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Comment by flatline | Hacker News Reader

I could see this being the case, but it's got to be very narrow timing, and it probably only applies for the same type of action. A friend and I used to do a drill with his Glock 9mm. (After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head. The pointee would initiate action by grabbing the gun and the pointer would try to pull the trigger. It was impossible to pull the trigger in time, action was always faster than reaction in this case. We did it many times over, both of us with the gun. Semi-automatic handguns will not fire when you keep the slide from moving, which is what happens when you grab the whole barrel like this, though I don't think I'd be willing to try the maneuver in real life.

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I have to second nfnaaron here. The gun is always loaded. I don't care if you just unloaded it. It's still loaded. That's one of the most fundamental gun safety rules. Violating that rule, in my view, means you are not responsible enough to own a gun. I mean, there are really only three safety rules; it's not like there's a huge list.

There are plenty of ways to simulate the exercise with no risk. If you want to do stress exercises, you need to come up with a different way. This[1] is one of the standard ways. Notice that at no point does a real gun get pointed at a human being? That's by design.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

"(After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head."

Fail. Absolute fail.

We say "the gun is always loaded" even when we "know" it is not, because if we never, ever point a gun at something that we don't want to destroy, we will never make that one in a million mistake.

Fail. Sorry for the forcefulness, but this kind of gun "play" always deserves to be called out and discouraged.

I think you are wrong. I agree with you, in the sense that I would not feel comfortable doing this. "The gun is always loaded" is great rule, as is "Never point a gun at something you don't want to shoot". But it has its limits, and context is important.

Assume that you're a hostage negotiator, or someone in the police or military that otherwise expects to end up in a situation where someone is pointing a presumably loaded weapon at you at close range. I think there's a good argument to be made that you should train for this circumstance under the most realistic conditions you can muster, rather than hoping that your first live experience will go just the way it did on paper. If having a real gun pointed at you helps to simulate and train your real life response, this might be a good strategy.

Personally, as someone not in such a field, I'll spend the bulk of my efforts on figuring out how to avoid such situations. But for a professional training for a situation they expect to encounter, this is not 'play'.

Agreed that there are a small percentage of people who are professionals, for whom the risk of live practice is probably worth the risk, also considering the likelihood that they would have to deploy their skills in this way.

For the rest of us (and I didn't see anything to suggest that these two martial artists were practicing in a professional context), the likelihood of needing to deploy this skill in a real attack is small, and if you want to practice such a skill as self defence you should be doing it with a fake gun, or at most in a way described by novas0x2a's link to the Tueller drill.

To invoke a programming saying, "you ain't gonna need it."

Google "operant conditioning".

I've done so, and think I am generally familiar with the concept. I don't see any direct connection. Could you explain the relevance that you see?

It's why modern militaries prefer to train with real weapons. In the scenario the OP mentioned, it's about getting accustomed to facing a real weapon.

Note that I'm not advocating this for "play", or even amateur martial arts. Someone training for situations in which a real weapon will be pointed at them and they have to remain calm will benefit tho'. (I'm offering evidence to support your point BTW, not arguing with you!)

Professionals are not that stupid to point real guns at their friends' heads. They use special training models which can't actually shoot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glock_pistol#Training_variants

A Glock will certainly fire with the slide immobilized. If the slide cannot move with respect to the frame the current round will not be ejected and the next round will not be chambered, but it will certainly fire the chambered round. It is not clear from "grab the whole barrel" what you were doing. Glock is like many (most?) semiautos in that the trigger cannot be pulled when the slide is not all the way forward, is that what you meant? That you could yank the slide out of battery and hold it there, thus preventing the trigger from being pulled?

If you intend to replicate your experiments in the future, you can explicitly seat a snap cap in the chamber and leave the magazine out (no mag safety on the Glock). That way you are still violating rules 2-4, but possibly not rule 1.

It's pretty clear he meant that he was holding the slide back, preventing the hammer from moving forward.

But would that always work on a Glock, which has an odd striker arrangement instead of a traditional exposed hammer, and doesn't have a way to decock it without pulling the trigger?

Holding the slide is not what prevents the hammer from falling. A semi-auto handgun with an exposed trigger that is placed out of battery has its trigger immobilized by mechanical linkage, regardless of the hammer's position.

Because of the way Glocks have their lug linkage, many will actually fire even when slightly out of battery. Knocking the slide back 1/10" and holding it there is probably not going to be sufficient to disengage the lug that prevents trigger pull.

Even if one could manage to pull the trigger with the gun significantly out of battery, I imagine that this would be a non-event with an exposed hammer because as you say, the hammer would fall onto the slide, not the pin. Still, firing out of battery would seem to be a function of the linkages, not striker-vs-exposed-hammer-ness.

From what I remember of KravMaga gun disarms they agreed with your experiments. They taught moving your head out the way at the same time as grabbing.

A Krav Maga gun disarm involves twisting the body while redirecting the shot. Grabbing the gun isn't supposed to prevent the gun from firing, it's supposed to prevent the shot from killing you. In a real life situation when someone's got a gun to your head you probably don't have time to think about the gun's mechanics.

Well thats why you're thinking about it ahead of time.

I distinctly recall the instructors commenting they'd rather face an idiot who gets too close to you with a gun than an idiot who gets too close to you with a knife, the knife will still cut you if you grab it.

They also suggested you comply with anyone who has a weapon unless you have good reason to think they'll kill you anyway.

I Really should take Krav up again, was good stuff.

Yeah, I'm only a yellow belt at my school (Krav Maga Canada has a belt system even though the international org. doesn't) so we haven't gotten into weapon disarms much yet, but I think the general idea is it's easier to give up your wallet than successfully perform a gun disarm or redirect a knife.

Either way, it's a hell of a work out.

Dude, slide immobilized it will still go bang.

Not if the hammer is immobilized by the slide being held racked back

Slide back yes, slide forward no, it is unclear if he knows that & while unlikely could lead to some harm.

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