self defense

Detect, Defuse, Defend – do we need more emphasis on the first two?

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Tony Blauer asks the question: “What would it cost you if you didn’t fight back?”

I’m referring to the emotional/psychological taxes. Most people never consider violence’s deeper impact. The noxious effects that create PTSD, the memories that stain our mind’s-eye and silently agitate our nervous system.

When bad shit happens close-up, everything can change.

So what would you pay to avoid some of this? What would you pay to feel safer?

His answer?

Pay attention.

Some days ago, a man on a San Francisco Muni train pulled out a gun and flashed it around. A lot. There was nothing covert, hidden, or non-obvious about what he was doing – he was quite obvious and blatant. However, everyone around him was oblivious, noses buried in their phones and tablets. No one saw what was going on until the guy shot someone.  Apparently it was a random encounter, thus anyone on that train could have been the victim, and they never would have known… they never would have had a chance to do anything.

Now, everyone is quick to blame mobile devices. We have to remember that books and newspapers and Walkman’s existed long ago, and people found themselves just as engrossed and oblivious with those. However, I cannot deny that we’ve changed and find ourselves with our noses buried on the glass screen a lot more these days. In fact, people tend to consider that device of primary importance, more so than driving or walking. I admit, I’ve watched people walking around with their eyes on their phone and not on where they were going, and I’ve been tempted to step in front of them or simply insert my hand between their eyes and their phone. It’d be to make a point that perhaps they should pay more attention to the world around them, alas, I’d just be seen as an asshole and no lesson would be learned. *sigh*

Mr. Blauer talks about the 3 D’s:

1) DETECT (to avoid)

2) DEFUSE (to de-escalate)

3) DEFEND (to protect).

Two-thirds of your personal safety takes place before you even step on the “X” (The “X” being symbolic for the time & place of an ambush).

The Three D’s is the basis of your ‘ Personal Defense OS’.

Two-thirds of confrontation management relies on awareness, mental toughness and fear management strategies before any contact is made. Avoiding danger should be the primary directive.

Col. Jeff Cooper has his color codes of awareness. Insights Training has their street & vehicle tactics course. SouthNarc teaches about Managing Unknown Contacts (MUC). Karl Rehn has done much to further the utility and use of force-on-force training. Any good trainer in this area is going to stress the importance of such things. Granted, it’s #3 that sells the most because we all like to shoot guns, or practice kata and joint locks, or whatever. There’s not a lot of sexy appeal in #1 and #2, but it’s precisely those that will do the most to keep us alive and out of trouble.

Yes, this is where “force-on-force” training pays off. The thought of “FoF” scares a lot of people because it makes it sound like it’s going to be a UFC battle. Yes, there’s FoF classes (like SouthNarc’s ECQC) that are about going to some physical extremes. But a lot of FoF training is just scenarios, role playing, with little physicality (and a lot of people finding their inner thespian). What it does give you is a lot of understanding of how Detect and Defuse play a big role in your own personal safety. If the only training you’ve had is to “draw your gun” or “palm strike to the nose”, you only know how to do #3, and that’s not always going to be the right answer.

This sort of training helps you make a mental shift. It sinks in a lot of reality, and should enable you to give yourself permission to listen to yourself more. Blauer continues:

This strategically brings us into the next step in enhancing your personal safety: decide right now to respect and embrace your body’s survival signals. If an alarm goes off, respond to it. Got a bad feeling? Address it. Something nagging at you? Stop and look into it. Don’t ignore these signals. Don’t rationalize and mentally correct them. Don’t dismiss them without assessing them. Your body is built for survival and one of its hard-wired systems is designed to alert you to danger.

I know what some of you are thinking, “What if I mistake a feeling, body language, a gesture or movement and react to it.” And? What’s the downside? No one [important in your life] is going to be upset with you for facing fear. Don’t be shy or embarrassed about this. Accept that the human body will generally err on the side of survival. And so should you. There is no downside to being safe or safer. But there is a massive down side to ignoring these survival signals.

And don’t let peer pressure; socialization, fear of fear or other distractions mess with your survival instincts. We are physiological survival organisms, designed to adapt & survive. (FYI, in my courses I’ve re-named us #humanweapons, because that’s the mindset you need when the shit hits the fan, right? I’d rather remind myself “I’m a human-weapon”, and charge forward than scream, “I’m a Survival organism!” self-talk is key. Also, I can use the # on Twitter).

So make a contract with yourself right now that the moment your instincts & intuition raise an alarm that you will take steps to move to safety as soon as possible. Got a bad feeling? Address it now. Get off the “X” ASAP. Start moving when time and space are allies and options.

What’s the cost of learning the most the most important and practical part of self-defense? Zip. Just pay attention. Getting off the “X” is FREE.

If they stand down, can you stand up?

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Take a step back for a moment and ask yourself a question – and honestly answer it.

When it gets down to it, who is responsible for you?

Or perhaps instead ask, who is best able to take care of you? Who are you best able to count on? Or when everything else goes south, who is there, able to do things for you?

As of this writing, word is that when the shooting started at the Navy Yard, the police were told to stand down:

Four heavily-armed members of the Containment and Emergency Response Team (CERT) [of the US Capitol Police] were nearby when the initial report of an active shooter was announced, sources told BBC.

An officer with the Metropolitan Police Department told the tactical officers, who were wearing full tactical gear and armed with HK-416 weapons, that they were the only officers on the scene with long guns and their help was needed to stop Aaron Alexis.

When the CERT team radioed their superiors, they were told to leave the scene, according to the report.

Again, it’s still under investigation if this happened, and if so why.

But think about it.

With all the heightened sensitivity to “active shooter” situations, when there’s not just police but a special team equiped and trained for such events right there and able to respond… and they don’t.

Yeah, that’s not good.

Who knows. It may have been an honest, but tragic, mistake on the part of the police supervisors to not respond. They are human too.

But here’s the thing.

It really doesn’t matter if they were there or not. It really doesn’t matter if they were there, why they were told to stand down. Or even if they were there and started an immediate response, how much impact they could have had; I’m sure it would have been some improvement, but there would still be innocent lives lost.

What matters is, they didn’t come.

What this shows is that, in the end, you cannot count on someone to come and save you. Yes, there will be people who will try, but it may not always happen. It may not always work out. They may not come at all, or if they do, it may be too late.

You have no control over someone coming to save you or not.

And it’s not just good people with guns showing up to save the day. Consider medics. Medics will not be permitted into the scene until it is considered safe. What happens if you’re bleeding? Can you stop your own bleeding? Look how long it takes to consider a scene safe: hours. Do you know how quickly you can die from blood loss? Can you really bleed for hours? can you really wait? Can you really count on medics arriving in time? Again, this isn’t to say they won’t try, but there are circumstances beyond their control which forces delays in getting you care; and if they don’t have control, you really don’t have control.

Step back even further. Do you have any control over bad things happening in a day? Do you have any control over if “that guy” at the office chooses today to be the day he decides to share his disgruntledness with you?

Think about it folks. You don’t have a lot of control over things (a fact of life, applying to far more areas than just the above topics). This includes the ability for others to take care of you. The ability for others to be there when you need them. The ability for others to respond quickly when you need them at your side. This isn’t to say there aren’t good people out there, that these people are unwilling to respond, but rather there are realities of time, geography, physics, and other matters of the world that you just cannot control, change, nor bend.

But what you can do is control yourself.

When you need someone, you are there.

When you have to count on someone, you can count on yourself.

Who is on the scene right now? You are.

Why are we encouraging a system, lifestyles, and choices, that require a dependence upon others? Yes sometimes dependencies happen, but step back and think about how you can often fare better when you have the capabilities to handle things yourself. That doesn’t mean you always have to, but then at least you have options. Then at least if you must, you can.

If no one can stand up for you, can you stand up for yourself?

Sheepdog Fallacy

/ hsoi / 12 Comments

In his book On Combat, Lt. Col. David Grossman speaks about the notion of “sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs”.

…“Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” …. “Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”

Via Claude Werner, an article by Jack Feldman examining if the sheepdog analogy is a fallacy. He examines what a sheepdog actually is – that is, the actual dogs that are owned and used by a shepherd to guard his flock. It takes the analogy to task and makes the case that the police are actually sheepdogs, and armed private citizens are… something else.

Armed citizens are a problem for the shepherds. Not being sheep, they’re not afraid of the sheepdogs and are prepared to take on the wolves, hyenas or whoever. They mean no harm to anyone, have no desire to control others, but are much harder to control and therefore to exploit. Worse, their example might spread. They’re not wolves, but not sheepdogs either. The shepherds, expecting obedience from everything but wolves, have no clue how to deal with them. Their common response is to try to get rid of armed citizens one way or another, typically by removing the arms. Acting like a sheepdog when you’re not gives the shepherds that opportunity.

It’s an interesting examination of the analogy.

Blind people and guns

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Iowa is granting permits to acquire or carry guns in public to people who are legally or completely blind.

No one questions the legality of the permits. State law does not allow sheriffs to deny an Iowan the right to carry a weapon based on physical ability.

The quandary centers squarely on public safety. Advocates for the disabled and Iowa law enforcement officers disagree over whether it’s a good idea for visually disabled Iowans to have weapons.

Full story (h/t Eric)

I’ve seen numerous people mentioning this story. Of those I know that are in the anti-gun camp, they just see this as more gun lunacy and how the NRA is infiltrating and destroying everything. Of those on the pro-gun side,  I’ve seen them asking  questions and wondering, because this obviously creates some uncertainty and uncomfortableness.

When my friend Eric posted this on Facebook, here’s how I responded:

An interesting notion for sure. Certainly lots of legal implications involved, but setting those aside…

To me it still comes down to a simple thing: should people be denied the ability (right?) to defend themselves. We could even argue that folks with disabilities are, by nature, at a greater disadvantage and thus could be argued have even more need to have “force equalizers” to make up for the greater disparity caused by their disability. To deny them, to leave them in a position of greater vulnerability, would be wrong. It’s such a popular notion to care for and give special dispensation to the vulnerable, to afford them greater protection — especially by and from the state — would it be right for the state and general populace to deny them the ability?

That isn’t to say it may be right for them to actually do it [meaning: blind people shooting guns, blind people having carry permits, etc.]… but that’s different from the state forcing them into a greater state of vulnerability.

I have taught a few deaf people to shoot guns. They’re actually really good shots because there’s no BANG to make them flinch; quite an advantage. We have to do a little different handling of range commands and teaching style, but that’s not a big deal.

Haven’t taught any blind folks tho. I don’t really have a firm stance on this… quite open to discussion. The above is just my gut reaction, because I don’t see why we (or rather, The State) should deny good people the God-given right to self-defense.

Of course, the State denies all sorts of things all the time. Some of them are right, some of them are wrong, and no matter what we shouldn’t be making legislation off knee-jerk reactions and feelings. Furthermore, legality and morality are (should be) two separate things: just because it’s legal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right, and just because it’s illegal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong. As well, just because it’s legal doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea to do, and just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea to avoid.

Because well… you tell me what a blind woman is supposed to do in response to being raped. You acknowledge her blindness puts her at a disadvantage, do you really want to make her more vulnerable? Before you deny her right to self-defense, before you deny her right to life, before you deny her right to choose, before you deny her “women’s health”, offer a better solution.

Little things can help keep us safer

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

“(Hubbart) began to sexually assault women in their homes in 1972,” the petition said. “He committed 25 or 26 such assaults that year, all of them in the Los Angeles area. He would drive around in the early morning and look for homes that had garage doors open, indicating the man of the house had gone to work. He would also look for children’s toys, believing that mothers would be protective of their children and more likely to cooperate with him. He would bind the women’s hands and cover their faces, then sexually assault them.”

Regarding Christopher Hubbart, a serial rapist, and his release.

This isn’t about the horrible things Hubbart did. But it does afford us a chance to learn so perhaps no one else will become a victim of such a monster.

Look at what Hubbart did. He didn’t attack in the middle of the night. He didn’t stroll around a college campus or a dim parking lot.

No, he drove around neighborhoods — like yours — looking for signs of vulnerability:

  • Open garage doors
    • Not just being open, but then empty… with signs the “alpha predator” was not around
  • Children’s toys
    • Children usually mean there’s a woman nearby
    • That women will be willing to “give him what he wants” because he can always play towards injury of the children

I see it constantly as I go around town. People leaving their garage doors open, windows open, doors and windows unlocked. Signs that say “come on in”. It makes for easy access, and it shows a lackadaisical attitude towards one’s personal safety. That you don’t care, that you don’t think it could happen to you, that you’ve never considered that it could… and thus you are all the more vulnerable, and all the more susceptible prey to the sick predator.

Kids toys left out also raise signals like that there’s probably a video game console inside — make a quick buck by selling it. Various signs that help to make your home, and perhaps you, more appealing. And yes, Hubbart’s notion of the woman being more willing to submit out of fear of injury to the children? Just another angle to take advantage of.

No, this is not right. But the sad part is it happened over and over. He committed a couple dozen of these. Where was the fighting back? Where was the unwillingness to be a victim?

And are you really going to tell me these women would have been better off without a gun? And without the determination and mindset to use it, to prevent their attack, and the possible future attacks of others?  Are you saying they should “just give him what he wants?” because that’s the mantra so many utter as the proper response to being a crime victim… but Hubbart is what happens when you “give them what they want”.

No. Learn from this horrible situation. Learn how you can do a few simple things to make yourself less appealing as and more difficult to be a victim. If you’re going to become a statistic, make it one for the “win” column.

What should she have done?

/ hsoi

Kari Bird just started law school and continues to work full time. Bird got home at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and when she got out of her car, a group of three or four young guys approached her.

….he quickly pulled out a gun.

“He told me to … give him my keys,” Bird said.

She did turn over her keys, but realizing all her law books and belongings were in the car, Bird made a quick decision. With the gun still pointed at her, she reached into her center console to pull out her own gun.

“(He said), ‘Oh s***’ and then ran,” Bird told Fox 59.

Full story (h/t Brian)

Just one question.

For those of you who wish to ban guns, that wish to deny good people the ability to defend themselves, that seek to prevent people possessing guns in public (in their car, on their person)… why are you seeking to harm Kari Bird?

 

Realities: F=ma

/ hsoi

There’s just some realities of the world that political correctness and good intentions cannot overcome. “F = ma” is one of them.

– John “Hsoi” Daub

In response to my “Little woman vs. big man“, Chuck Rives commented “Good stuff. There’s a reason why even UFC adopted weight classes.”. The above was my response to him, and I think the notion is one that too many people forget.

Little woman vs. big man

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A common sales pitch of martial arts is that learning my deadly art will allow a 100# woman to fight off a 300# gorilla.

As well, one common refrain about the use of tools in self defense, is that the tool becomes a way to overcome the force disparity that a 300# gorilla poses to a 100# woman. If you can have a baseball bat, pepper spray, gun, it “levels the playing field”.

So which is right? Or are both right? Or are both wrong? Or is there something else?

Rick Randolph writes that there’s actually something else that matters more:

While it may be unrealistic to think we can teach any 110 pound person to knock out a 220 pound attacker … or use pressure points or joint locks, that is not what self-defense is. See “fights” in a self-defense sense aren’t won with techniques, they are won with what Coach calls indignation.

Bad guys aren’t looking for a fight. They are looking for a victim. Give them a fight, even an unskilled one, and often times they will go look for a “better” victim

[…]

Lets face it: it wasn’t their physical skills that saved them. None of the stories tell of fancy techniques. Simply that they chose to fight. And that is the reality of self-defense. It is less about how you fight but more simply about the fact that you fight.

Make the decision you will fight now. You don’t want to wait until you have to.

Self-defense classes shouldn’t be so much about teaching people how to fight, and more about empowering them to fight and fight with everything they have.

And that’s what it is: mindset. You must have the mindset to fight. I’ve heard some say that you should become angry, or Rick above says to be indignant, which is probably a more accurate term. Use that. Let it drive you to drive them off.

Yes, I think there is great merit to using tools. That’s one of the things humans have that other animals don’t. We are gloriously mediocre in our senses and our skills, not really good at any one thing, but decently good enough at a lot of things. And one of those things we’re decently good at is using our brains to create stuff, stuff that helps us overcome our shortcomings and mediocrity. We can’t move fast, so we invent cars and planes. We can’t see well, so we invent telescopes and night vision goggles. And our fangs and claws aren’t much, so we have knives and guns. Tools are useful things and we should use them.

But the tool doesn’t matter if you’re unwilling to use it. If you buy a gun, shove it in a drawer, that does you no good. If you practice with that gun but merely plink or slow target shoot with it, that does you no good. Might you want to take classes to learn about good defensive handgun skills so you can use the tool well under pressure? Or how about taking Force-on-Force classes so you can be put into realistic scenarios and see how you’d react. Maybe see how you might be able to channel some indignation. When you read news articles, put yourself into the story and figure out how you would react to being mugged, beat up, raped, or otherwise left for dead. What would you do? Because if you play out these scenarios in your head, basically a visualization technique, and your response in them is to choose to fight, to choose to be indignant, you’re setting yourself up for success.

I don’t want people to become bitter or negative about the world and live their life in some ugly way. I do want people to acknowledge tho that the world does have ugly elements that are willing to infringe upon your life and turn it into something you could never imagine in your worst horrors. Hopefully it will never happen, but if it does, I hope you will have prepared beforehand. Whether it’s acquiring the tools, the skills, or more importantly the mindset and mentality to fight. That is what will enable a 100# woman to overcome a 300# attacker.

Going without

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I “lost” my eyesight for 24 hours.

Oh, nothing horrible here. I have pretty bad vision, very near-sighted. Things have to be maybe 2-3″ in front of my face to be clear. I wear glasses.

My glasses broke. Freak thing. I came home from teaching, was cleaning them, and in the process of drying them off the bridge just snapped. Odd thing too, being Nike Flexon… uh, what happened to flexing instead of being brittle and breaking? This isn’t the first time I’ve had a Flexon frame just break on me, but I opted to try for something else for my replacements. But that’s not the point of my writing.

I was without clear and useful vision for 24 hours.

Oh I know it’s not that horrible. I could still see somewhat well enough to get by and exist. Wife has a friend that is actually losing her eyesight completely. I know my problem is nothing like that.

But it’s enough to make you appreciate what you have.

I could get by, if I stuck my nose 2-3″ in front of things. iPhone was alright, computer was not so much. Walking around, interacting with the kids, avoiding stuff lying on the floor, no problem. Even walking around the crowded shopping mall where the eyeglasses store was, I had no problems seeing and avoiding (tho no window shopping to pass the time while we waited). I wouldn’t want to drive, and if I wasn’t able to get a replacement set “in an hour” I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about work (sick day?), but thankfully that didn’t happen.

I thought about my carry handgun. Pfft… what was the point? I really couldn’t see well enough to shoot anything beyond arms length. I did try some draws and dry fire, and if anything it did make me think I should practice more with my glasses off.

See, it’s very unsettling to not have clear vision. Or rather, to go from having it to suddenly not. There’s a lot you take for granted, and suddenly it’s gone. It’s unsettling, it’s disconcerting. And how to suddenly operate? After a few hours without my glasses, I was getting used to it and felt more comfortable. But there’s still no way I’d take a 15 yard shot (my vision is just that bad, it’d be irresponsible). But given most “interpersonal confrontations” happen 0-5 yards, well… yeah, I ought to see how I can manage.

I should dry practice to gain enough confidence here because I cannot see the front sight, so I have to ensure I can index well enough. I have to learn what I can do — and what I cannot. I should try some live fire work to see how I fair. If nothing else, to shoot and KNOW instead of having only ignorance, that will serve me better.

Shooting at that distance doesn’t actually require a perfect sight picture (read Enos, Stoeger, etc.). And while it’s somewhat about that, it’s more about dealing with the sudden loss of eyesight and knowing what I can and cannot do. To know what it will look like, feel like, what information and feedback I will be without and must find alternatives upon which to base my actions. And to have the confidence to know that this is not a problem, I can work through it. It’s better to have and know this stuff ahead of time.

Because to lose my glasses? It’s a distinct possibility. I ought to know what I can do, when I’m forced to do without.

Some data about knockouts

/ hsoi

Analyst James LaFond studied 1,675 acts of violence that took place between June 1996 and May 2000. At the request of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, he then analyzed the incidents in his study that led to a knockout.

And here’s a summary of that data. (h/t Shaun Heyes)

Here’s a link to more of the data, from the original study author.

What gets me the most is how easy one can get knocked out. Sucker-punches are pretty typical, and tend to lead to bad things for the recipient.

Empty hands can be ugly things. Weapons (don’t limit yourself to guns and knives) can be uglier. Do your best to avoid the fight in the first place.