"How many guns do you need?"

Weapon of Mass (x Velocity) Destruction

Disclaimer: Not a PG-Rated Blog Entry This Time

I was watching gun control debates last night on YouTube, and the question was raised, "How many guns do you need?  Is five hundred too many?"  How much square footage does your house need per person?  Does a person need a Ferrari?  Does Oprah need thirty mansions for a two-person family?  Do rich, liberal celebrity douche bags need private jets?

I'm a single guy with an average house, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, about 2000 square feet.  That is WAY more space than I NEED, but I can afford it, and it's legal for me to buy it.  In a free society, governments don't get to restrict the purchase of perfectly legal items based on a lack of need.  Liberals like to (hypocritically) ask us peons "what do you NEED all those guns for?" as they drive away from the private jet terminals in their Lamborghini super cars.

"But, a super car is not a weapon that can be used to murder people," say the liberals.  That's bull crap; you get a Ferrari up to full speed on an interstate and then swerve into a school bus coming the opposite way, you've just created a highly effective terrorist weapon.  Private jets can be used as weapons also, come to think of it.  The September 11th hijackers used jets as missiles.  The guy in New York who used the delivery van to run-over all of those people on the bike path used a normal automobile as a weapon of terror.  The guy in China who took a butchers knife and stabbed over a hundred people used a kitchen tool as a weapon of terror.  Ted Kaczynski used homemade explosives mailed to his targets.  And, yes, the Las Vegas Shooter used guns.  

We do not blame the airplanes for the attacks on 9/11.  We do not blame the automobile for the attack on the bike path.  We do not blame the knife for the attack that resulted in over a hundred people stabbed.  We do not blame the Ryder Truck for the Oklahoma City bombing.  We do not blame the envelopes for the Anthrax Attacks of 2001.  We do not blame any of these incredibly deadly and dangerous devices of mass destruction.  But we blame firearms for the actions of the people holding them, which is absurd because the airplanes used as missiles on 9/11 were MASSIVELY more deadly than any firearm.

What all of these attacks have in common are not the tools used to cause violence and destruction.  What they have in common is the people who carried them out.  The attackers in all of these cases, and most random acts of violence, have one thing in common.  They were BAT-SHIT CRAZY!  I don't mean they were mentally ill; the vast majority of people with mental illness are not dangerous to other people, though admittedly a significant number are dangers to themselves.  When I use the word "Crazy," I mean it is more than just mental illness; it's violently, criminally insane.  Suicide bombers are insane fanatics brainwashed by hatred.  Mass shooters are lunatics.  Timothy McVeigh was a nutjob armed with diesel fuel and fertilizer.  Even less spectacular acts of violence are often the result of the criminally insane.  Rage is a type of insanity.  Maybe it's temporary, maybe it isn't; sometimes anger is the outward manifestation of depression.  The Columbine School Shooters were filled with so much rage by the constant bullying, that they turned their self-loathing into externally-focused hatred and violence.  Their guns and homemade bombs did not MAKE THEM attack their school and perceived nemeses; being Bat-Shit Crazy did.  Do you think the .22 caliber pistol with which John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan MADE HIM do it?  No, it was a Bat-Shit Crazy obsession with Jodie Foster and the psychotic idea that he would impress her enough to fall in love with him if he shot the President...but it's the target pistol's fault?

Blaming guns is easier than blaming people for two reasons.  The first is that it is more politically expedient to paint an inanimate object as somehow possessed by the devil than it is to address the staggeringly complex problem of our mental health crisis.  As messed up as that politically expedient answer seems, it is actually the one that I understand and can accept from the other side of the gun debate.  It's at least a political position.  But I don't think it is the reason MOST of the anti-gun movement blames guns instead of people for shootings.  Most liberals blame--and are afraid of--guns because they do not believe, maybe CANNOT believe, in the capacity for evil within human beings.  The modern progressive movement has grown out of the civil unrest of the 1960s, and the belief in the innate "goodness" of humankind has never changed.  It has changed in individuals, but not in the movement.  It is the same naivete the believes that under a Marxist system, a single genius with few material NEEDS, will be motivated to the peak of his ability without being compensated for it.  It is a desperate desire to make people live in peace, love and harmony; and a categorical denial of the opposite.  Such naive people do not want to accept the history of the human race, clawing its way to the top of the food chain by bloody violence, tribal conflict and millennia of war, genocide, slavery and murder.  It is easier for them to instill the evil into an idol of evil called the firearm.  That way they can continue to believe in the saintliness of humanity, and that it's just the devil inside the gun making people do evil things.

Some have a little less naivete, but they want to create a world without war, without violence, without murder.  But as I have written in the past, what causes all of this violence is the fact that we are mortal.  No revolution can change that.  Only evolution can.  As long as we are mortal, we will be subject to violent death, and as a result bad people will exploit that mortality for wealth, power or pleasure.  The hippies who have grown up to try "to make a world without sin," never understand this true root of violence.  They think the human race en masse can learn to "be good."  But, as Malcolm Reynolds says, "....they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people better.  I do not hold to that.  So no more running; I aim to misbehave!"

Inanimate objects do not have any intent, much less murderous intent, so stop ascribing such characteristics to them.  Guns are not possessed by demons, they do not have mentalities, emotions, psychological characteristics or willpower.  Humans have all of those.  And when those mentalities, emotions, psychological traits and intent turn to murder, the tools such Crazy people use to take life are abundant and plentiful.  The absence of any one of them is irrelevant for dedicated madmen.  We saw that on 9/11; in the absence of guns, the hijackers used utility knives and non-lethal pepper spray to turn airliners into missiles that killed three thousand people in under three hours.  What I am trying to teach good people, with the W.I.D.T.H.6. Principles, is this lesson that bad people know already: it is our intentions that make us dangerous, not the tools.  Once a person becomes the Weapon, and they understand that almost anything can be used as a tool of self-protection, then they become truly dangerous and able to protect themselves.  The same hammer they use to build a house, they can use as an amazingly effective tool of violence.  The glass they drink out of can become a deadly tool of violence very easily, once they understand being the Weapon.  Once they understand Initiative, how to gain and keep it, the way the Columbine Shooters did, then they understand how to win in any self-protection situation, by taking it away from the Bat-Shit Crazy person.  Once they understand how to cause Damage to the human body's critical systems, then they know how to use any tool to end a self-protection situation in two or three seconds.  Bad Guys understand all of this stuff either intuitively or through training in the correctional systems; delusional cowards worried about the "demonic possession" imbuing inanimate objects with murderous intent, or failed hippies desperately trying to change human nature, do not understand violence.  They don't understand the causes of violence.  They don't understand the utility of violence in self-protection.  They don't understand the irrelevance of banning certain things when trying to get bad people to stop behaving badly.  They absolutely do not understand the massive mental health crisis facing America.  They do not understand that people who are Bat-Shit Crazy, who want to hurt innocent people, always WILL unless they are stopped by equally violent people.  But we can't all be presidents with Secret Service Agents to step in front of the bullets when a John Hinckley nutjob shows up, so we have to get prepared to protect ourselves.

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Soule

Easy6

www.easy6training.com

W.I.D.T.H.6.

Weapon

Initiative

Damage

Torque

Head/Neck

Sixuational Awareness (Check your 6)

Also, please check out Colion Noir's debates with the anti-gun movement which inspired this blog.  Sorry about the language!

More on "Self-Defense Mindset"

So, after last week's blog and my facebook post about martial arts, I got some questions regarding what I meant by "self-defense mindset."  As always, I give credit to Tim Larkin and his amazing book When Violence is the Answer, in which he defines "self-defense" not as any actions we might do against another person, but as the legal determination from a criminal justice authority after the incident about whether it was justified or not.  By that definition, "self-defense" is the justified use of force against another person as determined by a cop, a prosecutor, a judge or a jury.  So, understanding what "self-defense" is and is not, then we have to understand that the things martial arts instructors and shooting instructors teach--the actions we train students to perform--are not self-defense, they are what many of us call "self-protection."

Now, last post when I was talking about the marketeers in the personal protection training business referring to the "self-defense mindset," I was really highlighting how many people misuse the term "self-defense."  The confusion I got was from people who still think this is about fighting.  I had a debate with my dad over the holiday about this very topic and if a bar fight can ever really be "self-defense."  My assertion is that nothing in a bar is worth fighting over, and if you can deescalate a situation by leaving, that is always the best option.  So, for me the "self-defense mindset" is not the same as it is for fighters, brawlers and martial artists.

Fighters, whether they be professionals, martial artists or just good brawlers, think of "self-defense" situations as any instance where somebody tries to put a hand on you.  That is their mindset.  I had a martial arts instructor tell me one time that he believes in teaching people lessons and if somebody touched him, they "earned a trip to a hospital."  He was an outstanding practitioner of his art and could easily snap people's limbs at will.  That's the problem.  A guy pushing you in a bar, or spilling a drink on you, or grabbing you because you spilled his drink (all three of which have happened to me at various times in my bar-going lifetime), does not constitute a "self-defense" situation to me, using Tim Larkin's definition of "self-defense," because drunk idiots are not Bad Guys.  Bad Guys is capitalized because it's a compound proper noun, not an adjective describing a noun.

And that is the fundamental difference between my concept of a "self-defense mindset" and the idea that some drunk idiot in a bar deserves a trip to a hospital because he took a handful of lapel and wrinkled your shirt.  My concept of "self-defense mindset" is killer instinct.  I don't mean that hyperbolically either, I mean literally killing people.  Now, when is that justified?  When would a criminal justice authority determine that gouging out somebody's eyes and snapping their neck would be an appropriate self-protection response?  The answer is when it really is a Bad Guy.  When the opponent is actually trying to do you grievous harm.  I can't justify blinding, paralyzing or killing a man who takes a wild-ass, drunken, hay-maker swing at me in a bar because I accidentally spilled his drink.  No criminal justice authority is going to say that was a justified use of force.

In my philosophy of violence, the "self-defense mindset" is the same whether you are armed with a Bradley Fighting Vehicle or your bare hands.  The tools are irrelevant because it is a life or death situation.  Which means, as I have written in the past, unarmed combat is still a struggle for life and death, it's just really uncomfortable combat.  The conclusion I draw from this philosophy, therefore, is as old as repeating firearms: Don't take a knife to a gunfight.  And, always take a gun to a knife fight!  Because there is no such thing as "cheating" in a real "self-defense" situation, where you are legally justified in killing a Bad Guy who is trying to rape, kill or maim you.  That is a combat situation, and in combat, whether it's between armies on a battlefield, fighter planes in the sky, or a rapist and a victim in an alley, cheating is winning!  In a real "self-defense" situation, where a Bad Guy is trying to do you serious harm, you would be perfectly justified in using a knife or a gun if you had it on you.  If you would not be justified in shooting or stabbing the other person, then that is not a real "self-defense" situation.  That is the difference between the "self-defense mindset" that a lot of martial arts schools teach and what I teach.

Which means, in answer to my student a few weeks ago, that unless we are talking about law school, there is no such thing as a "self-defense class."  There is all kinds of training that can teach self-protection skills.  This includes unarmed combat skills (like martial arts or boxing) and armed self-protection skills (like knife fighting and shooting and flying a fighter plane), but these are not "self-defense classes," because it's not about the stuff we do to the other person, it's about what a criminal justice authority says regarding the things we did to the other person after the fact.  If you're not justified in shooting or stabbing the guy, it's probably not clear-cut "self-defense."  And if it's ambiguous, like the drunk asshole in the bar, you can lose a lot of money in legal fees trying to prove that he was a Bad Guy and not just a guy acting badly.  So, I will tell you the exact opposite of what my old martial arts instructor said: Walk Away!  Tim Larkin says that if you can walk away, then it's not a real self-defense situation.  Guys behaving badly are not the same as Bad Guys.  Just because a drunk asshole pushes you in a bar, doesn't mean he deserves a trip to a hospital.  But a Bad Guy, pushing a woman into a dark alley to do terrible things to her, deserves a trip to the morgue instead of the hospital.  See the difference?  Which begs the question, then, why not just shoot him?  Don't worry about whether Technique 1 or Technique 27 would be better in that situation, just pull the trigger until you hear click.  Which is not to say you should not take unarmed combat training; I think everybody needs to have enough unarmed combat skills to get to their tools: "Fight to the gun and fight for the gun in order to fight with the gun!" But it's the tools that finish the job, and if you're not justified in using the tools, then you're just in a bar fight and that isn't a real "Self-Defense Situation" where the first officer on the scene will shake your hand and tell you, "good job" instead of arresting you.  

"Kicking a guys ass," is a fighting mentality.  That's how you should judge so-called "self-defense" training; are they teaching you to "kick a guy's ass," or kill a violent predator using whatever tools you have?  Good schools teach the second one as the "Self-Defense Mindset;" harnessing the survival instinct required to kill a Bad Guy and get back to your loved ones, regardless of whether you are armed with a gun, your bare hands or a rock.  The problem is that many of those schools teach their students to use good, lethal methods of self-protection against guys behaving badly instead of actual Bad Guys, and that mistake can land you in prison very quickly.  Just remember, if you wouldn't be justified in shooting the guy or stabbing him if you had a knife, then it's probably not a real "self-defense" situation.  That's just a fight, and whether you can "kick his ass," or he "kicks your ass," none of it is worth it if you can WALK AWAY.

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Soule

Easy 6

www.easy6training.com

Thoughts on "Self-Defense Classes"

I had a student ask for a recommendation for “self-defense classes” recently during my pistol class.  I didn’t know how to answer the request.  For one thing, she was learning armed self-protection, which is far more useful than unarmed self-protection.  Secondly, as I have said repeatedly, the only purpose of any unarmed system of self-protection should be to get armed.  And lastly, she was looking for a recommendation for martial arts; martial arts are not very good at teaching self-protection.  Some are good at teaching some physical skills that are somewhat useful in self-protection, but almost none of them teach the mentality necessary for effective self-protection. 

Having said that, I felt bad that I did not have a good answer for her.  I have said repeatedly that I think traditional martial arts are good for teaching young people kinesthetic sense, specifically how to use their bodies more fully in a self-protection scenario.  That should be the goal of studying martial arts, to learn how to use your various hard body parts, like knees, elbows, fists, heels, et cetera, as weapons.  There’s also utility in learning about Torque through some of the grappling arts, how to do throws, breaks, et cetera.  Be cautious with learning the “self-defense techniques” many martial arts teach.  A few are good, most are bad, some are patently idiotic. 

So, if the primary goal is to learn to use the hard parts of your body as weapons, the most useful art I would recommend is kickboxing.  Real kickboxing does not incorporate any “self-defense” techniques into its curriculum.  All it teaches is punching, kicking, knees and elbows.  That is a great foundation for learning the kinesthetic sense needed to use those parts of the body as weapons.  The problem with kickboxing is that it teaches "fighting," not self-protection.  But, having the flexibility, balance and physical intelligence to fight can easily be adapted into self-protection. 

The secondary goal of learning unarmed systems of combat is to develop skills inflicting what I call “Torque.” Torque is applying circular motion and utilizing gravity for throwing and breaking bones, which is best learned through grappling arts.  Without getting into the debate about whether Brazilian or Japanese Jujitsu is better, I would recommend either for learning throws and grappling, or even Aikido to learn throws!  I know a great deal of MMA practitioners are totally anti-Aikido as lacking practicality.  They aren’t wrong, but the holy grail of MMA, Brazilian Jujitsu, also lacks practicality in an actual self-defense situation.  All martial arts do.  However, any of the Jujitsu disciplines, or Aikido’s throwing techniques, can teach some important lessons in body mechanics that can be applied to actual self-protection.  Avoid martial arts that incorporate “self-defense techniques” into their grappling training (like Hapkido and Kempo/Kenpo, or “Ninjutsu”) as they train “bar room self-defense,” at best the techniques are effective and they get people arrested for hurting, maiming or killing drunk guys who are not actual threats, or more frequently, they train completely useless crap that gets the practitioners hurt, maimed or killed. 

So, if you can only study one, study kickboxing to learn how to strike with a variety of anatomical tools.  Once you feel comfortable with the striking, then incorporate a grappling art that teaches throws and breaks—from the standing position—and maybe some ground-escape techniques.  Once you have one or both sets of skills that martial arts can teach you, then you must learn what marketing people in my line of work call “the self-defense mindset.”  Good martial arts teach that mindset, but then they teach you to use it at the absolute wrong time, such as a bar-fight.  Bad martial arts don’t teach the mindset at all, they teach sports, competition or even just a useless art.  None of those are inherently bad, they just have nothing to do with defending yourself from a violent predator trying to maim, rape or kill you. 

So, what is “the self-defense mindset?”  Basically, it means that if you had a gun, you would use it, or use a knife.  It means you must mentally be willing to use your unarmed body as a tool of lethal force, just as if you had a gun or a knife.  It is not a bar fight, therefore, nor is it a competition ring where there are rules and trophies.  Which means that everything I have written above in this blog is pointless if you are smart, because unarmed combat is dumbass combat!  The first rule of unarmed combat is, always has been and always will be: DON’T GET INTO IT!  Arm yourself with something, and almost anything can be used as a weapon.  To me, the only valid purpose of unarmed combat is to fight to a point where you can arm yourself and get into armed combat.  Any martial art that teaches that mentality, is probably a pretty good one.  Just like shooting, which is, to me, the most important martial art, because it means I finish self-defense situations with just my trigger finger instead of my fists and feet.

Soule (Easy 6)

www.Easy6training.com