This is not a new phenomenon. In the law enforcement community it has been well recognized for many years that people who carried concealed weapons will often exhibit reduced arm swing on the gun side. The habit is driven by two issues. The first is training and a desire to keep the strong side arm indexed to the weapon for faster unholstering. The second is a reaction to the first and involves trying to unlearn the reduced arm swing, which more recently has been seen as a "tell" which may give warning to potential adversaries that one is armed and may be a potential threat. As a corollary people are now taught to be aware of reduced arm swing in others.
I can nearly guarantee it would be a Makarov, and only special forces have ever been issued Grachs. KGB is synonymous with the Makarov and to a lesser extent the Tokarev.
Thanks for this link. A fascinating weapon. Would love to see a teardown and some range action. I didn't think such a thing would be possible. Sounds like something along the lines of a gunpowder-powered air gun -- the gunpowder contains the force, but it's the cylinder that ejects the round -- all the gases are captured. Very interesting!
Here, the arm with reduced swing is not on the gun side though. It's on the other side I think? Assuming the gun is holstered under the jacket close to the left breast.
"..where trainees are taught to keep their right hand close to the chest "
This appears to be a different thing than keeping the arm close to a waist holstered weapon
Really hard to say with Secret Service where and what they are carrying. Likely a handgun strong side carry on the waist but also perhaps a PDW like an MP5 or equivalent in its most concealable iteration under the arm on the weak side.
The hand position is pretty standard as a ready position for many fighting systems. Easy to go to a guard position or to initiate striking or pain compliance maneuvers from that stance. On a startle cue, from that position the hands will come up, at which point they can choose the appropriate response.
"Moving forward should be done with one side, usually the left, turned somewhat in the direction of movement."
This strategy is known as straferunning, and was previously thought to be effective only in 90's era first-person shooters, particularly Goldeneye. Maybe Putin is also a 00 Agent?
I think this kind of research is rather unethical and farcical. Like the previous research, where they came to the conclusion that Putin was an autist, based solely on Youtube video's.
it seems like a clumsy attempt to discredit Putin, so
that people don’t take him seriously.
we’re just being given pure conjecture, dressed up as
convincing scientific knowledge. This sort of practice
doesn’t offer any useful scientific insight into, well,
anything, and it misrepresents how science works, and
what good quality scientific research looks like.
I do understand that as a public figure one attracts more scrutiny. But I also thought that medical professionals, like neurologists, fall under Hippocratic Oath:
Whatever, in the course of my practice, I may see or
hear (even when not invited), whatever I may happen to
obtain knowledge of, if it be not proper to repeat it,
I will keep sacred and secret within my own breast.
If a neurologist is allowed to dig up old KGB manuals to classify heads of state as gunslingers, I am allowed to say this has nothing to do with fast gun access, but everything with signalling stature through body language: People will pass you by at your swinging arm and not bump into you when you employ this gate. Either that or old habits really do die hard, and Putin carries a gun to summits.
it's the christmas BMJ, which is traditionally full of somewhat tongue in cheek articles. That said, how does your dominance hypothesis explain the consistent asymmetry?
I read a book recently written by a former member of the UK SBS ("Black Water: By Strength and By Guile" - Don Camsell) and at one point he goes to work for an undercover intelligence unit and one of the important parts of their training for undercover work was learning how not to look like a soldier/marine - which is quite difficult if you have had as much training as someone in the SBS.
For anyone who has seen played "spot the Fed" at DEFCON, blending in is clearly a challenge. (E.g. Most of the hackers there don't have neck muscles that indicate their owners can bench 300+ pounds)
It's a bit of a myth really that of the muscular military spy (even James Bond would fit that role) - most intelligence officers tend to be small and wiry, lacking bulky muscles, trained for speed and agility. They would be fit, but not noticeably so. So they of course be lacking beer bellies and man boobs, but they wouldn't have big muscles.
Now someone at DEFCON is not going to be a field agent - they will work in an office behind a computer which leads me to the next myth from DEFCON: that spooks are not geeks. They are exactly that. They are us, like us, have the same interests. They just work against us whilst believing they are working for us.
UKSF are not equivalent to what the American (if I may be so presumptuous) above termed a "Fed" though.
I still largely agree, it's just hard to draw comparisons, although I imagine CID (resp. FBI) personnel even without sidearms may be more naturally inclined to spend time at the gym than the average HN reader.
A friend in the Army was in some kind of team competition that also included a SAS team and he said he could tell who they were just by looking - "nails" as they say.
I did make me think that if these guys are so easy to spot then it must make undercover work quite tricky!
I read about this yesterday, and spent last evening people watching. Either there are a lot of KGB-trained spies in my neighbourhood, a very high rate of Parkinsons, or there are other possible causes.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
I realize this is getting off-topic, but that's by far the funniest book I've ever read. I don't remember laughing out loud so consistently (or even, at all) at any other book. If anyone's interested, "Three men in a boat" is HIGHLY recommended. "Three men on a bummel(?)" was OK, but this book hurt my ribs because I laughed so much so hard. : )
Ah, to be able to write like that. Was that his only more-popular book, anyone know (wiki's not helpful)?
Better: People of the same age without weapons training.
High officials of other countries would also have had weapons training, so they'd make a bad control for the claim in question “weapons training → reduced right arm swing”.
What other countries have high officials trained by the KGB? Presumably this isn't standard advice given to all military men, because I've never heard of this before.
I guess Israeli officials (or any other country with conscription) will all have had military training. And, for example, Ariel Sharon was a special forces commander.
Same here. Especially after spending 8h clicking mouse on not very ergonomic office table. I also notice a lot of people (especially younger males) have one shoulder a bit higher/lower than the other. I can only speculate it's for the same reason.
Earlier this year I swapped mouse hands to spread the workload out more evenly with my weaker arm, was a fun experiment with I think pretty good results.
My left arm also swings more and I attribute this to carrying a backpack for a long time on my right shoulder and holding the backpack with right hand.
I've noticed in previous years that I have such a gait, and I have never had any sort of combat training. I always just assumed it was a result of wearing my wallet in my back, right pocket while I sat at work, which generally causes other imbalances in the spinal column.
