If you’ve got a gun to your back, it might seem like you have few choices that don’t involve prayer and luck.
But Tony Blauer explains it’s all about cooperating with your assailant—at first.
To demonstrate, Blauer, who owns Blauer Tactical Systems and leads the CrossFit Defense courses, plays the victim while CrossFit Media’s Tyson Oldroyd is directly behind him with a fake gun aimed at Blauer’s back. At that point, if you turn around without doing any reconnaissance, you might end up pistol-whipped or worse. So when the criminal sticks a gun in your back, turn on the acting skills.
“Hey, man, I’m fucking cooperating,” Blauer says in the mock situation, glancing over his shoulder as he does so. “See, I spun, I used a behavior like feigned compliance, feigned fear, but what did I do? Identified which hand the gun was in.”
Once you’ve gained this knowledge, then you can spin around toward the hand holding the gun, grab it and begin your fight for dear life.
“You guys see how simple that was?” Blauer asks.
And all he did was cooperate.
Video by Jay Vera.
2min 26sec
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SD mov file size: 17 MB
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Additional reading: Dark-Alley Defense by Hilary Achauer, published Jan. 8, 2013.