Krav Maga Gun Defences

Krav maga or KAPAP, the Israeli self-defence system, isn’t Israeli at all. It’s the Fairbairn and Skykes H2H combat system (aka defendo), taught to the the SOE, Palmach (SOE trained branch of the Haganah), and the Notrim (Jewish police in Palestine), who were recruited directly from the Haganah. It wasn’t until 1973, thirty years after it was first being taught in Palestine, that the name Krav Maga was adopted.

So what’s that got to with the price of rice? Well as it goes quite a bit. The problem with the Fairbairn and Sykes system is that it was based almost entirely on Japanese and Chinese martial arts and not on practical combat experience on the streets and battlefields of Europe. When the system was put into use by SOE operatives and British commandos it proved to be ineffective in real combat. The system was soon dropped by the British military. So the claim that krav maga is tested in combat is true — it was during WWII — but it failed in the battlefield.

One of the most ridiculous aspects of Krav Maga is the gun defences. I was taught as a paratrooper that if  someone tries to force you to kneel down at gun point, they either want a blowjob or they’re going to execute you. So I would never go on my knees. If they’re going to execute you, you’ve got no chance. This guy would have been shot dead.

Krav maga practitioners claim they train for real combat but this is a load of bollocks: they train to do set techniques during a krav maga class, with a cooperative partner, who doesn’t fight back. But in the real world, a gunman won’t just allow himself to be disarmed.

If you’re going to risk trying to disarm someone, you need to do it before they’ve got a gun pointing at you. But if someone is pointing a gun at you, they’re not shooting you, and there is a very high probability that they won’t unless you do something to panic them, like rushing in and trying to disarm them.