self defense

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.

She fought like a girl

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

She was attacked at 4 p.m. on a Thursday in a downtown Minneapolis parking garage. Her assailant camouflaged himself in a business suit. She was parked just steps from the elevator on her way from work to school.

As he put a knife to her throat and hissed in her ear, “We’re going for a ride,” Angela Champagne-From had one thought: She was not going to get into that car.

She fought back. Read her full story.

When you’re done, read “Limatunes” analysis of the story. There are a great many lessons to learn here, for women and men.

It may not be what you think

/ hsoi

Claude Werner relayed the following story on Facebook:

The Dangers of Intervention and Threat Management

I had a conversation today with a police officer friend of mine who recently had a sticky situation. It emphasized to me that things are often not what they seem and that our firearms are used much more often for threat management than for shooting.

Popo – I’m rolling on domestic call. I stop the car and it’s active, they’re knocking the shit out of each other. Male half gets out if the car screaming ‘she’s got a gun,’ he runs off. I pull my Beretta 92, start moving around so I can see her more clearly. It’s 0200, dimly lit area.

I see her in the passenger seat, hunched over, moving her right arm in a way that looks like someone running the slide on a pistol. I bring 92 the up, flip the decocker/safety off, start pressing the trigger with the front sight centered on her ear. I’m yelling at her to put her hands up.

The hammer is starting to move back when she sits back, puts her hands up and they’re covered in blood. She was sawing a hole in her wrist with the tip of a nail file.

I really think the safety plus a long trigger pull saved me from shooting her. I was positive she was trying to charge a pistol. I would have been screwed; bad shoot all day. Especially in this political environment.

CW – Did she have a gun at all? Do you think he was trying to get you to shoot her?

Popo – She never had a gun, I think he was trying to get me to kill her. She was transported to the ER for a psych evaluation due to her statements and cutting herself.

CW – That’s what it sounds like to me. “Homicide by cop.”

Popo – Yeah, I’ve been in a lot of close ones but that one made me lose sleep over what would have come next.

CW – What was the outcome with him?

Popo – he went (in) for felony domestic battery (due to her being pregnant). He also had warrants and cocaine in his pockets.

I’m more concerned with private citizen self-defense than police action, and the two do operate under different constraints and circumstances.

But what I primarily take from this is that the scene may not always be what you think it is.

I know a lot of people who consider themselves to be sheepdogs. So many people want to get involved, to be the hero. I hear this in conversations, I see it posted online all the time. I don’t fault people for having this attitude, and frankly I wish more people did have it because it shows a love and care for one’s fellow man. A willingness to be involved, to help others, to protect others. This is a good thing.

Alas, when shit’s unfolding, our heart is pounding, our mind is racing, and everything is zooming past… can we adequately assess a situation?

A common scenario I like to throw out is that you roll up to the local stop-and-rob, and as you step up to the doors someone runs out followed immediately by a second person. This second person points towards the first, yells something like “he just robbed the place!” then runs off in the opposite direction.

What do you do? What is your assessment of the situation?

And does it occur to you first guy might be totally innocent guy trying to distance himself from the situation, and it was really second guy that robbed the place and was merely distracting you so he could get away?

Or, maybe the first guy was the robber.

How can you know for sure?

What if you were in a park and saw someone mounted atop another, giving him the old ground and pound? Should you stop the guy on top? What if I told you he was a father that just stopped his child’s (attempted) abductor, and he was dishing out a little fatherly justice? Would you stop him now?

I’m not saying what you should or shouldn’t do in these particular situations, merely trying to point out that your first impression may be a wrong impression. Or it may be a correct one. You cannot know, and you cannot get involved unless you do know, else you open yourself up for a lot of risk and liability.

Yes, we can get back to premises such as beer & tv or merely “is it worth dying for?”. Is getting involved in someone else’s problems going to lead to good things or bad things, and you really need to consider the complete and mundane impacts it will have upon your life (every day for its remainder). And unfortunately taking such attitudes tends to run counter to a hero mindset, because now you are being selfish and choosing to not get involved. But is this really a bad thing? or is it about finding a balance between getting involved when you know you should, and staying out when you know you shouldn’t.