[nfnaaron]

"(After ensuring the gun was unloaded) one of us would point the pistol right at the other's head."

Fail. Absolute fail.

We say "the gun is always loaded" even when we "know" it is not, because if we never, ever point a gun at something that we don't want to destroy, we will never make that one in a million mistake.

Fail. Sorry for the forcefulness, but this kind of gun "play" always deserves to be called out and discouraged.

[nkurz]

I think you are wrong. I agree with you, in the sense that I would not feel comfortable doing this. "The gun is always loaded" is great rule, as is "Never point a gun at something you don't want to shoot". But it has its limits, and context is important.

Assume that you're a hostage negotiator, or someone in the police or military that otherwise expects to end up in a situation where someone is pointing a presumably loaded weapon at you at close range. I think there's a good argument to be made that you should train for this circumstance under the most realistic conditions you can muster, rather than hoping that your first live experience will go just the way it did on paper. If having a real gun pointed at you helps to simulate and train your real life response, this might be a good strategy.

Personally, as someone not in such a field, I'll spend the bulk of my efforts on figuring out how to avoid such situations. But for a professional training for a situation they expect to encounter, this is not 'play'.

[nfnaaron]

Agreed that there are a small percentage of people who are professionals, for whom the risk of live practice is probably worth the risk, also considering the likelihood that they would have to deploy their skills in this way.

For the rest of us (and I didn't see anything to suggest that these two martial artists were practicing in a professional context), the likelihood of needing to deploy this skill in a real attack is small, and if you want to practice such a skill as self defence you should be doing it with a fake gun, or at most in a way described by novas0x2a's link to the Tueller drill.

To invoke a programming saying, "you ain't gonna need it."

[nradov]

Professionals are not that stupid to point real guns at their friends' heads. They use special training models which can't actually shoot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glock_pistol#Training_variants

[gaius]

Google "operant conditioning".

[nkurz]

I've done so, and think I am generally familiar with the concept. I don't see any direct connection. Could you explain the relevance that you see?

[gaius]

It's why modern militaries prefer to train with real weapons. In the scenario the OP mentioned, it's about getting accustomed to facing a real weapon.

Note that I'm not advocating this for "play", or even amateur martial arts. Someone training for situations in which a real weapon will be pointed at them and they have to remain calm will benefit tho'. (I'm offering evidence to support your point BTW, not arguing with you!)