Hand gun Retention

Check the GOAL training website. I seem to remember that they ran such a course. No idea who teaches it or what they cover. I went thru mine the hard way, part of police academy training. It is INFINITELY tougher with civilian gear (no retention holsters).

Retention as in the bad guy tries to get it from your holster? No idea about that, but I would imagine a HARD BLOCK would take care of it.

In the military I was taught that, if the bad guy ambushes you as you enter a room during room clearing and grabs your handgun, you squeeze the trigger. A slide recoiling from a shot is going to make everyone but the most severe masochist let go, and even they will have to let go when their fingers are missing. Given that the first rule of room clearing is "never flag your buddy" and the second is "always know what is behind where your gun is pointing", firing the gun should pose no threat to anyone but the person trying to take it away from you.

Originally Posted by M1911

I've taken a few handgun retention classes and it was eye opening just how quickly the 100 lb, 5' tall female instructor could snatch the gun out of my hands. It was gone in an instant.

I've never gone through a retention class, but I can say honestly that my handgun during room clearing is in a death grip. If they attached the barrel to a truck, they would drag my skinny ass all over the place before they got it away from me. Again, I have never taken the class, nor had someone try to take it away from me, so I am speaking only from my estimation of my reaction based on how I hold my firearm. It also doesn't hurt that my handgun was leashed to my belt with a steel pig tail, so getting the gun away from me and getting enough room to turn it on me are two entirely different balls of wax, the leash made it so the gun had to be held close in to the body(which is preferential when room clearing, the further out the gun is held, the more opportunity the bad guys have to grab it before you are aware of them around a corner). I'm going to bow out of the convo at this point, as I have no further points to add, and it is all speculation on my part at this point.

Originally Posted by Scarecrow

I've never gone through a retention class, but I can say honestly that my handgun during room clearing is in a death grip.

Seriously, it doesn't matter. It isn't about strength. It is about leverage, and she proved that. She had the biggest guy in the room hold onto the gun with a death grip. So that everyone could see it happen, she did the technique very, very slowly. She just slowly twisted the gun out his grip as he had a death grip on it. In an actual disarm, the gun is gone very quickly, and it isn't a wrestling match. The technique she taught was Aikodo based. It involved rotating the gun around two axes simultaneously.

Mas Ayoob teaches the Lindell method. He also testifies as an expert witness. If you haven't met Ayoob, he's a little guy. Maybe 5' 5", 130 lbs. He was testifying in a court case about an instance where a person was disarmed. The plaintiff's attorney claimed that couldn't have happened, since the attacker was much bigger than victim. The plaintiff's attorney was a very big and strong guy. He asked Ayoob to try to take a dummy replica away from him, assuming his strength would prevent Ayoob from doing it. There was no surprise, as the attorney new Ayoob would go for the grab. That didn't prevent Ayoob from taking the gun away quickly.

It has been a number of years since I took handgun retention, and I wasn't any kind of expert back then. My knowledge is very rudimentary.