In fact, it is so obvious. Search Google for bodyguard courses and focus on promotional videos posted by the different companies providing the service. Mostly, the first thing you see is a firing range, students in position and drawing, loading and firing in some tactical manner. As the video continues, people demonstrate firing techniques from moving vehicles, in crowds, while wounded and so on.
If you search for PSDO courses it gets even heavier, as all students are armed with M4 or MP5 rifles, side strapped with what appears to be a 9mm, mostly a Glock.
Why do most schools portray the bodyguard armed with a firing-weapon? It seems as if all students become excellent marksmen and you might also get the illusion that after finishing the course, your concealed carry license is provided with the certificate. What is wrong with this and if anything, why do schools still portray this picture of a bodyguard?
Imagine the time when we all were young and we played cowboys and Indians in the backyard of the neighboring kids. When you could choose, being a cowboy was so much more appealing then being the Indian. As a cowboy, you would have a pistol as your arm against the ‘redskins’. Instead of having the bow and arrow, or if that wasn’t available, excellent hatchet skills… As strange as it might seem, this is the reason why bodyguard schools arm their students and teach them to use a firearm. It makes people feel tough, it makes you feel invincible and it gives you the feeling of power.
In a way, those feelings are right. It does give you some sort of power, it does allow you a point of advantage in certain situations, but in reality, the firearm weakens you. Here is why.
Carrying a firearm in most European countries is something that has been limited to Police, Military and Secret Service agencies. Some private security companies have permits to carry firearms, like value transport companies, companies guarding high risk government complexes and some offering Close Protection. However not many companies opt to do this as it is a legal paperwork nightmare and not enough agents have been trained according to local legislation to carry a firearm.
Because of this, many people consider Centre-European Close Protection as being minimum to non existent for private companies as almost nobody is allowed to carry guns so what is the point.
In my training, in both the military and the civil body guarding course, I have been taught different. Yes, I know how to handle a weapon, ranging from 9mm to MP5. I can draw pretty fast and I know what the Israeli Point Shooting is all about. I have been taught how to shoot while backing up, how to shoot through a window of a car and how to reload without loosing sight of my opponent. But, the big difference is, right after we were taught all these techniques, my instructor had us disarm, and continued with the sentence that keeps ringing in my mind: “If you have to draw your weapon, everything else you have done and were taught has gone horribly wrong, you are in a world you don’t want to be in, now lets hope that at least you remember where to aim…..”. Afterwards the course continued and I realized what the reasoning was behind this.
For me, coming from a military course first where weapons were something that never left your hand, it was most obvious why firearms weaken you as a bodyguard or Close Protection Specialist. To make you understand why, I will tell you some specific scenarios that happened and explain you a little about operations during a Close Protection Detail.
Close Protection means the guarding of a person, whose life and/or honor is threatened by elements not controlled by the person himself. You as a Close Protection Officer are there to make sure these uncontrolled elements don’t get near your principal and are not capable of harming his life or honor by any means. But the ‘close’ in close protection also means that most events will be at close range, in close quarters, at an arms reach.
In every course you are taught never to have your principal more than a stretched arms length away (depending on the level of threat of course, but for now, lets presume the worst). For this reason an attack will affect you from no more than an arms reach away.
During drills in which several scenarios were played where the principal needed protection and would most certainly be attacked, I screwed up several times. When an attack occurred, my first reaction was to draw my weapon and search for the threat. This for me was logical as I was conditioned in a military way. However, drawing my weapon only resulted in me standing in the middle of attention, being considered by the enemy as a threat and getting needlessly killed.
Instead of drawing my weapon, I should have evacuated the principal immediately, or even better, our pre-operation planning should have been better, as we shouldn’t have been there in the first place because the location was ‘hot’. So a whole chain of events went wrong before it came to me pulling my gun and loosing my life.
During other scenarios where I was sent in without a weapon, I felt vulnerable and naked. I didn’t understand how it was possible for me to defend a principal without the appropriate fire power. As a USMC commander once said: ‘sometimes it is very well justified to kill a mosquito with a sledgehammer….’ I was of the same principle. The bigger my gun, the better I feel.
Now I was sent in without a gun, and a head still spinning from all the operational planning and rehearsal. However, when the shit hit the fan, my planning came into mind, I reacted correctly and the principal was evacuated without any further incident. Why is it that the gun made me so ‘dead’ the first time?
Weapons give us a false sense of security; however, a gun is nothing but a piece of metal that becomes an extension of your hand. It doesn’t think for you, it doesn’t know what you want from it and it certainly doesn’t contain any tactical data. Even worse, when it comes to a ‘fight’ or an aggression, your drawing techniques might not even be sufficiently fast to have the gun ready by the time your opponent is practicing his martial arts skills on your face. Or, imagine drawing your weapon in a mall because you fear that the principal is in danger. The chaos and panic you create by doing so will cause more harm than good.
I’m not saying weapons are useless for a bodyguard, but they are not necessary to conduct an operation. Planning, knowledge and everything you can do before you get on the road are far more important. Your martial arts skills that give you confidence in yourself are far better confidence boosters than the weapon, which in the end only becomes an extension of your own fear.
Now, although I wish I would be armed, just because I have come accustomed to preferring over packing then missing something, I have also become a far more confident agent. I know I have to be resourceful at all times. I know that although my adversaries will have more choices in the battle we fight, I will overcome because I’m forced daily to overcome lack of confidence and fear. We plan, plan and plan until it becomes a routine. Afterwards we redo the whole thing because routine is not good either.
Anyway, the enemy will have to do it’s best to ‘out-plan’ us to be able to surprise us. But he probably won’t because he has a gun and he is confident. But his confidence is false, while ours has become real.