From Tony Blauer, a simple defensive technique for coping with a roadside assault.
self defense
Combined Skills
Next weekend (Sep. 12 & 13, 2009) KR Training will be holding a special Combined Skills course.
Students will work with Tom [Givens, of Rangemaster] on pistol skills for real fights. Southnarc will cover Managing Unknown Contacts, Practical Unarmed Combat, and In-Fight Weapon Access. This is a unique opportunity to obtain dove-tailed training in integrated pre-fight management skills, empty hand skills, and street proven gun skills.
Topics: group shooting at 7-25 yards, presentation from holstered and ready positions, multiple shots/single target, multiple targets, targets at varying ranges, one handed shooting (left and right hand), reloads, shooting on the move, shooting from kneeling and prone, shooting from cover, drawing and shooting from seated positions, and more.
This is some serious training, covering a lot of skills by two of the nation’s best instructors in their respective fields. It is not a beginner course, and looks to be rather intensive. I expect it will be educational, stressful, and humbling.. and you’ll probably go home hurting a bit. 🙂
Opportunities like this don’t come around often. If you’re within reasonable travel distance to Central Texas and the KR Training facilities, I’d recommend signing up for the course. There are still some slots left.
I’ll be there. I expect to be humbled and educated, and come out a better person for it all. It’ll be long and tiring, but should be good. I’m sure I’ll have reports afterwards.
Backing up? Go forward (sorta)!
Various gun bloggers are talking about this video:
The take-home? That’s how fast someone can come at you (Tueller Drill). Now, the video is IDPA and thus a game and you’re pretty much required to stand there and shoot. But in a real world self-defense situation, you don’t want to stand there and shoot. You want to move.
What bugs me a bit is a lot of folks are recommending that you back up.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not that good at running backwards, especially if I saw someone was coming at me at a high rate of speed with a gun or knife or somehow otherwise bent on hurting me. There’s no way I can run backwards as fast as they’re running forwards. I can’t see where I’m going and thus what I’m about to trip over. And tripping over your own feet is just likely enough and now you’re flat on your back or butt and at a massive disadvantage. Furthermore I know from empty-hand sparring, that going straight backwards does not give you any sort of chance of improving your situation. Your opponent is just going to bear down on you and you only delay getting whacked by a couple seconds — but you’re still getting whacked.
Better is to move off to the side. Let’s say you’re facing the attacker, and your facing forward is 12 o’clock. Going backwards would be 6 o’clock. The simplest thing to do would be to side-step to 3 or 9 o’clock. It’s not the best, but it’s better. Some would argue instead you should go backwards and to the side, so to a 7-8 o’clock or 4-5 o’clock position. Me, I’d argue differently.
I’d say go to 10-11 o’clock, or 1-2 o’clock.
Yes, go towards them. Well, somewhat towards them.
I learned this from InSights Training Center. What you do is make a “J-Hook” sort of run pattern. Allow me to draw a really crappy picture (tgace’s Tactical Preschool series inspired me to make a picture).
There you are at the bottom, attacker at the top coming at you. I drew it running to the left, but of course you can run it to the right as well. The key is to see the J-hook running pattern.
What does this do? Well, it gets you “off the X” and out of the direct line of attack. You do keep yourself far enough away that if they had some sort of contact weapon (knife, baseball bat, crowbar, etc.) that you’re still out of range (note: you can tighten the J and close distance, or expand the J to get away, depending upon your situation). You are moving forward and thus are moving in the manner our bodies are best suited for moving. But you are turning. What’s not shown in the simple diagram is that as you are moving in this manner you are still keeping your body (well, your gun) facing the opponent. You are on the advantage. The attacker now has to change direction and try to turn hard to keep up with you. It’s quite difficult. To really appreciate this, you need to get with a friend and try it. No need for any guns or training weapons, just use your fingers. Start facing each other at some distance apart (to start try 21′ apart, but experiment with different distances: start arms length apart, then when you start the next iteration take a step back from the prior starting point). Without any prior warning or “go” signal, one person should rush the other person and the other person should initiate the J-hook maneuver. Go to either side, you can even mimic drawing your gun if you wish. Make sure you try it as both attacker and defender so you can fully appreciate it.
Is this the be-all-end-all solution? Of course not. It’s just more fuel for Internet debate. 😉 But from my own sparring experience I know that backpeddling isn’t really a productive solution. You must put some sort of “off to the side” movement in there. At least you want the movement to get you out of the line of attack. Better, it also moves you to a more advantageous position. Best, it also reduces your opponents position. The J-hook really works that angle.
Updated: The InSights Training blog echos similar sentiments (of course, since that’s where I got the J-hook from). Also, I didn’t know InSights has a blog. I shall now follow it. 🙂
Updated 2: John Fogh @ InSights now has a specific entry on the J-Hook.
Tactical Preschool
Cool. tgace finally got all of his excellent Tactical Preschool series set with categories and tags. Makes it easier to link to the whole series, and pick up future ones.
Small incident
Had a small incident tonight.
I’m chillin’ with Daughter in the house when Oldest rushes into the room and says, “Mom needs you, now.” Urgency there, I get up and go. Wife briefs me. There’s some dude hanging around the street-light a couple houses down. Gave Oldest the willies, and it was certainly odd behavior. Strange person, why would they just be hanging out at the street-light?
I head outside to check on things. I’m able to do a few things in the yard to look busy and otherwise occupied, but watching what the dude is up to. Then I see good neighbor across the street, who has a similar penchant for paying attention to the neighborhood goings on. I head over and we talk, as he too noticed the dude.
As we watched, dude’s behavior wasn’t too suspicious. Perhaps just waiting for someone to pick him up. But then it dragged on. We were standing outside talking about life, family, work, hunting, playing in band back in grade school, whatever topics. But dude was still there… hour went by, still there. It went from a concern, to probably nothing but we’ll keep an eye, to “this is just getting weird.” Why just standing there, doing nothing, for about an hour? Gave the police a call to have them drive by. I don’t know exactly how long it took them to show up, but I know I checked the clock and 15 minutes went by and it was some time after that before APD rolled onto the scene. Two cruisers showed up, they spoke with dude, eventually some people from a nearby house come out and there’s interactions with the police and discussions. Back and forth for a bit, APD seemed eventually satisfied and left. People from house brought a phone out to dude, and eventually he leaves in a car with someone (they had pulled up prior to APD arriving).
While the men were outside minding things, the women of the neighborhood were on the phone alerting all other neighbors. People were watching out their windows, noting things, taking descriptions, pictures, whatever. If something was going to happen, we were going to be prepared. 🙂 Plus, as everyone connected, it was evident that others had noticed dude too and had similar concerned feelings about the matter.
No idea what was going on, but it was still all very strange. We’re attempting to contact APD to find out the story.
Lessons learned:
- Don’t blow off gut feelings. If something feels wrong, act on it.
- You don’t know when ugly will strike, so always be prepared. I have all my everyday gear on me (including my flashlight), every day all the time. Wife needed me now, I was able to go and was ready (well, didn’t have my phone on me… still trying to work out a good “gotta keep it charged but need to keep it on me” strategy). I didn’t have to take time to get all my stuff together, I was ready and could act immediately.
- Ensure all your neighbors know each other and have each others contact information. You don’t have to be friends, but you are neighbors. Even if you might not like your neighbor, there may come a time where there’s a bigger evil that will require you to come together.
- If you’ve got a team, ensure you’ve got a plan. My wife and I? Team. Kids can be involved too. Then have plans, and ensure people know their parts; practice. Wife knows one of her primary roles is communication: she calls proper people, gathers information. I didn’t have to walk out the door and tell her to do any of this; she knows her role, I know mine. Kids even do to, for instance, they know that yeah sometimes in life you might be able to argue with Mom & Dad, but when something serious is going on you must obey… and they know that.
- Don’t count on a fast police response. I’m not surprised they didn’t come blaring in with sirens within 2 minutes, and I expect if they had to get two cruisers/officers and coordinate a bit that that would require a little more time too. I wish they were a little faster in their response but in the end it was acceptable response time. Still, it was quite a long time for the response…. you can only count on the police for so much, and your immediate safety isn’t necessarily part of that equation.
- If you believe in self-defense, your training shouldn’t be in only physical skills such as punching or shooting. You need to know street smarts, mental skills, and other such things. That will take you further.
I believe the world is a generally safe place. I believe the world is filled with good people. But evil can come in any form to any place at any time. Nothing is immune. If you don’t want evil to harm you and your loved ones, it’s good to be prepared to deal with it when (not if) it comes your way.
What gun control really amounts to
Marko pens a piece on what gun control really does.
I’ve written about this before, in my Simple Experiment.
Fancy footwork
tgace posts about “tactical preschool.” Some diagrams of basic manuvering, when you’re faced with multiple opponents so as to give yourself the best positioning.
Basically, you put yourself in a place where essentially you reduce their numbers so you can fight say one-on-one instead of two-on-one. Not always easy to do in the heat of the moment, but that’s what practice is for.
As I was looking at tgace’s diagrams, I swear I saw similar diagrams somewhere recently. I just remembered where. Col. Jeff Cooper’s book, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. Whether you agree with Col. Cooper or not, it’s still a useful read.
On home security
Brigid pens a great article about home defense. It is well worth your time to read it.
InSights ABC’s
I have a fondness for InSights Training‘s ABC’s: Always Be Cool.
It’s a mode of being that helps to keep you out of trouble. Always Be Cool. If trouble happens to come your way, you need a level head and a demeanor to help you get out of the situation. Always Be Cool.
There was a recent discussion about dealing with police in the context of concealed carry (e.g. how to produce your license/permit, how to notify the officer that you are carrying, etc. in a way that won’t freak out the officer). Any time a police officer has to pull someone over, they’re going to be tense because they don’t know what to expect and must prepare themselves for the worst. If you are tense, if your body language is anxious, the officer is going to see it and will react accordingly. You are doing nothing wrong (other than your moving violation), you’re just tense because it’s a tense situation by its nature, but still… what can you do to make things better? Always Be Cool.
From Greg Hamilton:
I should of course add YOUR body language, demeanor, speech, etc. must be calm and nonchalant if you want the officer to be also. If you are stressed, anxious, etc you immediately lead the officer there.
[…]
InSights ABC’s: Always Be Cool; first step of being cool is LOOKING cool.
Calm demeanor, natural non-forced smile, normal tone of voice, all lead to you being “believed” They also produce a calm, matter-of-fact, just doing my job demeanor in the officer.
The thing is, this goes far beyond interactions with police officers. It enters into the realm of interactions with anyone and everyone. If you come across calmly, smiling, looking like a nice and cool person, you will be perceived as a cool person and it makes so many things in life go smoother for you.
Whatever you’re doing and dealing with in life, just remember to Always Be Cool. It can take you pretty far.
Sometimes violence is the answer
Matthew, over at Straight Forward in a Crooked World, has an entry titled “Failure to Comply.”
It’s a compelling read, and you’d do well to take a few minutes to read it, then a few minutes more to think about what he wrote.
There’s one thing he wrote that really caught my attention:
We are taught early on and reminded as adults constantly that violence is bad and that it never solves anything, and that no one wins in a fight. This is simply untrue. In fact it is horribly untrue. This is the result of political correctness infesting everything. It skews how we set and train our minds to win.
Violence does solve problems.
Reactive violence can and does routinely stop evil offensive violence. When you are left (regardless of your sex) on the ground and fighting to win to keep your life violence is the answer…and it is the only answer. And you should not apologize nor back peddle for that.
It made me think about my children and what I teach them.
When I started my parenting career, we opted to do the “no hitting” thing. There was no spanking, we taught Oldest not to hit, period. Basically, violence was completely frowned upon for any and every reason, in every context, every angle, you name it.
It didn’t take long before we abandoned that to a small part. Spanking came around. Why? Because you can’t reason with a 2 year old; they just don’t know enough about life to understand greater things. We didn’t and don’t beat our children, but all living things respond in a simple manner: seek pleasure, avoid pain. We saved a swat on the behind for those times when you really needed to enforce a negative consequence to some action. That is, spanking was not the general punishment; it was reserved for times when you needed to make a strong negative impression because there was no natural negative consequence of the action. For example, child runs into the street; that could warrant a swat on the behind because there’s no question there could be tragic consequences of that action — it must not happen again. However, the action itself has no natural negative consequence (apart from the undesirable of the child getting hit by a car), so you must impart a negative consequence so the child will not undertake that action again. The child must know that action leads to painful consequences so they will avoid partaking in actions that lead to pain. Political correctness compells me to say that we also are into positive reinforcement; frankly that garners a lot more compliance and a happier household. But sometimes, a spanking is the right and only answer. Heck, even my old college roommate just went through a little “my son got whacked” situation. He’s still of the “no spanking” camp, but there’s no question the little whack his son got straightened him up and made for a better long-term experience.
When I started getting serious about self-defense, martial arts study, firearms study, I realized that when our kids hit each other, to condemn them and lay down a rule of “no hitting, never” was not correct. Here I was studying all sorts of violent things because I know that sometimes violence is the answer, and now I’m telling my children never to use violence? That didn’t jive, and I had to correct myself.
I teach my children differently now. I teach my children that yes, sometimes violence is the answer, but you must know when that is. If your sibling took your toy or is being annoying, violence is not an appropriate response. If someone is attempting to harm you, abduct you, your sibling, your friends, your Mother… then yes, violence can be an answer. I do what I can to teach my children the proper contexts, to know how to respond in these contexts. I wish my children to live peaceful lives, and while I know the world has mostly good people, there are enough bad people out there that we have to take care and be prepared.
Some months back I posted about guns and church and reconciling Christian doctrine against violent activity. It doesn’t preach it, it doesn’t desire it, but even it acknowledges that sometimes yes, violence is the answer.
It’s not pretty to think about, and it’s far from politically correct. But where do you choose to live? In fantasy or reality?
Stuff From Hsoi 