot of grief and troubles.

"What does the research show?" Here's mine non-clinical, non-PHD observations. Over the last two months I can guess I have taught about 120 or so police officers in three different countries in close quarters fighting classes. At least 75% of them were tactics instructors and/or on SWAT teams. And this “season' I am teaching my Four Stops module - two charging people that get stopped at hand stops, forearm stops, shoulder stops and clinch stops, with sudden pistol quick draws anywhere along the way. We are using any sims guns we can get our hands on, from rubber band to gas.

These scenarios get crazy, especially with this Type A-Personality crowd! They battle for the gun arms of each other, then the guns. They often hit the deck. And low and behold what did I see? Pistols twisted around, disarmed and/or knocked free. Chaos! And what else? Sometimes the officers would try to turn the newly captured guns in their hands, and be thwarted by the original owner. Other times? The men and women would...brace yourself...beat the opponent with the jammed or otherwise oddly held pistol to gain the advantage. If your disarm a suspect, the pistol may not be in the best position in your hand to threaten or shoot without some juggling. And, the suspect probably is still very close and still fighting you over the gun. You might have to use it to strike and stun him.

With the opponent stunned or knocked out from a pistol impact strike, the holders could gain proper control of their weapons and themselves. When you see this happen, when you really train in scenarios for real-life circumstances, you realize what a key trick and great tool pistol whipping can be. Outlawed? It should be mandatory!

When administrators and trainers condemn, condemn and condemn, their brainwashed commands often have a lasting imprint and effect. The idea may become blocked! Officers may treat their handguns with the delicacy of a laptop and fail to forget that when it is jammed, or when it is out of ammo, this piece of heavy metal is a lifesaving hammer. Of course these practices apply to civilians carying handguns also.

So break out the knee braces and mop up the vomit, and carry off the faint of heart. If you completely outlaw this kosh idea? You are limiting the survival skills and options of your people. You may be creating a mental block about the option. Only through research and scenario training can you find the truth. It might just take tossing a police mafioso down, unchain a UFC teenager to attack him and then toss a gun on the ground within 5 feet of them both and watch what happens. Two or three out of ten times, I'll bet that pistol turns into a club that saves his life. Or the bad guy will...beat you to it, and start beating you with it. Its an offer he can't refuse!

Adios, amigos - Hock

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3 April, 2008: The Three Waves of Crime Fighting

Police scientists state that there have been three waves and methodologies of investigative science. The first wave was the study of clues, as pioneered by Scotland Yard in the 19th century. The second wave was the study of crime and the crimes themselves. Documenting frequencies and types, locations. Times of day. The logistics of crime. Predicting patterns. The third wave is the study of abnormal psychology, learning the psyche of the criminal.

We hope that all three still come into play holistically. If you run across an old successful bobby or copper or deputy from yesteryear, he was already using these "waves" to solve crimes and problems and didn't have names for his methods.

Quickly Watson, what will the fourth wave be?

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Email Hock at Hock.Hochheim@sbcglobal.net

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