Backwards Ideas

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)