Self-Defense vs. Traditional Martial Arts vs. Self-Protection Systems vs. The Only Art that Matters

Intro: Martial arts are not Self-Defense, and Self-Defense has almost nothing to do with martial arts.  The lie that the consumer has been told for the last fifty years is that the two words are synonymous.  In truth, “Self-Defense” is not a system of physical actions one takes to protect oneself. Actually, Self-Defense is a legal determination—from a criminal justice official—after a physical confrontation occurs (Tim Larkin, When Violence is the Answer).  If it was a real Self-Defense situation, where the person was protecting self from murder/rape/stabbing/home invasion/carjacking, then whatever actions were taken in self-protection would be construed as justified by the legal system.  That is Self-Defense, it is a plea in a court, a determination by a cop, or a finding by a prosecutor/judge/jury of a justified use of force in protecting self. 

1) Self-Defense is not a barfight. If you mortally wound or maim somebody in a barfight, you will go to prison.  Barfights are not Self-Defense, and yet traditional martial arts teach nothing but how to win in barfights, and then they call it “reality-based street self-defense training.”  It is NOT Self-Defense; barfights are “duels;” two drunk gorillas pounding their chests for social dominance.  When somebody is yelling “MotherF-er!” at you for five minutes before anybody takes a swing, that is not real, justified Self-Defense.  There is no legal justification for killing drunk idiots in bars with a gun, and we all understand that, but the martial arts community would tell you that permanently maiming somebody by stomping their head into a barroom floor is perfectly justified because “he threw the first punch.”  That idiotic idea will land you in jail.  There is NOTHING in a bar worth fighting over, because nobody ever wins.  Somebody gets hurt—usually both parties—and somebody goes to jail—often both parties—regardless of who “wins” or “loses” the altercation. 

2) Real Self-Defense means that if you had a gun or a knife, you would have been perfectly justified in using it because your life/body was truly in danger; it is combat at the interpersonal level.  Thus, when unarmed and confronted with such a threat, you must make your body a bullet—or a blade—and maim or kill the assailant by attacking vulnerable parts of their body.  Kickboxing the face and ribs or grappling on the ground may win in a cage fight, but in real unarmed combat it takes too long.  In real unarmed combat, you want your body to cause the same trauma to the enemy that a knife or bullet would if you had one; you attack the eyes, the throat, the spine and the brain to replicate such wounds.  You cause enough Damage to the assailant to allow escape, or to get to a better weapon and use it on him, because there is no “fair fight” in real Self-Defense.  If you would not be justified stabbing somebody to death, then it is not actually a Self-Defense situation; it’s just a barfight or a competition. 

3) Therefore, I never get into fist fights, because none of them are necessary to me.  I am always armed, so if it is real Self-Defense, why wouldn’t I just shoot/stab/run over the assailant?  There are only two kinds of physical confrontations: justified Self-Defense and unjustified “fights” or “duels” for illegitimate reasons (like impressing women, or because somebody spilled a drink on somebody else).  In the first kind, you are always justified in using a weapon to prevent your death or grievous bodily harm (unless you live in one of the insane places like Maryland, New York or the U.K.), so why get into a fist fight at all?  There is never a reason to get into a fist fight if you are armed, and if you are in a situation where you can’t take a gun or knife (like an airplane), then use an improvised weapon to get you to a better weapon that you can use to kill or neutralize the threat.  So, I just don’t see the need to get into fist fights; if I am justified in defending myself it means my life is actually at risk, in which case I am going to use the most lethal tool I have and use my bare hands only as a means to get me to a lethal tool.  If you adopt this outlook that you are going to kill any real threat to your person or loved ones, then actually your life becomes a lot more civil and peaceful, because you ignore the social slights and fake “self-defense” situations that most martial arts train you to defeat.   

4) Tom Clancy once wrote, “The first rule of unarmed combat is: Don’t Get Into It!”  Unarmed combat is never the goal, but it may be a transitional step to getting to a weapon.  But, traditional martial arts like to teach that “Self-Defense” is nothing more than winning fist fights by being a better puncher/kicker/grappler.  In truth, the whole goal of unarmed combat is not to win, it is to get out of the predicament of being unarmed.  To that end, there are some non-traditional self-protection systems that are useful for making your body into a weapon of last resort.  Their utility is two-fold: first, the biological utility in learning to strike from many different parts of the body other than just fists and learning mechanics of how the human body moves and doesn’t move (breaks).  Secondly, these non-traditional self-protection systems emphasize being armed.  Have a weapon; if you don’t have a weapon then find one; if you can’t find a weapon then make one.  Only as an absolute last resort should you use your body as the weapon, and then only in the pursuit of getting a better weapon.  Traditional martial arts do not teach this principle because they do not believe in this principle; they have been lied to for centuries about the effectiveness of their arts in killing people.  Do not buy the b.s. about some system being the “world’s deadliest martial art,” or “the most realistic self-defense system ever.”  Don’t believe hype or propaganda claiming the ability to disarm anybody, beat anybody or survive any threat because they evolved from some thousand-year-old style of taking spears away from guys in armor. 

5) The goal of all the other unarmed self-protection activity I might engage in during a violent encounter is ultimately designed for one purpose: to get my hands on a gun to eliminate the threat. Therefore, the only martial art that matters to me any longer is shooting.  Yes, shooting is a martial art (a “war skill”).  Just like fencing was a martial art for swords, and warriors of the Renaissance understood that to get good at using their tool they needed to train and practice with it.  Firearms are simply the modern version of swords.  Therefore, I train with the pistol like Musketeers trained with their rapiers.  The skill and the tool combined is what made the Musketeers effective in combat, and so must the modern concealed carrier be efficient and effective in using his version of the rapier.  So, we have to train, and not just for marksmanship but for gunfighting.  I think the most dangerous person on the planet is somebody with a concealed carry pistol who has not gone to a range and practiced with it in years.  That is somebody who will end up arming a bad guy, because he will be useless with the tool when the time comes to use it, and he will have it taken away from him.  To prevent that, some empty hand skills are needed to “fight to the gun, fight for the gun in order to fight with the gun.”  That should be the focus of a good unarmed fighting system (getting armed), and the system should apply the same principles to shooting as it does to unarmed combat: 

1. Get the Initiative away from the attacker: become the aggressor, make the bad guy retreat. 

2. Cause traumatic Damage, not just intimidation or peripheral pain: shoot/fight to end threats. 

3. Maintain Situational Awareness: don’t get ambushed. 

4. If you do get ambushed, be mentally prepared to kill to protect yourself: don’t freeze! 

5. The first rule of unarmed combat: don’t get into it!  If you are in it, get to a weapon fast!