You’ve got four wheels under you, steel in front of you, and a whole lot of glass, plastic, and aluminum around you. You’re in a vehicle, and like most Americans, you’re in there often. With that in mind, how often have you trained to defend yourself inside a vehicle?
Have you practiced your draw? Do you dry fire inside your car? What about practicing an escape? If not, you might be missing out on a valuable training opportunity.
Police officers in the United States basically live in their vehicles, and being able to engage from inside the vehicle and evacuate it with a weapon drawn can be invaluable.
Having a gunfight from inside a vehicle is a terrible idea.
Unless you’re tooling around in an armored car, your vehicle can quickly become a coffin. You have hardly any cover, and if you can’t put it in drive and gun it away, you have zero mobility.
When at all possible, evacuating the vehicle for better cover is the second-best idea. The best idea is to drive away, if possible. If you can escape in your vehicle, do so.
Even if you’re law enforcement or military and your job is to stop the bad guy, the best first step is getting out of the kill zone, be it ditching the vehicle or moving to a better position.
Sometimes the first- and second-best ideas aren’t possible. A popular carjacking tactic is to position a vehicle in front of and behind you, then approach the vehicle; you can’t drive out, and you can’t bail.
What if your family is present? Can you get a kid out of a car seat fast enough to avoid getting either of you hurt? I can’t. Simply put, you might be forced to remain in your vehicle through any number of probable situations.
Before we get too deep into the article, the best advice I can give you is to go take a dedicated vehicle class. Learn from professionals in a controlled environment. That’s really the only way to do this live, with actual ammo, in a safe manner.
Probable, Not Possible
We are going to focus on the probable, not the possible.
Is it possible that a group of ninjas springs out of a van with AKs and opens fire on you? Sure. Is it probable? No, not really. The probable scenario for most people is a road rage situation turned violent.
Someone at your window, yelling, does not call for deadly force. Call the police and attempt to leave. If it escalates to the aggressor breaking windows, trying to force a door open, or pointing a gun, then we have a violent situation developing.
Before we draw, there are three things we can do to help prep for the situation and remain safe.
First, lock your doors if they aren’t locked. Why make it easy for an aggressor to pull you out of a vehicle?
In this case, if you’re stopped and can’t move, if possible, put the vehicle in park and remove your hands from the steering wheel. This helps reduce the chance of your hands getting in the way of your draw.
From there, if possible, remove your seat belt. Seat belts don’t often get in the way, but removing it can make it faster to bail out of the vehicle if necessary. This assumes you have time to remove the belt, and you might not.
Realities of Drawing Inside a Car
The draw doesn’t change much. If necessary, clear the cover garment or defeat the retention devices, achieve a master grip, and pull the weapon up and out. Orient to the target or a safe direction.
What has changed radically is the environment. Cars, trucks, and SUVs are a complicated environment that you have to actively deal with.
For right-handed shooters, the center console can be an obstacle to overcome. I did some vehicle shooting at Full Spectrum Warrior with Rich Graham, and even in a retired police SUV, my duty-style rig was difficult to manage.
Your arms bang into things, stuff gets snagged, and going quickly feels cumbersome. A slow draw is better than no draw, but never optimum. It turns out that no one designed a vehicle for a gunfight.
Planning for any and every vehicle is difficult, but what you can do is practice in your vehicle. Use a dry gun, or even better, something like the Mantis TitanX. Practice drawing inside your car from concealment or a duty position.
Get a feel for it, for what gets in the way, and how you can smoothly and quickly draw inside your car. You might need to make sure you’re sitting straight or contract your legs together; whatever movement you have to develop can only be done inside your vehicle.
After drawing, engaging from inside the car can be difficult. If you’re engaging a threat from the door window, then you may need to shove your body backward, toward the passenger or driver’s seat, to come to an extension that works.
Beyond the Draw
Safety is always a concern with a firearm. We don’t want to flag ourselves, other cars, pedestrians, or our family. For this reason, I think the TitanX is great for training inside the car.
Turn the laser on constant mode, and you can visually see where your muzzle is pointed. Throughout my draw, I can see what my muzzle covers and adapt based on that feedback.
When the gun’s drawn and it’s not oriented at a target, the safest place is a temple index. You hold the gun facing upward, next to your temple. This keeps it from pointing at anyone or anything but your roof.
It’s also the position of choice when you bail from the vehicle, and ensures you can keep the gun oriented safely as you’re moving. It’s not going to point at anyone, and it’s not going to get snagged as you escape the vehicle.
What About a Vehicle-Mounted Holster?
Wouldn’t a holster tucked between my seat or attached below my steering wheel be perfect? No. Not at all.
It’s a bad idea for several reasons.
First, car accidents are much more common than uses of force. In a car accident, your gun might leave the holster, or the holster itself might detach. Now your gun and holster are just floating around the car, unsecured, and unsecured is unsafe.
Second, it encourages unnecessary administrative handling. Firearms don’t go off until you handle them; the less we handle them, the less likely we are to have a negligent discharge. Removing the gun from your waist holster to a vehicle holster, and back again, is needless handling.
Finally, if you bail from the vehicle, you either have to remember to grab the gun on your way out or you forget. If you get pulled out of a vehicle, your gun stays behind.
Keep the gun in the holster that’s on your body.
Drive and Thrive
Driving is something the vast majority of us do. We spend a lot of time in vehicles, and that should be a part of our defensive training. Factor in your vehicle, take a class on it, and most importantly, train and practice in a safe and effective manner.
