Good points Chad and still learning.
I take gun disarms with the same consideration as knife disarms: to attempt a disarm with these is suicidal. So, you need to consider yourself a dead man already in order to attempt such a feat.
That said, there are times to consider where you may be basically a dead man no matter what you do because your attacker is going to kill you or your loved ones regardless of your response. This situation, added with the unavailability of escaping, pulling your weapon, or picking up a weapon of opportunity as an option, must be the case for one to attempt such a feat.
I teach empty hand vs. knife or gun, but I teach them as a set of tactical responses rather then just doing a series of disarming techniques. This is simply because disarming techniques by themselves will most likely fail. Attempting to disarm the gun is a part of the tactical responses that I teach. However, I do this with the understanding and communication to my clients that there not only is no garauntee that a gun disarm will work, but that there is no real recorded evidence that I can find where a gun disarming "technique" by itself has been successfully deployed by a single empty-handed defender. So there really isn't even any anecdotal evidence to draw from on this, let alone enough information to come up with statistics. So all we can do is test our responses in as realistic of a fashion as we can, and hope that we get a second chance at life if they are ever needed.
Now, that said, I am sure there must be evidence out there of people who have lost control over their firearms to an empty handed person. I am sure there are cops who have lost gun retention to a criminal, for example. But the situations I hear of don't involve well executed "disarming techniques" per say.
I'll end with a story to illustrate my point. Now, because I don't like to speak from experience because I don't condone violence, lets just say that I know of a situation. A prearranged fight was happening involving a bunch of teens. One of the fighters was involved with young drug dealer type thugs and drop outs. Two of these people were strapped with pistols. The fight wasn't going well for the "thug" fighter, so one of his strapped buddies decided he was going to end it himself. So he drew his unholstered pistol from the inside of his waistband. A bystander noticed this and immediately reacted by trapping and grabbing the gun with his left hand, and punching the gun wielder in the face. The gun wielder was completely taken by surprise, and lost retention on the gun as he dropped to the ground.
This illustrates what I am saying. I know that people lose gun retention all the time, but it usually isn't from a well executed disarm. It usually occurs when the gun wielder is caught by surprise, or caught in a grappling situation, and truama is caused to the gun wielder (usually strikes to the face area) enough to cause him to lose retention.
But, I would still like to see some sort of statistic even on these situations.
Paul
