This has been an interesting week teaching martial arts. I taught many different combat scenarios on how to defend against bad guys with guns. Guns and the martial artist in the past did not mix well in the least. It was always one or the other, with guns being superior to empty handed combat. I like to think of disarms as just another aspect of martial arts. There are many weapon arts in the line of Arnis and Excrima that have weapons use and disarms at its core. But once you leave the Filipino arts you are pretty much on your own. Sure there are bits and pieces that some teachers have added to one art or the other to make it more useful in the world we find ourselves in today.

The really cool thing about the disarms that I teach is that they transcend martial arts styles and martia arts limitations. So they will work with all arts regardless of its original intent, as long as you remain open minded to making your moves more natural like out bodies were and are intended to move. The further a martial art gets away from the way we were meant to move the more trouble you are going to get into when it comes to actual self defense. Then it only gets worse when you throw in sticks, knives, and with this weeks lessons, firearms.

Modern firearms present problems for the standard martial artist and the teacher. The biggest hurdle is that there are so few teachers who have any kind of experience in dealing with weapons of any kind. Good thing I don’t have that problem. All the student seemed to enjoy the real life settings working with the wooden guns for training, and then got big eyed when the real ones were brought out to show them exactly how do handle the pistol itself to have a positive result.
Everyone learned something, and that is always the goal.

Carter Hargrave is the Grandmaster at Tulsa Martial Arts