When John Wick hit the big screen, people immediately noticed something different — Keanu Reeves wasn’t holding his gun in a traditional stance. What he was using was Center Axis Relock (CAR), a shooting system developed by the late Paul Castle. Since then, CAR has generated curiosity, criticism, and confusion — mostly from people who never trained with Paul, let alone knew him. Many have tried to reverse-engineer the system from articles, YouTube videos, or secondhand stories. But I had the privilege of learning it firsthand.
I first heard about CAR in the spring or summer of 2001 from my good friend David “Dangerous Dave” Williams — a former Black Hat at the U.S. Army Airborne School and a seasoned detective from Decatur, Alabama. At the time, I was a police officer in Aberdeen, Maryland, serving on SWAT, teaching at the regional police academy, teaching report writing, officer survival, crisis negotiations and post shooting survival. Dave had recently joined the Tennessee National Guard and was activated to Aberdeen Proving Grounds after 911. That’s where our paths crossed.
Dave frequently crashed at my place on weekends to escape the barracks, and one night he told me about this guy — Paul Castle — and the CAR system. I was intrigued and reached out to Paul via email. A few weeks later, Paul was at our range, riding shotgun with me on patrol the first night he got to town. That night sparked a close friendship that lasted until Paul’s untimely passing from cancer in 2011.
The first CAR class I attended was a two-day, SWAT-only course covering pistol, rifle, and shotgun. By the next day, Paul invited me to become a CAR instructor. That course lasted a day. During his visit, I introduced Paul to my Sensei, David Bish of Red Dragon Ju Jitsu in Havre De Grace. The two hit it off immediately. It made sense — CAR is essentially ju-jitsu with a gun: minimum effort, maximum efficiency.
Sensei Bish, a retired 18D (Special Forces Medic), later joined me at what I believe was the first and last CAR Master Instructors Course held at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin — a five-day deep dive into the system with a handpicked group of police and military professionals. We trained in everything from less-lethal munitions and edged weapons to the intricacies of the CAR method. Learning took place in and out of the classroom. It was an unforgettable week — complete with late-night whiskey, parking brake falls out of the back of a pick up, and Bish, an Elvis impersonator belting out Suspicious Minds as the NCO Club. That night concluded with me stapling training materials together for the next day in Paul’s room after he passed out drunk.
In total, I trained under Paul Castle for seven days in person and have spent hundreds of hours teaching CAR over the past 23+ years. I say this not to flex — but to clarify that I’m not guessing or theorizing. I lived it. And I’m one of the few still teaching it.
CAR has always faced skepticism — often from instructors who felt threatened. Paul owned the system, and if you wanted to teach it, you had to go through him. That rubbed some people the wrong way. Others mocked the bladed stance, claiming it exposed officers and compromised body armor protection. Never mind that most officers naturally blade when dealing with suspects, and that detectives or off-duty officers usually aren’t wearing armor anyway.
The real resistance, I believe, came from ego and turf — not tactics.
Let’s get one thing straight: the average hit percentage in officer-involved shootings is a dismal 30%. Traditional stances like Weaver and Isosceles don’t address the realities of close-quarters gunfights. CAR does.
Here’s why it works:
- The farther a firearm is from your body, the more unnatural it becomes. Muscle fatigue sets in fast, especially under stress.
- CAR positions the weapon close to your center of gravity, improving control and reducing the chance of a suspect grabbing it.
- Traditional stances make a suspect’s hands — often at waist level — vanish below your muzzle line. In CAR, you can see the entire body, head to toe.
- CAR supports aggressive forward movement. Traditional stances encourage backpedaling — a poor strategy in confined spaces.
- The HIGH position, where the gun is tucked in as Paul would say “like holding a pint in the pub”, creates a stable, reactive platform for both offense and weapon retention.
- When extended into HIGH EXTENDED, it allows for fast, accurate fire with the entire silhouette of the firearm serving as a large, intuitive sight picture since it places the front sight your natural focal distance of 11-13 inches, this is where your front sights are using traditional two-handed shooting positions. This makes the front site look like a pie plate over the target instead of little dot.
My old friend Luke Blaser — who introduced me to traditional Japanese Ju Jitsu back in ’92 when I was a young PFC in the 523rd Military Police Company on APG MD and he was my squad leader, and later my best man — has been on me for years to teach him CAR. Recently, during a visit to Fort Worth for the Renegade Pigs MC national convention, he finally got the chance. With little explanation, I walked him through “ground school” using a Blue Gun for five minutes. Then he loaded up and put nine rounds center mass, followed by a headshot at 3 yards in 5 seconds. The look on his face said it all. “Why didn’t I think of this?” he asked.
Exactly.
Luke, now retired from East Moline PD after an honorable career that included time as a firearms instructor and K9 handler, became only the second person ever to receive full certification in my Modern Combative System — my fighting system that integrates open-hand combatives, edged and impact weapons, and handgun use in close quarters against multiple attackers within the space of a parking spot.
CAR makes up the backbone of our handgun work. And if I only had 15 minutes to teach someone how to survive a deadly force encounter, CAR is what I’d teach. It’s intuitive. It works. It saves lives.
Paul Castle faced a lot of heat in his time. But his legacy lives on. If more instructors cared about bringing officers home instead of protecting their brands, we might have fewer names on the Law Enforcement Memorial in D.C.
As Paul used to say, maybe one day we’ll see a “change of conditions” — where instructors will be required to evidence what they teach on the range before someone bleeds because of it on the street.
If you’re in Fort Worth and want to learn the Modern Combative System and/or Center Axis Relock, call me at 682-220-9550.
If you’re near Palm Coast, Florida, call Blaser at 386-473-1385 or check out Whiskey Six Tactical online.
To my Brother Paul, fair winds and flowing seas, until we meet again.
Train like your life depends on it — because someday, it just might.
