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That makes me think about something else with the 9MM. We were sitting around in our tent in Bosnia one winter evening and had nothing better to do so we practiced "drawing at close range vs drawn upon person taking the weapon away" (unloaded of course). All you have to do to keep the 9mm from firing is put the palm of your hand against the barrel and push. As long as you can keep pressure against it, the guy with the 9mm can't shoot you. We both (the guy I was practicing with) got it to where we could manage 9 times out of 10 to get our hand on the barrel (disabling it) before the shooter could pull the trigger- you had to be really quick and not half assed about it, but once you got your hand on the end of the barrel you could then turn the weapon away from yourself and deliver a blow to the face with the other hand. What we found when we practiced this manuever later with soldiers who had no clue what we were going to do was they were so stunned that they couldn't pull the trigger they failed to block the overhand right to the nose when it came.

I'm not a big handgun expert, so I don't know if other automatics are the same way. I found it disturbing in a way to know that the weapon was that easily disabled. We had another SGT who could do the same thing but actually was pretty good at taking the slide off the top of the weapon as well. He could do this in like one second and leave you holding only half your weapon- it was a funny trick but I didn't think I'd have tried that one. Personally, I'd want a handgun that fired even if it was totally jammed into someone's belly (like they were laying on top of me with all their weight). I've never figured out why they can't just make a revolver type handgun with a larger cylinder or maybe with two cylinders so that you could quickly swivel a full one up into place when the top one was empty- that'd give you ten to twelve shots with a low malfunction risk. I'm no expert or nothing- I'm sure one of you handgun nuts will tell me it's a hokey idea ;-)

Never tried that, lol. But it does sound like it would be a good defensive thing to know about. However, if it doesn't work for all semi-autos and you misidentified the gun . . . Watch out!

One thing I don't understand from your description: If a round is in the chamber and the hammer is cocked, what good does it do to grab the barrel? I believe if the hammer hits the firing pin and the firing pin hits the primer, it wouldn't matter if you were applying pressure to the barrel or not. The gun will fire, no?

Now if you can block the hammer with your thumb, either preventing it from moving backward into the cocked position or preventing it from striking the firing pin after the trigger is pulled, then you could conceivably ruin some gunman's day. However, I don't think I'd want to try this trick as too much would depend not only on your own reflexes but also on his.

I've seen something similar with revolvers . . . If you can grab the cylinder, preventing it from rotating, the person holding the gun can't pull the trigger . . . However, if the gun is fully loaded and already cocked . . . Watch out!

PS, I'll also watch this thread with interest now to see what others more knowledgable about modern handguns than me have to say about all this! :-)

...All you have to do to keep the 9mm from firing is put the palm of your hand against the barrel and push. As long as you can keep pressure against it, the guy with the 9mm can't shoot you. We both (the guy I was practicing with) got it to where we could manage 9 times out of 10 to get our hand on the barrel (disabling it) before the shooter could pull the trigger...

Interesting. It's not hard to disarm a person who has a handgun on you within arms length. one hand grabs the barrel and twist up or away and the gun will come out of his hands, the other hand controls his wrist. You could break his trigger finger in the process. The person with the gun has to react to your quick movements, which will be too slow for him to pull the trigger in time. While twisting the gun barrel up you could use the freed pistol butt and pop him in head all in one motion. Or use your other hand, like you said to deliver a blow possibly in combination.

"That makes me think about something else with the 9MM. We were sitting around in our tent in Bosnia one winter evening and had nothing better to do so we practiced "drawing at close range vs drawn upon person taking the weapon away" (unloaded of course)."

I don't know what combat school you were trained in...but you would never have gotten that close without me double-tapping you and moving on.