Concealed Carry Fashion Part 2

Last weekend I talked about the various methods of carrying concealed with their advantages and disadvantages.  I start with the framework of wanting to be able to defend myself effectively and efficiently with a firearm, which means I have to carry a gun in a way I can get to it easily and present (draw and point) it for engagement efficiently.  This mentality is thinking from the gunfight backwards to the way you carry, rather than starting with a method of concealed carry, a concealable gun and then thinking your way forward to a gunfight, as the concealed carry accessory industry would prefer.  The conclusions I reach are that, while there are a lot of ways to carry concealed, only a few are useful for a gunfight.  Best to worst: Three O’clock Carry, Four O’clock Carry, Appendix Carry, Shoulder Holster Carry (vertical) and Small of the Back Carry.  It is inefficient to carry in a pocket holster or an ankle holster.  Lastly, it is flat out dangerous to carry in a cross-draw holster, a horizontal shoulder holster or in a purse/satchel off the body.

The second aspect is carrying an effective tool.  This is very tricky, because a .22 caliber Derringer is more effective than nothing, and a Desert Eagle .50 caliber is highly effective but not very easy to carry concealed.  So, it is always a compromise between firepower and concealment, and if you add in the other variable of capacity, you have a three dimensional scale.  So, to simplify, there is a general rule: carry the most powerful, highest capacity weapon you can effectively conceal.  That is a basic principle of a gunfight, which is contradictory to what the firearms accessory business is trying to sell you.  They are trying to sell you products that compete on concealment rather than firepower.  That is amateur thinking; that is a victim with a gun, not a gunfighter.  A gunfighter wants to get to the gun as quickly and efficiently as possible; the “concealed carry fashion industry” sells things that completely ignore those goals.  The products they sell either have no retention, and you have a gun rattling around in the lining of your jacket/bag/fishing vest, or they have multiple straps that you need two hands to undo in order to get access to the firearm.  Both of these reduce the efficiency of drawing and engaging with the weapon.

Worse, they look like exactly what they are.  Here is a general rule of thumb in life, if you are walking around town wearing an NRA hat and a khaki fishing vest, you are not carrying concealed!  You have a spotlight on you with a little cartoon bubble saying, “Look at me, I have a gun and a Concealed Carry Permit!”  Trust me, I know ten guys that dress that way and I just shake my head.  It is extra ridiculous because these are the guys that practice the least with their firearms.  These are the guys that take the gun to the range once every other year.  These are victims, in other words.  If I was a bad guy with a knife and I wanted a gun, then that is where I would be getting one.

Therefore, the two biggest mistakes you can make when carrying a concealed carry handgun are: to cover up a pistol with a bunch of “I have a gun” clothing, or cover it up with clothing designed to conceal a gun so effectively that you can’t get it out if you need it.  So, like with the firepower vs. concealment spectrum, you have to find a compromise in how you dress between concealing the gun and using the gun.  Sometimes, as I’ve said, I am required to wear things that make concealment very difficult.  In that case, I consciously choose to violate my own rule and stick my little .380 ACP in a pocket holster in my pants pocket, because gunfights are percentages games, and having the little pocket pistol is better than not having anything.  But, at those times, I am uncomfortably aware that six rounds of .380 ACP in a pocket holster is far less firepower than nine rounds of 10mm or eight rounds of .45 ACP, but sometimes the requirement for concealment overrides the benefit of a higher caliber pistol, and you have to compromise.

I want to make the point here, though, that such occasions are the exception not the rule.  It is knowingly taking a greater risk than carrying a .45 at the three o’clock under my jacket.  There might be good reason to take that increased risk, but I do not get into the habit of doing so.  I recognize that I am temporarily putting myself at a disadvantage by doing it, for the sake of going to a wedding in a tuxedo or going to a luau on a beach in shorts and a t-shirt.  I do not compromise firepower and capacity on a daily basis, even though there is a greater risk of exposing the firearm.

Which brings me to my second tangential paragraph: exposing a firearm is not the end of the world.  The gun fashion industry would have you believe it is the worst faux pas imaginable.  It is not.  But, even if it was, who cares?  Carrying a gun concealed is considered by most liberal idiots to be a massive faux pas already; exposing it inadvertently is not going to offend anybody who isn’t already offended.  If some liberal idiot who knows nothing about guns for some reason sees a gun and has a panic attack, you cannot control that.  If you take self-protection and protection of your loved ones seriously—which is true of everybody who carries a gun—then that priority overrides considerations of breaching etiquette.  These gun magazines that say exposing a gun is the absolutely worst thing you can do, ever, are staffed with people who have obviously never been…you know, shot at!  I have inadvertently exposed a firearm on numerous occasions; nobody has peed themselves and had a nervous breakdown.  I have deliberately walked around open-carrying on thousands of occasions and, except a few sideways glances, no negative consequences have ever occurred.  Worrying about not offending some anti-gun idiot should not cause you to reduce your ability to win a gunfight; remember, the life you save may be that anti-gun idiot’s.

Okay, back to concealing clothing.  If you start from the concept I described first, which is dressing for a gunfight rather than trying to gunfight in how you choose to dress, then there is yet another basic compromise you have to make and still be fairly fashionable: length versus fit.  You can always conceal a gun if you wear long and loose clothing like fatigue pants and a fishing vest, but you look either like Henry Blake from MASH or you look like some wannabe Blackwater mercenary.  Either way, it is hardly fashionable, and in the case of the latter it is hardly concealed carry if your whole outfit is broadcasting “I have a gun on me.”  Wearing “concealed carry clothing” like the vests with the sewn-in holsters, is also not very fashionable, nor is such clothing efficient for getting into a gunfight.  But, you can still conceal a pistol with decent firepower if you compromise either on shortness of clothing or tightness of clothing.  As a general rule, you cannot wear short and tight clothing and also conceal a—powerful, high capacity—handgun in a manner that is gunfight-efficient.  Basically, ladies and "gentle" men, while you can wear skinny jeans and carry a gun concealed, you can’t do it while also wearing a halter top!  In other words you will have to make a compromise on your fashion for your personal defense.  Basically, you can sacrifice one of the two: you can wear tight clothes, but they have to be long (think Trinity in The Matrix), or you can wear short clothes, but they have to be loose (think baggy cargo shorts).

So, after much compromising between carry methods and concealment, between firepower and concealment, and between fashion and concealment, I realized the best solution to all of these compromises for what I like to carry (.40, .45 or 10mm) and how I like to carry (3 o'clock or vertical shoulder holster) dictates how I dress.  I have to wear a hip-length coat.  That can be a car coat, a pea coat, a suit coat or a blazer.  They can be fitted, but they have to be long.  They don't have to be overly formal, either.  While I have suits, wool blazers and sport coats, I also have a couple of western leather blazers, a couple light-weight cotton summer blazers, and I have several car-coat length jackets.  That fits how I carry, which is determined not by style or concealment, but by effectiveness in a gunfight.  I don't recommend going out and buying clothing that is specifically designed with holsters built into the panels like some super-spy jacket.  Or, dressing like Henry Blake from MASH.

Nope.  Just wear a blazer.  You can wear a blazer with jeans and a t-shirt.  You can wear a blazer with slacks and a dress shirt and tie.  You can wear a blazer with a turtleneck and a shoulder holster à la Steve McQueen in Bullitt.  Or, like me, you can wear a blazer with jeans, cowboy boots and a button-up.  You can wear them to almost any occasion without looking over-dressed.  I’ve even worn light-weight linen blazers to beach parties in Hawaii and still looked appropriate.

In the alternative, if you are a person who does not want to wear long clothes, then you have to wear loose clothes.  You have to wear loose clothing if you want to carry an effective weapon.  I can conceal my little .380 ACP in a short, tight suit vest, that is true, and I used to do that.  Then I got to thinking that if I am really worried about self-protection, and I own a bunch of higher caliber pistols, why am I trusting my life to a little pocket pea shooter?  Instead, if I want to carry the guns I want to carry, I had to start dressing in less fitted clothing.  That is the short but loose theory.  I know a lot of guys in Colorado that walk around all summer (and some even in the winter) wearing nothing but cargo shorts and T-shirts.  That can work, if you dress loosely enough to conceal a gun.  But, you can't dress in clothing that is both short and tighter fitting.  I have worn cargo shorts, a loose t-shirt and an open button-up over top of it in the summer, and that works fairly well for concealing three and four o'clock carry.  A summer-weight button-up doesn't work with a shoulder holster, Crocket, so don't even try.

So, my shopping trip to find a vest that was long or loose enough for me to carry concealed, was a failure.  It was not a failure because there were no vests that could conceal a gun, it was a failure because they would not conceal any gun I would want in a gunfight.  I realized that that is the difference between the mentalities.  One is self-defense thinking (i.e. dressing for a gunfight), and the other is fashion, or prioritizing concealment over everything else (i.e. dressing like a victim with a gun).  I also realized that if I ever have to get into a gunfight again, then I want a tool that has the capacity and firepower to give me the greatest opportunity to win that gunfight, which honestly is a rifle.  But, since I won't be concealed carrying a rifle, then I want a pistol that is powerful enough, carried efficiently enough (i.e. I can rapidly get it into the fight with one hand from concealment), and that has a high enough capacity to give me the best chance of winning that gunfight.  Therefore, as often as I am allowed by circumstance, I am going to carry a full-sized automatic on my hip or—if it’s longer than four inches—in a vertical shoulder holster.  This results in three methods of dressing, two of which don't make you look like a wannabe mercenary or Henry Blake: fitted clothing that is long enough to conceal a gun, or short clothing that is loose enough to conceal the gun.

Ladies, this includes you too.  How did Agent Scully carry her sidearm in The X-Files?  She carried in a belt-holster, under a blazer, on her body.  I know women’s clothing tends to be more tailored and form-fitting, but female detectives and female FBI agents manage to carry concealed on their person every bit as easily as their male counterparts.  Don’t buy the little blazers that end at your belly-button, though.  Remember, clothes can be tight or short, but they can’t be both.

Last thing: speaking of tailoring, find a tailor who is not an anti-gun idiot and will tailor the garment with you wearing a firearm.  A friend of mine used to manage a men’s store and two of his customers were in the executive protection business; they trusted my friend to tailor their clothes around their guns, radios and telescoping batons.  My friend was not an anti-gun idiot and did not have a nervous breakdown when these two came to get measured for suits wearing their "Batman Belts."  By the same token, if you are buying off the rack, wear your gun into the fitting room and make sure that the jacket you’re buying fits not only you, but also the concealed carrying you.

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Soule

Easy 6

Concealed Carry Fashion Part 1

I was looking for a Carhartt or similar vest today that was long enough to cover my pistol.  Now, I approach concealed carry differently than other people do.  To me, concealment is secondary to defensive shooting.  Which means, I want the most powerful handgun I can conceal, and I want to be able to present that firearm as fast as I can.  While there are many other ways to carry a firearm that are more concealed than how I carry, none of those allows rapid presentation of a powerful firearm in a gunfight.  So, I start from the gunfight and work my way to what I am going to wear rather than starting with what I am going to wear and figure out how to conceal a gun most covertly.  I see this as a defensive thinking mindset over a style mindset (which somewhat bothers me, actually), so I've described below a few ways to carry.

I always tell my students to keep the firearm on your person.  Never, never, never carry a gun in a purse or a laptop case or a satchel; if I steal any of those from you, I just got a gun.  Which means I am limiting myself significantly in how I carry a concealed firearm.  I can carry Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum in a laptop case.  Since you have to carry on your person--and this is really a non-debatable issue for me in my classes--you are reduced to a few ways of carrying a pistol and their advantages and disadvantages.  For why this is so important, please watch this great Youtube video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDwQCOJVXq4

The three o'clock (note: I'm writing as a right handed shooter, obviously left handed people this would be nine o'clock) is the fastest, most efficient way to present the gun from concealment; as opposed to a leg holster which is faster but open-carried.  Three o'clock position is where cops carry their sidearms for a reason.  It is where your arm is attached in line with the firearms.  However, it is also very difficult to conceal.  Width of the firearm is what determines how easily it conceals, and putting a hard metal object against your hip bone makes it stick out.  You can't effectively conceal a pistol with a t-shirt like this, regardless of what the commercials tell you.  Having said that, the reason I almost always carry this way is for the very important reason that I can draw the gun with one hand from behind a concealing garment very quickly and start to engage immediately.

Four o'clock is almost as good.  The gun's a little farther away, so a little slower, but still able to get it with one hand.  It is also easier to conceal carrying on the back of the hip and the curvature of your spine than on you hip bone.  It is conceivable to wear thin clothing and conceal on the four o'clock, but there is an extreme risk of exposing the gun when you tie your shoe, or reach for the top shelf, if you dress that way.

I am not a fan of appendix carry, personally, because I am not a twenty-two year old fashion model with a six pack, but if you are, it's almost as good as four o'clock carry.  Once you get to the gun, it is faster than four o'clock; concealment is a little easier, it is less likely to be exposed.  Having said that, the biggest problem I have with appendix concealed carry is that you MUST use two hands to get the gun out quickly.  If time is a factor, you have to grab the concealing garment upward with your weak hand to draw the pistol with your strong hand.  That's no problem as long as you are a far enough distance away from your attacker to make those two moves before he can close the distance.  However, violent crimes often don't happen at that distance.

Shoulder holsters: never, ever, ever, ever buy a horizontal shoulder holster!  First, the same thing is true of a cross-draw holster, you are presenting the grip of your gun to your opponent.  Mostly, however, it is a really bad day when the gun falls out of whatever doomed-to-fail retention strap it has fighting gravity, and hits the floor in public.  Plus, you are pointing a gun at somebody all the time behind you.  Guns don't "just go off," however it breaks a fundamental of firearms safety to never point a weapon at something you don't want to destroy.  Vertical shoulder holsters are another matter.  Vertical shoulder holsters are what I use to conceal full-size handguns.  Concealment is great (so long as you don't take off your jacket), and you can get to the gun with one hand.  Disadvantages are that presenting the gun is slow; you have to reach across your body and backhand the pistol forward.  My philosophy of shoulder holsters is that they are really good for full-sized handguns and weather allows concealment with a jacket.

The "12 o'clock" carry.  I can't even discuss this without cracking jokes.  In all seriousness, there's no need for this, as it has no greater advantage than appendix carry, with all of its strengths and weaknesses, but the risk of sticking a gun down the front of your pants is way more than I want to take.

The slightly-less funny ankle holster.  First of all, ankle holsters were designed for back-up guns, not your primary firearm.  If you carry a back-up, fine, put it on your ankle.  But otherwise, physics is against you.  You not only have to use both hands, you have to use one leg, to draw the gun.  Very slow.  Very complex series events to draw the gun, from a disadvantageous position when you get it out and start engaging.  And it does not really offer any advantages in concealment.

Instead, I recommend pocket carry.  I have a small .380 ACP caliber gun that I can carry in a pants pocket holster.  This is the total compromise of my philosophy of starting from the gunfight and working your way to what you're going to wear.  However, sometimes what you wear is dictated to you, like a formal occasion.  Then, rather than going unarmed, I carry the pea-shooter in a pocket holster.  The holster is the important word there.  Don't throw a gun loosely into pants pockets; they make special holsters and gun-mounted clips for pocket carrying of small pistols.  A gun rattling around in your pocket unsecured could lead to a bad day.  I wear this when concealment is absolutely essential, recognizing I have sacrificed firepower and speed of draw, but a small slow gun is better than no gun in a gunfight.

That brings us to the weak side cross-draw, the "ten o'clock."  The advantage is that you can get to the gun with one hand.  The disadvantages out-weight the advantages, however.  First, it is slower; you have to reach across your body to draw, and you have to present the weapon in a backhanded motion.  Second, it's very easy to expose a gun in this position.  As a result, third and most important, like the horizontal shoulder holster, you are pointing the grip of your gun at your opponent.  In a grappling situation, that is really bad.

Lastly, small of the back.  Tactically, it is every bit as good as 4'oclock.  It is massively uncomfortable if you have to sit for any length of time.  You can get to the gun with one hand.  You can draw relatively fast.  It is relatively good at concealment, except when reaching high.  I don't like that you can't see to re-holster, and re-holstering usually takes two hands, which is not nearly as big of a problem as drawing, but it's something to think about.  You cannot carry a very large thick (meaning, in general terms, powerful) handgun this way very comfortably.

In conclusion, I firmly believe that the three o'clock position is the fastest, most efficient way to present a gun.  I recognize that you have to dress a certain way to pull that off, and many people do not want to dress that way (including me sometimes).  And sometimes you can't dress that way for weather or occasion reasons.

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Soule
Easy 6

Philosophy

The problem with philosophy in self-defense is that it’s the wrong philosophy.  I do not mean that the opinions are wrong, I mean that the subject matter is not really self-defense philosophy.  In armed self-defense—which few people actually teach, but I am considering weapons instructors broadly—the primary focus of the training is on safety.  In my state, most of the people carrying guns around for “self-defense” have gone through an 8 hour class on firearms safety.  The main purpose of this class is to teach people how to safely operate a firearm on a shooting range.  It really instills a healthy respect for the capability of a firearm to do damage.  This on many occasions scares people into not carrying the gun.  This is not self-defense philosophy, it is sports mentality.  Shooting is a sport, and you take your equipment to the field in a bag, you load your ammo, and then you consciously engage your brain to switch to the task of shooting.  As I have written many times, the biggest threat in an ambush is the confusion.  Training to shoot when your brain is actively engaged only in shooting, not distracted by anything from the target, is not really training for self-defense.  It is good training for marksmanship, but marksmanship is only the very basic first step in self-defense shooting.  Sports and self-defense have nothing to do with each other; many people understand this in unarmed self-defense, but don’t recognize the same thing is happening in armed self-defense.

This is because they start over-focusing on the tool (the firearm) and forget the fundamental lesson of weapons training: I am the weapon!  The gun, the knife, the sword, the car, the aircraft carrier are not the weapon, the people operating these things have to be the weapon.  When people go from the martial arts mat to the shooting range, they lose a certain aggressiveness.  People believe the tool will make it easier to protect themselves.  That is only half true.  A gun makes killing an enemy physically easier than doing it with your bare hands, but it is still mentally as difficult.  Training in what the Army calls an “Admin” attitude—as opposed to a “Tactical” attitude—gets people complacent.  They are not complacent to range safety; my point is that range safety makes people complacent to the very unsafe experience of a gun fight.  It is a very confusing, chaotic and frightening experience.  Training to calmly stand on a range, take a deep breath, let it out, and slowly squeeze the trigger of a pistol to where it surprises you will allow you to hit bulls eye targets, but has nothing to do with training you how to defend yourself with a firearm.  In fact, it may actually make you less capable of defending yourself than somebody who does not go practice just marksmanship.

Weapons-based martial art systems usually teach the wrong philosophy as well.  A great example is teaching stick fighting to fight the opponent’s sticks instead of attacking the opponent.  Now, there are exceptional teachers out there who teach to use batons to break through the opponent’s guard and bash his scull in with a baton, but much of stick fighting is putting sticks in a ring to fight each other.  That’s not self-defense.  Or, training people to use a knife as a defensive—as opposed to offensive—weapon; cutting hands and arms to keep distance, trying to fence with it in essence.  Knives are good for stabbing people or slitting the throats of sentries; they are not a dueling weapon.  But, we start (I used to do this too), teaching hand to hand combat concepts with a blade instead of just stabbing the enemy until he’s dead.  Again, dueling is a sport mentality.  It was one hell of a sport back in its day, but it was still a sport.  That is not the right philosophy either.

Of course, traditional martial arts, by definition, totally teach the wrong philosophies for people who want to learn self-defense.  One, they teach a sport philosophy for fitness rather than self-defense.  Two, they teach to always walk away (“never throw the first punch”), the mindset of The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miagi.  Three, they teach eastern religions as a part of their martial arts.  None of these things is necessarily bad, and as I have said in the past, the study of traditional martial arts makes a more complete person.  But, these are passed off as “self-defense” and they are the exact opposite.  They are monastic tenets that come from the religious institutions involved in the founding of traditional martial arts.  These are not the concepts you need to master if you want to survive a deadly-force encounter or a real—not sport—self-defense situation.  These are pacifist philosophies, or at least mild-mannered-monk philosophies, that do not fully appreciate how to survive an ambush.  Ultimately, they are designed for self-mastery and not personal protection in the physical realm.  They teach some excellent conditioning skills, regarding how to use the different parts of the body as tools, but they don’t really train people to be the weapon.

Ironically—proving my point—I have said these things to people who are very good martial artists and they challenge me to a match in the ring.  I have always accepted on one condition: I would accept the challenge if they let me enter the ring with the things I carry every day for self-defense.  No really great martial artist has yet accepted my counter proposal.  That is exactly what I mean when I say that, in combat, winning is cheating.

If you are unprepared to kill somebody to protect yourself or somebody you care about, you are nothing but a victim waiting to happen, and you should stop reading this blog now.  If you are still reading, I will attempt to explain what the philosophy of self-defense really is.  It is combat.  Essentially it is doing whatever is necessary to get home to your family.  Combat is not a sport.  There is no such thing as a fair self-defense engagement.  Self-defense is violence.  You have to be the most violent in order to seize the Initiative, and remember that whoever has the Initiative at the end of a fight is the winner.

A real self-defense situation is one where the outcomes are life or death.  So, the real philosophy of self-defense is the same philosophy we teach soldiers facing life or death situations in combat.  You are either the winner or you are dead.  Beating the shit out of somebody is not self-defense.  Getting the shit beat out of you is also not self-defense.  Self-defense is when you stab the guy beating the shit out of you, kicking you in ribs on the pavement, ten times in the femoral artery until the blood stops spurting.  That is self-defense.  The philosophy behind it is the deeply held belief, in one’s core, that I am going home no matter what.  When you start from that belief system, then—and only then—all of the skills and all of the tools you learn how to employ in the physical realm of violence are useful.  The tools are added to a solid foundation in the actual philosophy of self-defense.  Self-defense is combat.  It may be interpersonal combat, but it is still combat, and the only way you survive in combat is getting the Initiative and keeping it. 

Now, does that mean that the only option you have is killing?  No, that is not what I am saying; what I am saying is that the person who is willing to kill to save his life has a better chance of surviving combat, regardless of how much violence he had to apply, than the person who is willing to get into some martial arts tournament.  You can use whatever amount of violence it takes to seize and maintain the Initiative.  But, if you are not willing to use lethal violence, then you are giving a violent criminal—who is perfectly willing to be lethal—an advantage over you; you have a weakness that can be exploited.  Now, we all have physical weaknesses; some people are stronger than others, some people have physical disabilities and limitations, that’s not what I’m talking about.  I personally have had way too many orthopedic surgeries in my life to want to get into a jiu-jitsu match on pavement.  What I am is a combat veteran who is perfectly willing to cheat my ass off to get home.  I am perfectly willing to kill a violent criminal who tries to hurt me or somebody I care about.  My physical condition might mean I lose, but I will not lose because of mental weakness.  If I die, I will die trying to kill the bastard and take him with me.  If you don’t have that mental fortitude, the willingness to be the most violent, then you will lose to those who are willing to be the most violent.

What frustrates me a great deal about modern America is that even people learning how to fight, are not learning about combat.  I firmly believe that the rise in terrorism in America since the 1980s is directly attributable to the pacification of our society.  In the 1950s, American men understood far less about fighting than MMA teaches today, but they understood far more about combat than the average martial artist is taught today.  Or what the average CCW holder is taught in an 8 hour safety lecture; the purpose of a gun fight is to be really dangerous, not safe.  So, we as instructors need to start training people in the philosophy of self-defense, the mentality of kill or be killed, instead of training them to be really athletic victims in life or death encounters.

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)

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.

If you liked it, "Like" it and "Share" it with like-minded folks who also will like it, "Like" it, and Share it,
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.

The most dangerous enemy in an ambush

I don't teach accuracy.  I teach aggression.  In the Army we called it "violence of action," meaning how HARD you fight rather than how WELL you fight.  To use Dubya's words, "Shock and Awe" is, in my opinion, more important than technical precision.  I wrote about the difference between the near ambush and the far ambush a few weeks ago.  The far ambush allows for judgment, which I mean as the ability to think and formulate a plan.  But in a near ambush, which is what I consider self-defense situations to be, there is no ability to develop a plan.  In fact, taking the time to try to plan something is a sure way to lose in a near ambush situation.

I did not explain that well because I forgot the most important aspect in an ambush.  I have been caught in a handful of ambushes, and the scariest part of them was not the bullets or IEDs or RPGs fired by the enemy, it was the confusion.  When somebody sucker punches you, the pain is not the major problem, confusion is.  In that moment, you have to react instantly to take the Initiative away from the person initiating the ambush, or you get slaughtered.  In the military example, that's what the battle drill is for: throw grenades, assault through the objective with "shock and awe," or violence of action.  No hesitation, no planning and absolutely no RETREATING.  Action is the only thing that will defeat the confusion, which is the real danger.  Not knowing what the hell is going on is what gets people killed in an ambush if they start trying to figure it out instead of just attacking to get the Initiative.  Frags out, charge, overwhelming firepower, and slice through the enemy like a hot razor blade at Mach 5.  That is the battle drill, and the battle drill overcomes the confusion and allows you to get so close that you butt stroke him with your rifle upside his head.

You ask, what the hell are you talking about, Soule?  We aren't butt stroking anybody upside the head and knocking their teeth down their throat.  Why not?  It's about aggression and violence of action, whether I have an M1 Tank or a butter knife.  I want to be on the other side of the bad guy...because I went THROUGH HIM.  I don't stop beating his teeth down his throat until he is no longer a threat.

I train that violence of action and aggression by teaching shooters to move forward.  If you learn nothing else, learn to MOVE FORWARD!  Once you start attacking with overwhelming force--which is not the same as numbers--then the enemy either dies in place, retreats or kills you.  Two of those three are winners, which means the odds of your winning dramatically increase if you become the aggressor.  That is why I spend an hour teaching people how to accurately hit a human torso and three to four hours teaching people how to be MEAN!  I teach them to be aggressive, because emptying a magazine into somebody's torso as fast as possible is much more plausible and effective than trying to calmly line up a perfect head shot while taking fire.  Shoot fast, and move forward!

This is not opinion, it is borne out by history and surveillance footage.  Historically, it is rare for two armies to attack each other simultaneously.  We call that a "meeting engagement," and it is not nearly as common as an ambush or a deliberate attack against a prepared defense.  More importantly from the self-defense shooting aspect, if you watch surveillance video of violent criminals that get met with armed resistance, they usually break contact and run.  Why is this?  Probably not because they are not good at violence, but because they have more to lose.  Not only can they get shot, but the can also get caught and prosecuted.  Prison is an interruption of their business.  Also, criminals generally look for soft targets.  So, if you aren't a soft target, you are less likely to be attacked, but even if you are and you become the aggressor, you are no longer a soft target and are more likely to prevail.  Death is also an interruption of their business.  They don't want to risk either, USUALLY.  That's an important note; there are psychos who won't tuck tail and run.  But, the answer to that is to be EVEN MORE AGGRESSIVE!  The three possible outcomes are the same, they retreat, they get shot or you get shot; bet on the two out of three where you win.

What if I try to retreat?  You get shot in the back.  Most soldiers in war that get shot in combat actually get shot in the back when they start to retreat.  There is probably something genetic in all predators that kicks in when prey turns its back on them.  Violent criminals are predators.  It is your choice whether you want to be prey or not.  Start thinking like the lion, and make them feel like the gazelle!

Violence of action is the only way to regain the Initiative in an ambush.  Having battle drills can defeat the initial confusion of an ambush because you don't have to think about them; in a crisis situation all the blood drains out of your frontal lobes and you get what's called "scared witless" and your fight or flight response kicks in.  Switch it to FIGHT, and attack the bastard.  Otherwise, if you hesitate to come up with some grand scheme, you get shot to shreds, raped, stabbed, kidnapped, et cetera.  Remember, whoever has the Initiative at the end of an engagement is the winner.

Hope that clears up some CONFUSION.  If you like what I'm saying, please share the link to this blog.

Thanks!
Soule (Easy 6)

Cheating is Winning

If I control the Head, I control the body; if I destroy the Head, I destroy the body.

Last week, I wrote briefly about the principle I call Torque.  Many martial arts call it Circular Motion in unarmed combat; in armed combat we think in terms of 360 degree security/situational awareness.  The last of my principles is a specific kind of Torque: against the Head.  If I crank a person’s Head in a direction it is not supposed to go, their body will contort and throw itself into amazing positions to protect its brain and central nervous system—I consider the neck part of the Head too.

I don’t advocate headshots from really any distance with a firearm except in one instance.  If your enemy is down but is still a threat and still trying to engage you from a supine position, then shoot him in the Head from point blank range.  It’s the same thing as stomping on somebody’s Head when they are on the ground and still a threat.

On the unarmed side, it is also important to understand the variety of Damage inducing points on the Head.  So, while moving the Head will move the body, attacking the Head in the vulnerable points can incapacitate, maim or kill the enemy.  Eyes, ears and throat (I distinguish the neck as the whole thing and the throat just being the front part of the neck) all can incapacitate with very little force.  The top of the nose, the temple and orbital bones around the eyeball are all capable of sustaining incapacitating Damage with a little bit more force.  For the boxers, the chin button is also very effective if you hit it perfectly and knock a guy out.  There are many more, like the ear drum, the brain stem, the third vertebrae, et cetera.  You don’t need to know all of them to be effective, but you should know a handful and know how to inflict maximum Damage to them.  Unarmed strikes to the Head should simulate putting bullets into it.  You want to affect the brain.  Your hands cannot penetrate the cranium like a bullet can, so you have to find targets that can simulate the same kinds of Damage.

As for applying Torque to the Head, there are two desirable goals from it.  Taking away their focus, by changing their eye line and/or balance is the first.  This controls their ability to see you doing things, like drawing a Weapon, or going in for a finishing blow.  The second is to attack the neck with Torque to cause paralysis.  To do this, you need to move their Head and get them into a position where their own body weight and/or strength can assist you in snapping their neck, traumatic Damage that ends an engagement.  That is the key to remember when attacking the Head; you can end the engagement very quickly and easily.  For non-lethal scenarios, like crowd control or private security, attacking and controlling the Head can put somebody out of the fight quickly and efficiently, without having to Damage the body or break bones.

So, those are my principles: WIDTH.  WIDTH does not have any deep philosophical meaning; it was just a convenient acronym-word that soldiers could remember.  But, if you think of the intent of these blogs, it is to expand the WIDTH of combat practitioners from competitive shooters to unarmed martial artists.  To review quickly:

Weapon: The first rule of unarmed combat is: Don’t Get Into It!  Anything can be used as a Weapon.  However, the most important Weapon is you, your brain and your instincts.  So, when you pick up a knife or a gun or a club, these become the extensions of yourself.  Be the Weapon! 

Initiative: Shoot First, Move Forward!  Remember, regardless of who Initiates the engagement, the winner is the one who has the Initiative at the end of the engagement; combat is essentially a fight for the Initiative. 

Damage: You regain the Initiative by causing Damage to vital organs, the central nervous system, or eliminating senses.  How hard you hit is irrelevant; where you hit is critical. 

Torque: Being the center of 360 degrees of situational awareness, you can defeat threats from any angle, using circular motion.  Circular motion/Torque breaks all holds, generates power and over-powers single muscles using entire body weight.  It also allows you to move to orient on the target and engage with a firearm from any angle on the 360 degree arc. 

Head: If I control the Head, I control the body; if I destroy the Head, I destroy the body.  The brain bucket is the processor and memory storage for the human computer; shutting it down, even temporarily, allows you to defeat any enemy.  The vulnerable areas of the Head do not require large size to Damage. 

So, remember WIDTH.  This came about because I had a year in Korea to train up my soldiers in a quick and easily understandable way to counter threats on a peninsula where everybody is a martial artist.  It is nothing new, it was simply a distillation of principles I learned in American and Chinese Kenpo, Ninjutsu and Jujitsu in the preceding ten years.  It is a word and an acronym that anybody can understand.  It is a five step process for HOW TO CHEAT!  Remember, if you don’t have to “cheat” to win, then you are not really in a self-defense or combat situation.  You are dueling, which may be dangerous, but it has rules and controls.  In situations that are out of control and without rules, these principles may be useful to you, whether armed or unarmed.  Again, I am not a master of any martial art, or a sniper, but I'm a pretty good pistol shot and I survived three tours on the front lines of Iraq because I understand Initiative is everything.  I get the Initiative by being more aggressive than the other guy.  I retain the Initiative by causing critical Damage, using mass effects of weaponry on his vulnerability; in other words I take guns to knife fights.  That philosophy of most aggressive and these principles kept me alive in combat and maybe useful for you in a self-defense situation.

Last note: WIDTH is a hierarchy. First rule of unarmed combat is don't get into it, get a Weapon, seize Initiative, cause Damage using Torque and finish it by controlling or attacking the Head.  That should be the process, not just the principles.  The engagement could end after any one of those has been achieved, by the way, but if you start trying to apply Torque from a defensive position where you don't have the Initiative, you will be disadvantaged.  Understand this, very few violent criminals have gone through extensive armed or unarmed combat training, but they are very good at defeating skilled opponents because they can't afford to lose.  So, instinctively violent criminals understand Damage, they understand Weapons of opportunity, and they understand the first rule of unarmed combat is to never get into it.  Most importantly of all, they understand that cheating is winning. 

Soule (Easy 6)