I harp on the concept of aggression a lot.
Aggression gets a bad name in society, which is probably justified, but a
self-defense situation is not society, it is in fact the deliberate
betrayal of the social contract that makes a group of people into a
”society.” In that state of anarchy, where survival is at stake, aggression’s bad name goes out the window.
To survive an armed self-defense situation—or any
self-defense situation for that matter—you must become the aggressor. I
tell my students that they have to develop a “switch” that goes from
ordinary, mild-mannered citizen to warrior in a split second. The
easiest way I can teach that is to teach forward movement. As the
victim of a violent encounter, you do not have the luxury of initiating
the altercation, otherwise you are a criminal. This means that you have
to TAKE the Initiative away from your attacker. You do that by
becoming the aggressor and moving forward; in other words: attacking
your attacker. You are not attacking somebody if you are moving
backwards.
Which is the point of this blog post: never move
backwards! To prove my point I am going to give an example that on the
face of it looks to disprove my point, but it illustrated a need for me
to be clearer in how I explained a technique on the range. I taught a
class recently where I was demonstrating extreme close range
presentation and firing of the pistol. Extreme close range I define as
arm’s length away. That is essentially one yard—depending on your
height—and within gun-grappling range. The technique was how to get
into a good Weaver Stance (which all three of my students actually
preferred to the Isosceles Stance for the first time) from that extreme
close range. Basically it entails drawing the pistol to the high
compressed ready position and then extending your arms forward at the
same time you step backwards with your shooting leg into the Weaver
Stance, thus keeping the firearms stationary in space. This seemed like
a contradiction to my philosophy of aggression to some, because I teach
from every other distance to step into the Weaver Stance with
your non-firing leg, moving forward. But, this did not violate the
principle of not moving backwards, because, the firearm did not GO
backwards. It was the same distance from the target at all times. The
muzzle of the gun never moved rearward of its initial position in space
from the high compressed ready, which is key. The students eventually
understood that the pistol was not moving backwards, even though I was
moving my leg backwards into a better shooting position, and extending
my arms forward simultaneously.
So, I use this as the exception that proves the rule, even though it’s not really an
exception, because the gun doesn’t move backwards. Other than that
situation, I always advocate moving forward, either stepping into the
Weaver Stance with the non-firing leg, or stepping outward (not
backward) into the Isosceles Stance, to get ready to move forward. What
I like about the Weaver is that I have started to move forward
immediately, starting the fight for the Initiative immediately, instead
of an intermediate side-step. What annoys me about some instructors is
they miss the point of combat, which is all about Initiative, so they
talk about drawing while retreating or even drawing while falling
backwards. That may be cool gunslinger acrobatics, but it misses the
point that combat is fundamentally a struggle over Initiative. That is
why I always advocate moving forward into the target while engaging,
then closing with and slicing through the target’s spine to get out the
other side. That is the “switch” that has to be thrown.
The easiest way I have found to train this is to throw the switch with your feet. When
your foot takes a first step in the direction of the enemy, you have
just begun to take back the Initiative from the attacker. This is what I
mean by becoming the aggressor. Anybody that is advocating drawing the
pistol while retreating, or finding cover to get into a protracted
stalemate exchanging shots with a violent criminal, does not understand
how important Initiative is in combat. Lots of people have argued with
me that the advantage of the gun over a knife is that it allows
standoff. I will say, though, that if you are engaging another person
with a firearm, that standoff is moot, and then you have to think of it
like a knife fight in a phone booth. You stab into the body of the
other person as fast and as brutally as possible, over and over again,
seizing the Initiative from him. It is all a battle for Initiative;
whoever has it at the end of a fight has won.
Armies rarely attack each other at the same
time. Usually, one attacks and the other defends. When they do attack
at the same time—something called a “meeting engagement”—there is an
intense battle for the Initiative, then one gets the upper hand and
starts pushing the other backwards. If you are going backwards, you are
losing ground, you are losing coordination and agility, and you are
just overall LOSING. So, refuse to go backwards. See yourself as the
aggressor, slicing through the enemy like a hot knife through butter.
The closer you get to him, the more accurate your fire becomes. The
more accurate your fire becomes, the faster you can fire, the greater
volume of accurate fire you can achieve, the less resistance you will
face; those are the factors that make up what the military calls
“violence of action.” If you ever have to defend yourself with deadly
force, you want to do it with as much speed, shock and violence as you
can muster; let your fear turn to resolve and meanness to kill the
bastard trying to kill you. An interesting fact is that women sometimes
have a hard time accepting this “switch”—until they become moms. Moms
instinctively will throw this switch to protect their kids. Think like
momma bears at all times, though, to save your own life too.
Anybody that teaches you to retreat in the face
of a violent situation, is fundamentally teaching you to lose the
battle. Unless you are barricaded into a defensible position in your
house during a home invasion, which I have described more as a “far
ambush” than a “near ambush,” your best bet is to become the aggressor.
In the “near ambush” situations like a mugging or sexual assault or
carjacking, it is far better to throw the switch, get mad, get mean, get
violent and get HOME by going through the spine of the assailant. So,
stop listening to the people that talk about the draw and fire on the
retreat. One of the most important principles of unarmed combat that I
learned in martial arts came from Professor David James’ of Vee Arnis
Jujitsu, which is, “I can move faster forward, than you can move
backwards.” In other words, the person moving forward has more “speed,
agility and ability” than the retreating party. There is absolutely no
difference between that principle of unarmed combat and the principle of
an amphibious invasion force of several military divisions. If an
attacker gets you to start moving backwards, he has already won sixty
percent of the battle. If you are the one that is moving forward, then
the enemy will be forced to either stand their ground and die, or
retreat and flee.
So, become the aggressor. To do that, throw the switch. You throw the switch not just with your mind, but with your legs!
Get moving! Taking the steps towards the enemy, and engaging with
increasingly accurate fire, forces him to cede the Initiative to you and
retreat. If you finish a fight with the Initiative, it means you have
won that fight. Never move backwards, even if your leg moves backwards,
your arms should move forward so that the firearm’s stays stationary in
space. If you have to reload, move sideways so that the muzzle is
never moved further away from the enemy, then continue to move in and
kill the bastard. People that advocate a defensive posture in a “near
ambush” situation will get you killed.
Moving backwards is a backwards idea!
Soule (Easy 6)