Tap, Rack…What?

TAP, RACK, BANG OR NOT

For those unfamiliar with shooting, I apologize in advance. For your edification, almost every reputable shooting school worldwide teaches a drill to address weapon malfunctions. It’s commonly known as the Tap, Rack, Bang drill. (The link will take you to a video clip of it being done.) I have never heard it called anything else and if anyone has, I’d love to hear it. This blog entry is about why it might just be one of the most dangerous things taught on ranges around the world. (google shows 704,000 results in under half a second when you start typing “tap, rack…without even adding the rest.)

WHAT IS IT?

For the uninitiated, you’re shooting a pistol (not a revolver which looks like what cowboys used to shoot), and all of a sudden, it doesn’t work when you pull the trigger. There can be many reasons for this. For instance, the magazine can have a feed problem; the magazine might not be seated properly; you can have a dud round; the wrong ammunition; a limp wrist; a stovepipe (so-called because the empty casing is caught before it ejects completely and sticks out of the gun like a tiny chimney)

TAP

The solution is to slam the palm of your non-dominant hand, i.e., the one not wrapped around the grip, into the base of the magazine. This will seat it if that’s the problem.

RACK

After that, you rack the slide of the weapon. (Grab it and pull it back like you’re trying to tear it off the top of the weapon). If there wasn’t a round in there (you took the gun off a bad guy during a weapon disarm, for example, and he hadn’t put one in the chamber), that will load one. If the one in there was a dud, this will extract it and load a new one. Maybe the weapon fired during your struggle for it, but the slide was impeded. Again, you’re going to have to rack the slide to extract the old and put in the new. If there’s a stovepipe, this will also take care of it. In conclusion, whatever the problem was, the “tap rack” sequence will take care of it.

BANG

Now you’re supposed to pull the trigger hence the bang.

WHY IT’S DANGEROUS

When I first learned the drill, it was on a bodyguard course. So, we’re making the assumption that, in the middle of a gunfight, my weapon malfunctions. I need to get it back working as fast as humanly possible. So, “Tap, Rack, Bang.” The next time I learned, it was for competing. The gun jams, which slows you down so, to get back in the competition ASAP, similarly,  “Tap, Rack and Bang.” When I’m on a range shooting, and I have a malfunction, again, I want to get back to shooting, so “Tap, Rack, Bang.”

So, where’s the problem? Well, I teach gun disarming. Robbery at gunpoint is the highest probability crime around where I live. In addition, I teach practical self-defense, not classical martial arts. We teach if you’re able to wrestle the gun from the bad guy immediately, as you’re disengaging, to Tap and Rack. Maybe the gun he was holding on you didn’t have a round in the chamber. Maybe the magazine partially dislodged while fighting over it. Easy to press the mag release button while squeezing the gun in a death grip. Also, it’s highly probable that if there was a round in the chamber, the gun went off during the struggle. You gripping the weapon won’t stop that from happening however it will stop the slide from extracting the spent round. Again, pretty much anything that could screw with the weapon working can be fixed on the fly with the Tap and Rack portion of the program.

CONDITIONING

If you’re an avid shooter and you’ve been trained to perform “Tap, Rack, Bang,” can you guess what your next action will most likely be? Yep, pull the trigger, aka “Bang.”  Therefore, if the bad guy is surrendering or running away while you do that, you could find yourself in a world of legal hurt. You just shot and killed someone who’s no longer a threat. Please don’t try and say, “well, I wouldn’t in that situation.” The whole purpose of training is to drill responses that work almost on auto-pilot, otherwise, why train?

TAP, RACK, READY

In conclusion, once I realized this was a problem for my students (after watching one of them, an avid shooter, continually shoot people whether they were surrendering, running away, or fighting back), I switched it to “Tap, Rack, Ready.” Now they’ve inserted the magazine, taken care of misfires, duds, slides not sliding, etc., and have a weapon in battery “ready” to use should it become necessary. You are not in a gunfight like our bodyguard or police example. You’re not on a range competing for time and accuracy. Nor are you on a range shooting. All you’re trying to gain control of a situation and hopefully hold the bad guy till the cops get there.
Above all, should it now become necessary to shoot, you’re “ready.” If it’s not a situation requiring you to shoot i.e., he’s running away or complying with your orders to get on the ground, you haven’t automatically shot him after “tap, rack.”