For those that wish to ban guns or think that guns serve no useful purpose, are you willing to have such a sign relative to your home?
self defense
Learning from my dream
When I woke up this morning, it also woke up my wife. She asked me why I was breathing short and fast. I shrugged it off because I was dealing with my dream. I’d like to share it with you because there’s something I learned (at least reinforced) and maybe you can learn from it too.
DVD Review – ShivWorks’ Practical Unarmed Combat
I picked up the 4 ShivWorks DVD’s. This is a review of one of them: Practical Unarmed Combat.
Note that I have no connection with ShivWorks or SouthNarc. I paid for these DVD’s out of my own pocket money. I’m just some guy that happened to be a customer, bought the DVD, watched it, and wanted to blog about what I saw.
Here’s the official trailer for the DVD:
The Fence, and other non-aggressive stances
Geoff Thompson coined a term, “the fence”.
The fence is a self-defense technique. It’s so simple, but it’s not easy. Basically, the fence is putting your hands up and out in front of you. Poor description, but watch the first video and at about 0:46 you’ll see the fence. Watch the whole video to catch all the subtleties.
The fence aims to control a person: attacker, offensive person, someone in front of you. You’re working to maintain distance, so they cannot get in on you. The thing about the fence is that it’s not necessarily obvious nor aggressive. You have your hands up, you have your hands out. If you’re a person that speaks with your hands, this may not feel too awkward to you but you’ll just have to adapt how you move your hands so they don’t drop below your waist. The fence creates just that — a fence between you and the other person. From there you can control distance, you can use verbal skills to deescalate the situation. If however the situation escalates into violence, the fence puts your hands in a place for immediate action. You can block, trap, strike, parry all from a fence position.
Related to this, consider mantis blocks.
Another such stance some term the “chin-and-elbow cup”. Let’s assume you are right-handed. You will have your right hand cupping your left elbow, and the webbing between the thumb and index finger of your left hand will cradle your chin. This gives you an appearance of being in thought about whatever the dude is talking to you about. Some will say that you should also blade your strong side away. What does this do? It provides your body with coverage: right arm is protecting your mid and lower body, left arm is covering your upper body including having your arm in front of your throat. There are many possibilities and variations on this theme that you can do. Explore.
I have a Renzo Gracie book, Mastering Jujitsu, which discusses a stance called the “prayer stance”. Basically it appears as if you are standing with your hands in a prayer-like state, submissive. But of course it’s a deceptive stance in that it allows you to block, strike, drive in, whatever may be necessary.
There’s Tony Blauer’s “flinch” response:
There’s a lot out there that aims to look at self-defense from a non-agressive yet defensively advantageous position. Fences, flinch-response, and other such stances can be a vital part of your self-defense system, useful to help you avoid the problem in the first place or to help you survive and win if things get ugly.
ShivWorks
I believe I first heard of “SouthNarc” and ShivWorks through KR Training. SouthNarc runs a lot of seminars on his own, but my angle in was via “full-spectrum” courses offered in conjunction with Tom Givens’ Rangemaster. Specifically, in September 2009 I’ll be taking a “combined skills” course with Givens and SouthNarc via KR Training. I’m looking forward to it, as both Tom Givens and SouthNarc are well regarded trainers. It should be a humbling but educational experience.
I’ve also become interested in checking out all I can from SouthNarc because he has a background in Filipino martial arts, which I’ve just started studying. As I tend to do when I get involved in new things, I like to devour all the knowledge I can on the topic, so I’ll seek out books, videos, websites, people, forums and obtain all the information I can. I’ve read numerous things online from and about SouthNarc, and watched some videos on YouTube. So the next step? ShivWorks has produced 4 DVD’s:
- Reverse Edge Methods, Volume 1
- Reverse Edge Methods, Volume 2
- Fighting Handgun, Volume 1
- Practical Unarmed Combat, Volume 1 (my review)
I purchased them through MD Tactical, who were very quick with order turnaround. I just received them in the mail and have started watching. I’m sure I’ll post some reviews as I complete each DVD.
Updated: added link to my review of PUC v1
Tools don’t matter. Actions with them do.
Oleg Volk discusses the ethics of weapon use. (h/t to Robb Allen)
For those that may not want to click on this figuring it’s just some pro-gun justification rah-rah article, give it a read. Oleg has a rather well-thought out line of reasoning.
All pistol rounds suck
This came over a mailing list I subscribe to. The poster, Jeff Mau, is an instructor at a respected training school, in addition to being a police officer and SWAT member, amongst his other credentials.
Shooting someone with a pistol in soft tissue is like sticking them under a drill press and drilling holes, or as Dr. Shertz states it is like poking them with a #2 pencil. It is simply not impressive to a motivated attacker.
For FMJ
- A 9mm will make a 9mm hole with around 50 inches of penetration
- A .40 S&W will make a 10mm hole (I don’t have depth of penetration info on hand, but it will be a lot)
- A .45 ACP will make a 11.5mm hole with with around 65 inches of penetration
For quality JHP
- A 9mm will make a 15.5mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
- A .40 S&W will make a 17mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
- A .45 ACP will make a 19mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
50 plus inches of penetration is suboptimal. For defensive purposes, a quality JHP round is necessary.
The moral of the story is that all pistol rounds suck. Your skill to shoot a reliable weapon system fast and accurate is far more important than bullet size. That being said we all shoot 9mm.
And the reason they (the instructors at that school) all shoot 9mm is because they can shoot it faster and more accurately than the other 2 calibers. I’ve previously expressed my preference for 9mm.
Updated: Let me add some clarification.
There’s a long and seemingly endless caliber war on 9mm Parabellum vs. .45 ACP, and these days .40 S&W can get thrown into the war as well. Why is there a war, because the issue of “terminal ability” between these rounds is about the same. If one was distinctly superior in the area of “terminal ability”, there’d be no war/argument/discussion. Sure .45 ACP makes a bigger hole than a 9mm, but does a bigger hole necessarily equate to better terminal ability? In the laboratory, probably so. In a real life self-defense encounter? There’s far too many other factors involved. While caliber is important (.22 LR is not ideal for defensive work, but is arguably better than nothing at all), there are many other factors to take into account when choosing a handgun for self-defense. When talking about “all pistol rounds suck”, it is generally alluding to the terminal ability of the round, and in the end, all of the “major self-defense handgun calibers” are about the same in terminal ability.
Thus, if the 3 calibers are essentially the same in that area, what can differentiate them? Recoil for one. The recoil of .40 S&W is greater than the recoil of .45 ACP is greater than the recoil of 9mm Parabellum. If all things were equal other than the gun’s chambering, I’m sure first shots of guns in those calibers would all get off just as fast. But how about follow-up shots? The more the recoil, the slower follow-up shots will be. If you have more recoil to manage, it’s more effort to keep the sights in your field of vision and reacquire them before peeling off the next shot. To me, why exert all this extra effort and have to fight my weapon system more than is really required? Maybe it’s the engineer in me that likes efficiency, but if I can exert less yet get the same or better results, why wouldn’t I do that?
For me, shooting 9mm allows me to be a more effective handgunner. 9mm provides less recoil, so I can shoot it faster and ensure greater accuracy when I shoot it. This isn’t to say .45 or .40 are less accurate rounds, just one’s ability to shoot them. Sure I can shoot .45 and .40 fairly quickly and accurately (tho I admit I don’t care for the snappiness of .40’s recoil), but I can shoot 9mm better. Then you add in the increased capacity, less cost per round, and other such factors, and that’s why I prefer to shoot 9mm.
I’m not against .45 ACP. I think it’s a fine round. If you determine that .45 ACP works best for you, by all means use that. In the end, the key thing is to have something as that’s better than nothing. Then get training, practice, get more training, more practice, and become proficient with it. In the end, that “software” is going to take you further than any hardware.
Math for victory
A video from SouthNarc describing the HideAway knife:
The knife itself, useful information. What stood out to me as more useful?
1. Emphasis on the draw.
I’ve heard SouthNarc focuses a lot on drawstrokes, because if you can’t assuredly get your weapon into play, your chances of successfully dealing with a self-defense incident are drastically reduced.
2. Simple math for victory:
Good training + aggression + simple tactics = victory
Updated: Added a link to the knife company, and fixed the video to use an embeddable one (don’t know how that happened). Thanx Linoge.
A “Systems” Approach to Building a Profile
All this talk of Jeet Kune Do. Of studying various martial arts. Take what is useful and discard the rest. How do you determine what is useful and what to discard?
Over at ShivWorks there is an article “A ‘Systems’ Approach to Building a Profile” that discusses this.
What exactly is a System? A lexical definition of a system is “an arrangement of units that function together”. Following this line of logic, we would assume that when we call the data in our profile a “system” then all of it would function together. But does it by definition or even in reality?
[…]
For what you do to truly be a system, as per Webster, your “units” have to work together, or more importantly be common. The movements to deploy tools, strike, etc. need to be as close to one another in execution as they can efficiently be.
If you just take a bunch of things and mash them together, is that a system? According to the above, not unless they function together. It reminds me of my discussion of mantis blocks. Sure you could have various ways of blocking a punch or of putting up a fence or drawing your concealed handgun, but looking at the mantis technique it provides a system-like approach in that the movements are close to one another in execution; they are an arrangement of units that function together.
In the systems approach to building our combative profile, all skill sets are as similar as possible. Gun-handling is similar to knife work, knife work is similar to striking, and generally all footwork is the same. A good system should allow for the appropriate skill set to be utilized with essentially zero conscious thought, following a streamlined, learned, decision making process. With the proper system and the proper decision making process, one’s success in battle should be high.
The analogy of the system’s approach is to a well-trained unit versus a collection of individuals. A good unit, which works harmoniously, will always be more successful because everyone contributes their specific role to the overall success of the mission. Good team members in a unit compliment each other. They know their job and how it relates to their buddies’ responsibilities.
Likewise, a good system’s individual skill sets work in conjunction with one another to accomplish the overall objective of survival.
On fear
Last night I finished reading Col. Jeff Cooper‘s book To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth.
An interesting and enlightening book. Cooper, no question has his mind set in particular ways. You may not agree with him, but without question he’s been a major influence on the craft of shooting. The book comes across as a series of “talks” or stories on a topic. Some remembering past hunting trips, told as if you were sitting around a campfire having a beer and sharing with your mates. Some passages were Cooper’s take on pistols or rifles and how to use them properly. Certainly there was a dose of his philosophy, politics, and view on life and the world.
A common question from the hoplophobes (Cooper’s term) regarding gun ownership is “What are you afraid of?”. Questions about your mental state and your level of paranoia inevitably arise. This passage from Cooper’s book struck me in this regard:
Danger, to be appreciated, must be known. Our lives were all forfeit when we were born, but the hour of our peril is not always apparent to us. As you read this you may be seconds away from a fatal heart attack, but you are not in danger – so to speak – since you do not know that you are. Danger, in this sense, is the awareness of the possibility of imminent death. It is always a shocking experience but it need not be terrifying – and it absolutely must not be allowed to become incapacitating.
“Fear” and “terror” are words too often used in the Age of the Common Man. When I was a lad they were not admissible. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, for example, said, “I do not know what you mean by ‘fear’. I do not want to die, if that is what you mean, but you speak as if there were something more to it than that.” Fear that nullifies a man’s ability to cope with the danger which gives rise to the fear is an unacceptable emotion. The awareness of peril, however, is not the same thing at all, because in properly organized personalities it heightens perceptivity, sets the heart and mind to greater activity, and stimulates the entire consciousness in a way not otherwise realized.
I like Cooper’s distinction here on the effects of fear. That is, if fear paralyzes you, that’s not good. If instead you are aware, accept, and acknowledge peril exists and it motivates you to greater things, that’s good.
I don’t think the world is as horrible as the mainstream media paints for us and taints our perception. I don’t think there is evil lurking around every corner waiting to pounce on me, my wife, my children. But I do know evil is out there, and it only takes one incident to be too many. I work to make myself aware of peril and allow it to motivate my heart and mind to greater activity. Denying it exists doesn’t make it not exist, it merely puts you in a state of denial. Not being prepared puts you at a disadvantage, regardless of context or situation.
Some people find it odd that I study defensive pistolcraft and martial arts, but yet my sincere hope is to never use them in contexts beyond training, practice, and recreation. Why study them if you intend to never (truly) use them? We study language because we wish to communicate with others. We study math because we wish to engage in commerce. We tend to study and learn things specifically because we wish to directly use them. But this martial stuff…. that’s one of those “I’d rather have it (the knowledge and skill) and not need it, than need it and not have it” sort of things.
Stuff From Hsoi 