Eyes Closed on Mount Olympus

It's hard to convince people who live on Mount Olympus to prepare to defend themselves.  We capitalize on fear, which the modern American would say is a very sleazy way to make money.  When there is a national tragedy, people focus on protection.  Purveyors of violence, in those times, make money.

The modern American who believes the gun industry and the shooting industry are sleazy are themselves morons. These people have no concept of how fragile human life really is, and how easy it is to lose it to a bad person.  This is the Mount Olympus mentality that modern America has been brainwashed into.  This is where combat veterans could be useful in society, not just because of our skills with violence, but because we have seen how life is off of Mount Olympus.  Off of Mount Olympus, life is cheap.  In the second and third world, death is a constant companion, and people don't need national tragedies to wake up to that reality.

My proof of this is national delusion is that the only people who do not suffer from it, are labelled with a disease by our health care providers.  Combat veterans are exposed to the reality of the world outside our borders.  Death and destruction are ways of life for despots and fanatics.  When they come home they are diagnosed with PTSD or Acute Combat Stress because they had their eyes opened too far.  I view this as the fundamental problem with American society since the Vietnam War; we willfully deny and ignore the real world because it is too scary.  And anybody who has experienced that real world, thrived in it, are equally scary to the rest of society.  But, combat opens our eyes to the fragility of human life, which actually makes us appreciate it a lot more than those who have never had it threatened.  The real disease is not over-exposure to the violence of the real world; the real disease is the delusional denial that the real world is not like our fiction on Mount Olympus.

Which is why, when a national tragedy like Las Vegas or Orlando happens, people are shocked and all of the sudden motivated to protect themselves.  For a month, anyway, then they forget and go back to living with their heads in the sand.  Terrorist attacks like those are cracks in the bubble our society has built around its collective conscious to lie to itself about how safe they are.  So, for a few weeks, people get really motivated to be prepared for the next attack.  They go buy a gun, shoot it a couple of times, then lock it in a safe on their nightstand and delude themselves into thinking they are even safer.  They take it out shooting once every five years...whether they need to or not.  This is duct tape that they put over the crack in the bubble that is letting in the light from the real world.  It is where the firearms industry and the shooting industry make their money.  Is that sleazy?

Maybe, but why does it take a terrorist attack for people to wake up to the reality of how fragile their lives are and how valuable they are, and thus worthy of protecting?  Why people are not focused on this all the time is the problem, not that people capitalize on it when it is on people's minds.  That's the big problem; people see the Las Vegas shooting and remember that "oh yeah, I was going to get a gun," or, "I really need to get the family into a one day self-defense seminar and then we will be safe."  That's all duct tape.

I end all of my classes by telling the students that shooting is a sport like any other and to get good at it, you have to practice.  Practice does not mean you take the gun out of the nightstand safe once every five years, or even every year or six months, then go to an indoor range that is completely sterile and controlled and put holes through bulls-eyes.  I recommend to them that they shoot at least once a month, if not twice a month.  Shoot as much as they can afford.  Don't focus only on accuracy, either, go somewhere that allows people to move around and shoot, to shoot from different angles, different positions, etc.  Then, don't go back and lock the gun in the safe for another five years.  It's not doing any good in there.  I tell people that I treat my pistol like a piece of clothing; I put it on in the morning and take it off when I go to bed, and at no point is it ever more than arms reach away from me.  I train with it every weekend.

Why do I do this?  Because the first combat patrol I went on in Iraq, from the airfield I flew into driving to the Forward Operating Base I was to be stationed at, I did not have a gun.  We drew our rifles from the arms room when we arrived at the FOB.  That was a miserable experience.  When I got back, I though I was "back in the world," that I was safe and sound, so I locked up the one pistol I owned then in a nightstand safe and thought I was good.  Then a guy tried to carjack me in a dark alley in the middle of the night, and I pointed my finger at him and he thought I had a gun in the dim light.  He cursed, turned and ran away.  Except when I'm on an airplane (in which case I'm armed another way), I always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have a gun on me.

Am I paranoid?  Yes.  And that is the point of this article.  People are not paranoid enough in this country, because they want to live with their heads in the sand and pretend that violence doesn't exist.  They want to pretend that violence is the enemy, not the people who use violence as a tool to accomplish political or economic goals.  They want to wish it away.  You can't wish away violence.  Combat does not damage people, combat opens our eyes to the true horror of how easy it is to damage people.  America has to open its eyes.  Start preparing for combat ALL THE TIME, because you never know when the ambush is going to happen.

We instructors are frustrated because we want people to be safe.  I want people to be hard targets.  The more people we make hard targets, the harder target our country becomes.  But it takes courage on the part of our people to look outside of that delusion bubble our collective conscious has created, and recognize how easy it is to lose life.  Then, looking at it full in the face courageously, one has to have the commitment to train enough to become a hard target.  Be capable of shooting somebody trying to do you or your family harm.  To do that requires an eyes-wide-open, head-out-of-the-sand view of the world.  Go down to your local VFW and talk to some Vietnam Vets about how they view the human body, and how easy it is to destroy it.  They don't revel in it; but they totally understand how to exploit it should combat find them again.  They survived for a reason, because they were better at violence than their enemies.  Better means cheating, because cheating is winning.

Last point: you never need a gun until you really need a gun.  There are very few legitimate reasons not to be armed.  If you're in a place that does not allow it, like an airplane or a government office building with a bunch of cops who are there to protect law abiding citizens like you, then leave it locked in the trunk of your car.  But, otherwise, be armed.

Thanks,
Soule
Easy 6

True Self-Defense

Part 4: True Self-Defense

So if a bar fight isn't Self-Defense and Self-Defense isn't a bar fight, what is Self-Defense?  It is the legal determination made by a criminal justice official that the force used to defeat an assailant was justified.  It is absolutely not anything that any instructor in armed or unarmed combat teaches you.  But it is combat.

As I write this, I literally just got back from a fascinating conversation about the topic.  I was telling a friend about what I have been writing about when a young man at the next table asked to join us.  He asked me what system of martial arts I would use if somebody came up and threw a punch at me in the bar.  I told him none.  Instead I would offer to buy the assailant a drink.  He then told me and my friend a story about inadvertently spilling a drink on somebody at a bar, and then offering to buy the guy a drink.  The offended party took a swing at him.  This young man was a martial artist who blocked the punch, kneed the guy in the gut and then kneed him in the temple.  Then, he ran out of the bar.  I asked him, why did you run?  He answered because he was afraid of the legal consequences.  That proves the point!

This is a great illustration of what self-defense is not.  I told him, the martial arts instructors he had been studying under for ten years had lied to him.  The technique he used was not self-defense.  If it had been, he would not have feared the legal consequences of kneeing a person in the temple.  I said it was great martial arts, but it was not justifiable self-defense.  You can't knee a person in the head, causing Damage, when there is no legitimate threat of death or grievous bodily harm.

Then the "What Ifs" began in the conversation.  Well, what if he had connected and knocked him to the ground and the guy started kicking him in the ribs?  Or, bashing his face in?  Or, stomping his ribs and puncturing a lung?  All of these are really good technical questions about martial arts.  They have nothing to do with actual Self-Defense.  My answer is why didn't he just walk away after his apology was rejected?

True Self-Defense is combat.  It does not matter if you are armed or unarmed.  If you are not justified in shooting somebody, or stabbing somebody, then you are not justified in maiming them with your bare hands.  My young friend did not get it.  I told him that he (and I) had been lied to by martial arts instructors about the definition of self-defense.  They told us that it was a technique to end a fight.  Kneeing somebody in the temple is a good way to end a fight.  It is absolutely an over-reaction to a school-yard pissing contest.

If it is not a combat situation, meaning a situation in which you face death or grievous bodily harm, then there is absolutely no justification for causing death or grievous bodily harm to the other person.  He is very lucky he did not kill that person.

But, don't I have a right to defend myself?  Sure you do.  But, why did you get into the altercation in the first place?  Why?  Because egos got involved.  Be a gentleman, apologize and offer to make recompense.  If your offer is refused, then walk away.  If you try to walk away, and are still assaulted, then, and only then, could you justifiably hurt the other person.  That is a self-defense situation.  That is a situation where somebody is deliberately preventing you from leaving by their use of force.

The problem with the martial arts is that they train people to be able to do something, but don't explain when it is appropriate to do something.  I used to teach people how to use a weapon for intimidation.  Until a friend of mine got charged with "Menacing," for doing just that.  He was trying to not hurt somebody, but nonetheless broke the law.  It was not a situation in which he would have been justified in using the weapon, so brandishing it is an unjustified show of force.  Bashing someone's temple in because of a misunderstanding at the bar is also an unjustified use of force.

There is absolutely no reason for a bar fight.  I have been in a lot of bars.  I have spilled drinks in bars.  I have had drinks spilled on me.  I have never not been able to use social skills to resolve any issue I found myself in.  Tim Larkin calls it "The Three Day Test."  Every action of violence you are a part of must pass this test to be justified: three days from now how will this instance effect my life?  Will I be in jail?  Will I be in a morgue?  Will I put somebody in a morgue over a spilled drink, or in an intensive care unit?  Is any of that worth it?

If you are not justified in killing the person, it is not self-defense, and it is not worth getting into a bar-fight over.  Now, if the guy comes into the bar and starts stabbing people at random--which is happening now in parts of the world--then by all means knee him in the gut and then in the temple.  That is self-defense.  Which, to me, begs the question why are you not armed?  I would not have to knee such a person in the head, because I would either stab them or, in another setting, shoot them.  I carry a gun or a knife everywhere I go, and I have never had to use either of them since returning from Iraq.  But why would I put myself at a disadvantage if I am only ever going to defend myself in true violent criminal situations?  You can’t just shoot everybody that makes you mad.  You can’t punch them in the trachea either. But if there is a real dangerous predator doing violent crime against people, kill him.  But kill him efficiently.  Why would you go up and get into a boxing match with a guy wielding a knife?

I don't believe that armed citizenry adds to violence.  In fact, I believe that armed citizenry sometimes deters and often cuts-short violent criminal acts.  I would never get into a fist fight in a bar.  But, if a madman came into a bar and started shooting or stabbing people, and I was in a location where I could do something about it, then I would certainly stab the bastard.  That caveat is crucial.  I wrote about the Las Vegas Shooting and how you can't accomplish the legal use of lethal force if you are not in a position to do so.

All of the preceding is basically a book report on my takeaways from Tim Larkin's new book, When Violence is the Answer.  I really, truly encourage reading it.  www.timlarkin.com to order a copy from Amazon and get enrolled in the online program.  He is the best philosopher of violence I have come across.  He really delves into the two types of violence: one is a social situation, like the young man who got into the bar fight.  The other is an asocial act of a professional predator, where there is no posturing, no yelling back and forth, just a rapid application of lethal violence in a cold and calculated manner.  There are significant legal and physical penalties for getting the two confused.  Stop training for a play-ground fight that is wholly avoidable, and start training to kill the truly dangerous sociopath.  And train to kill him in the most efficient way you have at your disposal at the moment.  If that is an M1 Abrams tank, then use it; if it is just a pocket knife, use it.  Unarmed combat is the last resort; that doesn't mean you shouldn't study it, it means you should hope to never have to use it because you have some sort of tool to extend your physical abilities.

Next Week: Why We Instructors are Frustrated

Thanks,
Soule
Easy 6

And Fighting is not Self-Defense

Part 3: The Flip Side of the Coin: School-Yard Fist Fights are not Self-Defense

Self-Defense is not a bar fight, nor is a bar fight self-defense.  More dangerous than teaching over-reaction is the Industry teaching massive under-reaction to real violence.  Most traditional martial arts are teaching adults how to fight like children on a playground when their lives are in real jeopardy in a violent criminal encounter.  They are teaching people kickboxing against a guy with a gun.  Or how to grapple with a dozen guys, because the UFC convinced them that Brazilian Jujitsu is the greatest system of fighting ever devised.  Teaching adults how to fight instead of how to apply lethal force in truly dangerous situations leads to both more unnecessary, hot-headed physical violence and to less understanding and preparedness for actual life-threatening criminal violence.  Violent crime is not school-yard bullying.

Let me be very clear, I started studying martial arts as a juvenile, and I loved it.  I think that is when it is appropriate.  That is when the school-yard politics are real.  The threat of adult prosecution makes fighting inappropriate at bars and traffic lights or anywhere but a ring as an adult.  Again, fighting is not self-defense.  That is one thing that the “reality based” systems actually get right.  But most traditional martial arts don’t even acknowledge the difference between fighting and defense against criminal violence.  Fighting when you need to be killing is more physically dangerous than the legal dangers of the over-reacting described previously.  It is suicidal to try to apply some traditional martial arts fighting moves to punch and kick or grapple your way out of a situation where self-defense (justifiable killing and maiming) are called for to prevent grievous bodily harm to you or a loved one.  The karate guys, the guys that train kids to fight in the school-yard, tragically continue to train adults the same exact things.  So, when a truly violent criminal comes up with real intent to do real Damage to somebody, the victims starts kickboxing like it is some sort of competition on a mat or a ring.  That will get you not arrested and prosecuted, but killed and buried.  So instead of teaching you to be way too violent in a fake self-defense situation, they are teaching you to be not nearly violent enough in a real self-defense situation.

Once again, think about what they are teaching you.  Are they teaching you how to punch and kick?  Or, are they teaching you where to punch and kick?  If it’s the former, they are teaching you how to fight, which is competition not self-defense.  That’s great if you are a competitor and participate in tournaments, and that is your goal for studying martial arts.  But, it’s worthless in a real violent situation where somebody wants to cause you grievous physical harm or death.  In a truly violent criminal encounter, you need to know how to efficiently defend yourself.  For example, the WIDTH principles I have talked about at length in the past can be used to efficiently kill or maim a violent criminal trying to do you grievous bodily harm.  If it is truly a self-defense situation, where you are legally justified in using lethal force, then there is no reason not to use a knife or gun or a weapon of opportunity at your disposal.  Most martial arts are teaching you to believe that the ten step technique they have had you (and me, by the way) practice a thousand times is going to somehow protect you from a violent predator, when instead you could have just stabbed him in the throat before he stabbed you.  So, what traditional martial arts are really doing is trying to teach you to be some sort of pacifist warrior-monk that will never truly harm somebody in a permanent way, which is not surprising considering the origins of traditional martial arts.  That mentality will get you killed in a situation where it is the predator or the prey that survives.

Again, past the age of 18, I do not believe that traditional martial arts are a useful thing to study, unless you are going to dedicate yourself to, as Luke Holloway says, “self-perfection not self-protection” through the mastery of the art.  By “traditional martial art,” I mean a style or system that is teaching you to get into a kickboxing match; a system that is teaching you how to hit, not where to hit.  If you are studying the same techniques at a McDojo that somebody is teaching ten year olds, and you expect to survive a violent criminal act using those fighting skills, you are insane.  We teach kids how to fight, we teach adults how to defend.  To “defend” is not a word that means I can block a punch and counter-punch/kick or slip him into an arm-bar and “win” by hurting him a little bit more than he hurts me; that’s a competition.  Calling that “self-defense” is the myth that martial arts dojos have told people for a half century.  Self-defense is really the legal determination that I was justified in using lethal force (killing or maiming) against somebody who was trying to do me grievous bodily harm.  That's not trading punches and crescent kicks.  Just like a bar-fight isn’t self-defense, conversely, an armed robbery is not the school-yard political struggle.  Using tactics designed for the school-yard or the competition ring will get you killed in a true violent criminal encounter.

Self-Defense isn't a bar fight, and a bar fight is not Self-Defense!

My caveat: The only adults who should be learning to fight instead of learning self-defense are cops, bouncers and security guards.  They have a professional responsibility to not apply lethal force to non-lethal situations, while at the same time stopping violence.  They have to know how to control physically aggressive people without maiming or killing them.  If you are not in one of those positions, and are over the age of 18, learning how to wrestle with somebody in a violent crime situation will get you killed.  Notice I did not include military personnel, because I think we have done a huge disservice to our military by teaching them a bunch of non-lethal bull crap instead of how to kill an enemy with their bare hands the way our grandfathers learned in World War Two and Korea.

Next up: True Self-Defense

Self-Defense is not "Fighting"

Part 2: The First Side of the Coin—Self-Defense is not Fighting

This brings me to the Self-Defense Industry, which makes a lot of money teaching people very bad philosophy.  I studied a system of fighting for a couple of years that was marketed as purely a real world self-defense system.  Like every other martial art I studied, the first thing they taught was a technique against a collar grab, but in this system you responded to it by gouging out both of the attackers eyes, taking him to the ground and stomping his head.  I loved this system.  It was the most “effective” system I had studied up to that point.  It really did teach you to defeat most common types of attacks in a matter of seconds…and then go to prison for a few decades for applying lethal force in a situation where it was completely unjustifiable according to the law.  So, that is one problem with the Industry, the “effective” systems—the “reality based” styles—are teaching people to kill or maim when somebody pushes them or grabs their collar.  Unless you are a ten year old girl about to get abducted, using lethal force (which is what maiming is considered in most statutes) is not justified when somebody grabs your collar.  It is not, legally, Self-Defense.  They are teaching massive over-reaction to school-yard type conflicts.

“Fighting” is fisticuffs or competition.  Fighting is not “self-defense,” which I define as the justifiable (according to the legal system) use of lethal force in a violent criminal encounter.  Recognizing the difference is one thing that the “reality based” systems actually get right.  But then they teach people how to crush throats and break necks in every situation where somebody takes a swing at one of their students.  Think of every Krav Maga video you see on youtube; they all start with a push and a punch, and the Krav guy uses some sort of lethal force (killing or maiming) in response.  That is not a defensible “defense” and it is going to land you in prison if you over-react like that.

Think about what a system is teaching you.  Are they teaching you how to punch and kick?  Or, are they teaching you where to punch and kick?  If it’s the former, they are teaching you how to fight, which is competition.  If it is the latter, they are teaching you a system of self-defense, and that is great if somebody is actually trying to hurt you.  But, it is worthless in a fight, an altercation that can be wholly avoided and defused by not being an egotistical prick, unless you want to go to prison.  You can’t crush somebody’s trachea because they pushed you at a bar.

I think it is a terrible idea to teach kids under the age of 18 a “self-defense system” that involves gouging out somebody’s eye, or stomping their spine in half.  The reason I am writing these is because I heard a parent the other day talking about putting his son into a Krav Maga class.  His son was between seven and ten years old.  You cannot entrust the capability for lethal violence into the moral minds of a nine year old!  We should teach kids how to fight, not how to kill and maim.  We should teach adults how to defend, and when it is appropriate to do so.  To “defend” means that you can apply justified lethal force in a truly dangerous violent situation.  In a criminal act of violence “Self-Defense,” is the legal determination which justified killing or maiming a predator.  Self-defense does not mean you can break a man’s neck because he grabbed you by the collar in a bar.  It means you can break a man’s neck because he put a knife to your collar, and offers to slit your throat in an alley.  A bar fight is not the act of a dangerously violent criminal; it is a school-yard conflict with egos vying for social dominance.  Teaching kids to use lethal violence in such a case is incredibly dangerous and patently immoral.  Further, adults using such tactics, designed to defend against a truly dangerous criminal, in an ego-driven pissing contest for social elevation/dominance, will get sent to prison for a very long time!

Self-Defense is not a bar fight!  Next: Nor is Fighting Self-Defense.

Instructors' Quantity vs. Quality

Part 1: Quantity versus Quality

The next several blogs are going to be a series dispelling some myths about self-defense.  First, we have to recognize that there are two applicable definitions for self-defense.  One is an industry that teaches shooting, fighting, stabbing, tactics, etc.  The other is the more important definition of self-defense, which is the legal finding of a justified use of force.  I will try to make a distinction in the following between the self-defense industry (hereafter referred to as the Industry) and the legal concepts of self-defense being a legal determination.  To that end, let me dispel some Industry mythology.  Self-defense (the legal outcome) does not require a lifetime of training to accomplish.

I teach shooting, so I will focus on that.  But, I have studied martial arts off and on, in a number of different styles, including two that taught knife fighting; which I have said in the past makes me not an expert so much as a knowledgeable observer.  It does not take a Navy SEAL or a Green Beret to shoot somebody and win in a self-defense situation.  In fact, I would argue, the vast majority of people that use guns for legal self-defense do so specifically because they are not otherwise physically capable of fighting off a criminal aggressor.  The vast majority of the forces fighting the Global War on Terrorism are not special operations forces, yet they shoot and kill their way out of ambushes all the time.  When I was in, it was not an everyday occurrence; rather it was an every hour occurrence somewhere in Iraq.  Very few of those ambushes were against special operations forces, most were in fact against support troops or logisticians moving materiel or supplies around the battlefield.  But, every one of those support troops was a graduate of some sort of Basic Training that taught them how to shoot an M16 well enough to get out of the kill zone.

The same is true in armed self-defense.  All you have to do is get to your pistol and put two or three rounds into a rib cage from typically a very short range.  You don’t have to be an Operator to do that.  Nor do you have to be a Ninja to fight to your gun…which is an ironic perception in America of Ninjas, who almost never fought unarmed and certainly never fought fair.  You don’t have to be a martial arts master to get to your gun, all you have to know is some critical soft targets that allow you to fight to the gun, and fight for the gun in order to fight with the gun.  If you are right handed and somebody tries to perpetrate a violent crime against you, put your left thumb in their eye while you draw your gun with your right hand and empty the magazine/cylinder into them.

I can teach you to do that very effectively in four hours, not four weeks.  Why do I bring this up?  I have said before that there is a difference between good and good enough.  So, this is where I will make the argument for quantity versus quality.  I want every law abiding adult in America to carry a gun and be good enough to use it in a situation where they can save the lives of themselves or their loved ones.  That is good enough to survive.  That is not making them hunter-killers or combat arms soldiers, or even remotely special operators.  But the vast majority of people who are found to have used violence in a justifiable instance of self-defense are none of those things either.  So, as instructors, why are we spending so much effort training Johnny Six Pack how to be a sniper or how to enter and clear like a SWAT team?

Now, I know how to blow door knobs off, dynamically breach walls, enter and clear a room, use Bangalore Torpedoes as improvised breaching charges, and a lot of other cool stuff that made me a good combat engineer.  This does not make me a special operator by any means, but my unit kicked-, rammed-, shot-, and blew-down many doors and killed and captured quite a few bad guys in Iraq.  But, none of those skills are valuable to an armed citizen faced with a mugging, an armed robbery, a rape or other violent crime.  So, why is the Industry so focused on teaching thousand yard shooting, sub-machinegun bursting, AR-15 pie-ing corners (by the way, if you are using an AR-15 inside your own home, buy a $150 shotgun), or throwing flash bangs into a room before clearing it?  What kind of lifestyles are your students living where they would need these skills?

Don’t get me wrong, if money is no object to a student and they have the leisure time to invest in learning these things, they can be a lot of fun.  I am not morally or legally opposed to teaching people how to do tactics.  I am simply saying, I think we would make America safer by spending that same amount of time putting a dozen people through a basic training with a pistol, rather than one person through an advanced tactical scenario course.  I used to teach a lot more advanced pistol tactics in my classes, but then I realized that what I should be spending time on is getting more people comfortably proficient with guns.  I also realized that there is a huge disparity of learning in people who take the same class on the range, and it is better to train slow enough so the weakest shooter in the class gets good enough rather than maximizing the capability of the strongest shooter.  If the strongest shooter has to practice the same drill five more times so that the weakest shooter can get it right, then that is not a bad thing.  That only makes the strongest shooter that much better at that drill.  Practicing a drill that one has already mastered five more times does not hinder learning, even if it is not as "cool" as everything else the instructor knows.

This is not to say that the quality of the training should be cookie-cutter, fast-food, stamping out of concealed carry permits.  I think my classes are significantly better than most, because I spend much more time on the range than most basic pistol instructors.  I teach people how to confidently carry and use a pistol for self-defense, not just how to take one to the range and operate it safely in a completely controlled environment.  But, I do not try to teach them how to rescue hostages.  I don’t even try to teach them a fire-team wedge, because that has nothing to do with Self-Defense—the legal term.

It is better for the country to get a dozen people comfortable, confident and competent carrying a dozen .38 pistols than one person who is a master at rescuing hostages.  That is quantity over quality.  That is increasing our national security by increasing our homeland security, making us a harder target.  One bullet puts that really good master out of commission.  But it takes twelve bullets to put my squad of basic pistoleers out of action.  In facing violent crime, not skyjackings, I think the more bang for the buck are that dozen.  So, I teach people to be good enough to survive and thrive in violent criminal encounters.  I don’t need to teach them how to take out Bin Laden.  We have men to do that job already trained by our government.  I would rather train a lot of people to take out the armed robber who comes into the convenience store in the middle of the night while you’re out getting ice cream for a pregnant spouse.  That is making us a harder target.  This is our first problem as an Industry, trying to teach civilians a bunch of military Tactics, Techniques and Procedures that they do not need to know to defend themselves, but make us "shooters" feel so impressive and cool.  One of the best martial arts instructors I ever had made that distinction clearly; a good instructor teaches to the student's level not his/her own level.

Next: Self-Defense is not "Fighting"

Slim is better than zilch.

Somebody asked me this week, “What would you have done if you were at the concert in Las Vegas?”

I would have done what everybody else did, get to safety, and hopefully helped others to safety.  The point of their question was what can an armed citizen do in a situation like that?  I understand the question, but it gets back to my earlier writings, having a concealed carry pistol is not going to protect you from everything.  Self-defense is a percentages game.  When somebody dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it didn’t matter how many pistols they had, but I’m sure some shot at the B29 anyway, which is the point of the following.

There are two issues I want to talk about in regards to the Las Vegas shooting.  The first is the following hypothetical in response to the question I was asked.  If I was at the concert could I have done anything?  No.  But, what if the guy across the hall had a Glock?  Or the guy in the next room over had a Berretta?  He was allowed to shoot for nine minutes into the crowd because it took the first responder nine minutes to get to him.  If there was a good person with a gun closer to end his murderous rampage, maybe fewer people would have been victims.

So, the question to ask is not: what would you have done if you were at the concert?  The question is: what would you have done if you were in a place where you could affect the outcome?  Nobody in the crowd could affect any outcome other than through treatment of wounded, which by the way was incredibly heroic and the example we should aspire to and the lesson we should learn from this heinous act.  But, if an armed citizen had been in proximity to the shooter, innocent lives MAY have been saved.  Which leads me to the philosophical, larger picture perspective used to respond to proponents of tighter gun control: we are not safer if we are weaker.

The proponents of more gun control will be successful in arguing in the coming weeks that certain types of firearms are what led to the scale of this heinous act in Las Vegas.  They may have a point.  But, in general, making people weaker makes them more susceptible to being victimized, not less so.  The proponents of gun control will argue that in this situation the probability of an armed citizen being effective in stopping the mass shooting would have been very slim.  Which brings me to the second point.

Slim is better than zilch.  That is one of the cornerstones of my self-defense philosophy.  Even if you are getting your butt kicked by Chuck Liddell, you have to at least try to fight back.   The odds are, you are going to lose.  But, even if you only have a one percent chance of winning, that is still one percent more than if you surrender your life.  Probabilities matter to statisticians; if it is your life on the line, a tiny margin for success is better than certain death.  Todd Beamer and the heroes of United Flight 93 taught us that.  Even if you only have a tiny likelihood of success, failure to act is a one hundred percent chance of failure.  Marcus Luttrell talks about that in his book Lone Survivor, about crawling seven miles with a shattered face and multiple bullet wounds.  He just refused to give up to certain death.

I am not saying everybody has to be a Navy SEAL.  I am saying that even when your chances are extremely slim, when death is certain if you don’t try, then you must take the chance and try to win.  If somebody is going to shoot or stab you anyway, or fly an airplane into a building, or detonate their shoe on a plane, you have nothing to lose by attacking.  This is what untrained, unexposed people never seem to understand.  They want a world of absolutes.  Either we are absolutely safe, because we get rid of all the guns, knives, wars, racists, sexists, et cetera, et cetera, or they think they are in absolute danger.  It is a black and white way of thinking about the world.  But, the fact is, in a violent situation, it is all about percentages.  Two evenly matched people in a street fight each have a fifty-fifty chance.  But, even if you are completely out-matched and it’s a ninety-ten split on odds; you have to take the ten percent chance in a combat situation.  If you don’t, you become the victim.  Refusal to be a victim means you might lose, and you might even die, but you will not be taken easily like some crying lamb to the slaughter.

Also, you should train.  You should get to where the odds are in your favor, recognizing that there are some truly evil people in the world who you can't predict.  That is what happened in Las Vegas last weekend.  But, being weaker does not make you safer.

Slim is better than zilch!

Soule

(Easy 6)

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Intimidation In Defense is Indefensible

My personal philosophy of self-defense has been altered this summer by some studying and learning about violence other than warfare.  What changed was my belief in intimidation or scaring people off, or call it "Deescalation" if you want.  In the military we would call it a "show of force," or a "demonstration," in order to divert attention or intimidate an enemy.  It's a tenant of Army doctrine that I have used effectively in combat.  I drove a company of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles through a neighborhood the day after an ambush to scare them; and it worked.

How is this relevant?  I used to advocate the occasional open carry for people with concealed carry permits.  There are three reasons I personally open carried a pistol on occasion, even though I have and teach concealed carry.  The first is simply a business decision and probably not relevant to most people, but it was a form of advertising for my firearms instruction business.  The second is the most rational, which is that I did it because I can.  I tell people that a right not exercised is a right forfeited.  I still believe this to be true, by the way, and I still get advertising out of open carry.  The third one is the one I am having an issue with; the demonstration of firearms makes for a more polite society.

There are two parts of politeness.  I believe the more people who are afraid of guns are exposed to good people with guns, who are not committing crimes with those guns, the less afraid of those guns they will be.  It is desensitization and it really does decrease people's irrational fears about guns; it shows that guns do not just go off like a hand grenade and kill everybody in the room.  That I think is actually a very valid reason too.  But, the other aspect of making society polite is a type of demonstration.  This is the concept that has changed in my personal philosophy.

It is intimidating and can lead to legal consequences regardless of intention.  In a hyper-sensitive, hyper-polarized and hyper-wussified society that some people live in, my arguments for open carry can be thrown right out the window.  It is illegal to intimidate somebody with a firearm.  Intimidating them is a very subjective, victim-defined state of being.  Which is a very bad place to be if you are the gun holder and the cops show up and somebody accuses you of intimidating them or displaying a firearm in a threatening manner.

So, I am changing what I teach about open carry to be more coherent with the rest of self-defense philosophy.  You are only ever justified in using a weapon if you have a legitimate fear for you life.  Using a weapon to "deescalate" a situation, while it might save your life and the life of your opponent, can be a huge hornets nest you do not want to put your hand into.  There are also some tactical reasons why you may not want to open carry, unless you have some weapons retention training.  But, defending yourself with a demonstration of force, while it might morally seem like a better option than killing somebody, legally it may be the worst thing you can do.  Also, it can become a slippery slope where you are more likely to USE your firearm not as a bullet projecting machine, but as a visual indicator of threat.

Why am I changing my belief?  For one thing, a friend of mine got charged with Menacing with a firearm in the last year, for doing nothing wrong.  But also, I want to get my students and readers to stop "fighting" and just kill people who need to be killed.  I have to define "fighting" in this context: getting into a pointless competition of testosterone-driven stupidity.  Road rage, bar fights, dick measuring contests of all types, trying to become the baddest dude on the block.  Those are all contests.  You are not justified in killing people in contests.  So, if you are truly justified in defending yourself, you should never have to display or brandish a weapon at somebody.  You should just draw and fire because you are in mortal danger.  If you are not meeting that standard of threat, you can't use a weapon to defend yourself, and brandishing or threatening somebody with a weapon is USING it.  If it is a truly life or death situation, and you just brandish a weapon at somebody, but are unwilling to pull the trigger, you have given a tool and Initiative to a bad guy.  In those situations, where there is no posturing or dominance behavior, there is just violence, then you are justified in using a weapon in self-defense.

I think shooting sports, Mixed Martial Arts and video game reset buttons have on the one hand coarsened us to CONTROLLED violence, but on the other hand brainwashed us into believing those things are reality.  Those are very sterile.  Actual combat is very chaotic, uncontrolled and messy.  It is generally to be avoided at all cost, and introducing an attempt to intimidate people to "deescalate" a situation with a show of--impotent--force, usually will end very badly.  Either, you committed a crime by "menacing" somebody through a threat of force, in which case you can face criminal justice consequences.  Or, worse, if you are unwilling to pull the trigger and just want to "scare off" the bad guy and he does not buy it, he will take that weapon from you, victimize you however he was going to in the first place, and then kill you with it in the end.  So, unless you are justified in using a weapon to kill somebody IN SELF-DEFENSE, the use of it to NOT KILL SOMEBODY will be wholly INDEFENSIBLE at your trial.

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Soule
Easy 6

PS: I will caveat this to say, however, open carry by itself is not an act of intimidation, and until you get a concealed carry permit, it is always better to have a gun and not need it than need it and not have it.  So, get your concealed carry, but until then it's better to offend some people than die for want of a gun a week before you got your permit in the mail.