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BAD GUESTS, GUYS AND SITUATIONS
Author: Ric Pascetta
For most martial artists, nothing is more important than protecting their families from harm. When you consider the numbers, which indicate that some 10 million Americans will become victims of violent crimes in 2004, you begin to see that their concerns are not unwarranted. State the stat another way—one in 30 people around you will fall victim to a violent crime this year—and you might feel compelled to update your self-defense skills.
Tom Patire has devoted his life to helping people do just that. A martial artist, bodyguard and personal-protection expert, he has traveled a road that’s led him to develop the ultimate system for fighting back. Called Compliance Direction Takedown, or CDT for short, it’s now being taught at hundreds of martial arts schools around the world.
The last time Black Belt ran an article about Patire (October 2002), it introduced the readers to his legal control system, which set a new standard for law-enforcement and security professionals across the nation, as well as for thousands of ordinary citizens like you. In this article, he unveils his Last Resort Weapon Disarms, a set of techniques and strategies designed to boost your personal-protection ability against an armed assailant.
Path to Effectiveness
When discussing the ways in which CDT applies to use-of-force situations, Patire is quick to point out it’s designed to complement, not supplant, your prior training.
“Martial arts has been my life,” he says. “I believe in it, I live it. But most people are never going to do it for a variety of reasons. Some are out of shape, some have pre-existing injuries or worry about being injured, some don’t want to put in the time, and some think it’s too violent. The bottom line is, they aren’t going to study the martial arts.”
That’s where CDT enters the picture. It’s curriculum lends itself to being taught in segments that are appropriate for virtually any learner.
One of the most basic involves methods for dealing with the proverbial bad guest. “We’ve all met the bad guest,” Patire says. “He’s a person that, for whatever reason, gets aggressive by grabbing you. It happens in low-level domestic-violence incidents. It can be an altercation between friends or a pushing and shoving match between strangers.”
Statistics back him: Most situations in which the martial arts are used are low level, despite what some hard-core self-defense instructors claim. Nevertheless, CDT goes one step further and conveys the know-how for neutralizing bad guys—specifically, armed assailants.
“Bad guys exist in every society,” Patire says. “You have to understand that they’re bad for a reason. They live by their own code, hardly paying attention to laws and having little concern for human life, especially the people they are victimizing. Realizing that good people detest violence and love life [is what] creates conflict.
It’s this weak spot that bad guys exploit.”
The Foundation
About 15 years ago, Patire set his sights on developing a set of weapon disarms based on natural motion— like turning a key in a lock or knocking on a door. He started by acknowledging the true significance of the fight-or-flight syndrome.
According to his research, most people who learn an unnatural movement will freeze or forget to use it when the heat is on. In a bad situation, fear often overrides conscious thought.
The solution, Patire says, is to train the mind properly and allow the muscles to follow. Your body has to be comfortable with the movement and confident about executing it if you expect your mind to issue the order and your body to carry it out.
If you practice a martial arts move thousands of times, chances are you’ll function on “muscle memory,” but a person with little or no training won’t be as fortunate.
To illustrate his point, Patire recalls the time he served as an instructor at Camp Charles, a training facility at which government agents learn close-quarters tactics. There he was exposed to an official study which had determined that any learned movement—such as a gun disarm—must be practiced 25,000 times before it’s committed to muscle memory. That’s why many people opt out of self-defense training: They believe it takes forever to get good, especially at something as intimidating as gun defense.
Patire realized that even though there’s no quick fix, the situation could be improved if that knowledge of muscle memory was put to use.
Then it dawned on him that he could identify the movements we’ve all been doing since childhood—waving, grabbing, clapping hands and so on— and use them as the basis for a revolutionary system of personal protection for use in armed and unarmed conflicts.
Next, he examined the standard handgun disarms being taught to various agencies and units. The conclusion: Most worked when attempted by a trained practitioner, but untrained people tended to run into a brick wall when the pressure was high. Many of the techniques stressed grabbing the weapon and striking the assailant, but Patire determined that isn’t always the optimal response.
“I found through my studies and through talking to law enforcement about actual situations that if the average person grabs a weapon during an assault, there’s a good chance the gun will discharge,” he says. “This can cause several things to happen. For instance, it can disorient you, knock you off-balance or burn your hand, possibly resulting in the release of the weapon. If you’re close enough, it can temporarily blind you.”
Corroboration came during the production of a videotape called One Shot to Survive. It featured Patire and a plethora of other martial arts experts demonstrating disarms on opponents with prop guns, movie weapons which use real gunpowder charges without the lead projectile.
In the tape, which was never released because it was deemed too graphic, the self-defense instructors tried their most commonly taught gun defenses, only to discover that the techniques almost always resulted in their being shot. In fact, seven out of 10 failed miserably. Even kicking the gun caused the shooter to experience a flex-reflex reaction that led to the discharge of the weapon into the defender’s chest.
Three Easy Steps
Patire made sure CDT contained defensive measures that would preclude such occurrences. His solution was Immediate Takeaways, a unique blend of moves that focus on the mechanics of the handgun and the structure of the body holding it.
The strategy progresses through three phases: 1. You redirect the line of fire while simultaneously moving out of the way.
2. You lock onto the weapon while ensuring that you keep your hand away from the muzzle and the ejection port (if it’s a semiautomatic).
3. You strip the weapon away from the assailant and step backward.
Because of the stressful nature of gun disarms, Patire has also devoted countless hours of study to the mental side of the subject. He’s distilled his findings into the following four tips:
• Listen and live. Pay attention to what the bad guy says and how he says it. Note the presence of sweating, nervousness, irrational speech patterns and shaky hands because they can lead to an accidental—or purposeful—discharge of the weapon.
• Near or far. Remember that professional shooters don’t get close; they keep the enemy at a distance. Bad guys, on the other hand, like to get up close and personal so fear enters the equation. Try not to react to such a situation. Rather, act within it.
• Think positive. Believe in yourself and your training, and focus on the moment. Now is not the time to doubt your abilities.
• Safety first. Anyone who wishes to teach gun usage or gun disarms should complete a reputable safety course before commencing.
Although Patire believes the aforementioned sequence and tips offer you the best chance of stopping a shooting, he cautions that no technique is guaranteed to work in every situation. Sometimes, a disarm simply cannot be effected, he says. “I was invited to a California workshop where the instructor was demonstrating how to disarm a person standing 15 to 20 feet away. He asked for a volunteer. No one raised their hand, so I finally stepped up. He asked me to act like a bad guy holding him at gunpoint. He said that when I felt I was being threatened, I should shoot.
“The drill started, and I told him not to move. He tried to use reverse psychology on me, and as he spoke, he took a step forward. I put five yellow paintballs in the center of his chest. When he asked me why I shot so quickly, I replied: ‘You said I was to act like a bad guy, and bad guys do bad things. I told you not to move, but you did, so you died. End of story.’” The point, he says, is that bad guys don’t want to be saved or reformed.
When they want to be bad, there may not be anything you can do to prevail. Nevertheless, you can maximize your chances of coming out on top with superior training— training in a system that’s been tested and will be in your head and muscle memory when you need it. For Tom Patire and thousands of martial artists around the world, that system is CDT. ...
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