Category: mindset

Training, Practice, and Testing

Posted by Mostly Genius – April 20, 2009

Training is taking a class. I am trying to stretch this definition into reading a book, watching a video, but it really boils down to being taught something by someone. There are some subjects that can be “self-taught” but really fighting and/or shooting isn’t one of them. I would also say that getting a few “tips”, or “pointers” from somebody really isn’t training either. I can tell you to look at your front sight and press the trigger, but that isn’t the same as “training” you to actually do it. Without feedback and correction it isn’t really training.

Practice is going to the range (or it’s equivalent.) This where you repeat what you have learned in training. Practice makes you better at what you know, but it doesn’t do much for learning new things. If you practice looking at your front sight and pressing the trigger it won’t make you better at reloading the gun or clearing malfunctions. Practice is what creates a “habit” (good or bad.) Undisciplined practice really isn’t practice at all. I see people at the range all the time making their guns go bang: magazine after magazine, box after box of ammo, and they never seem to show any improvement.

Testing is any sort of competition. Shooting IPSC/IDPA, ring fighting or martial arts tournaments are an objective measure of a set of skills. It’s not combat, but it is being forced to produce results under stress. There are those in the “tactical” shooting world that dismiss the guys that play gun games as “gamesmen” or point out that some piece of the game isn’t really “real world.” I would point out that the top-tier military units all seek out and train with the best competitive shooters and try to learn speed, accuracy and gun handling from them. They don’t seem to have any problem with tactics or real world performance.

Real Self Defense for Women

Posted by Mostly Genius – April 2, 2009

I have been reading quite a bit lately about women’s self defense. For some reason this quickly turns into a gender politics debate and some kind of vehicle for feminist ideology. I thought that any discussion of self defense would revolve around protecting oneself and the people that one cared about. I keep seeing a number of the same themes popping up.

Empowerment: True empowerment is the power to change the outcome. Empowerment isn’t an emotion, it is the power to do something. Owning a firearm isn’t empowerment, it is a ‘capability’ only if you are up to the task of it’s operation under the circumstances. This is the will to do what is necessary and the ability to get it done. Without will and ability you simply have a “possibility.” Maybe brandishing the gun (like a cross to ward off vampires) will frighten away the assailants or maybe jerking the trigger in a cardinal compass direction will provide you with a lucky, fight-stopping, shot.

Confidence. Any training can give you confidence, even the worthless kind. If you sit in a room of true-believers you will begin agreeing on cue. A charismatic instructor can sell a lot of techniques that just plain don’t work. If you are miming a groin-kick against a compliant training partner then what happens to that confidence when the full-force/full-power version doesn’t produce the desired result? I am not disputing that confidence is a good thing, and having a suboptimal plan is better than having none at all. I argue for spending some time training under stress and using realistic levels of force if you really want to build confidence.

Girl Power Boosterism. There is a whole lot of “go girl” cheerleading in many women’s self defense classes. It’s important to remember that when everyone is sitting in a circle and chanting, there is a criminal lifting weights and waiting for his next release from prison. Violent assaults are frequently bloody, terrible, and most of all: lonely. Real empowerment and confidence is grounded in truly recognizing what one might actually face and having a realistic plan for dealing with that. If the starting place has to be a women’s only group that cheers each other on then so be it. Don’t let that be the stopping place.

Pseudo-pacifism and nonsense ideologies. I meet a lot of women in classes that cringe when I start talking about how bad things can get and what might be necessary in order to prevail. Everyone wants a simple tool or technique that is guaranteed to work and isn’t really going to injure anyone, but that doesn’t exist. I am a huge proponent of less lethal tools, deescalation, and avoidance but there always has to be a backup in case those things fail. At the worst extreme it is “combat” with all of the snot, blood, spit, sweat, and grime associated with it.

I read far too much “we must change society so there are no assailants/abusers/rapists/criminal” type ideas. This has never occurred in human history, despite a lot of people wishing for it. If this is an education issue, it is a matter of training people to resist with effective violence rather than handing out pamphlets about how being a violent criminal is bad. I don’t control public policy, law, or even public opinion. I do have a large measure of control over what happens to me.

You can’t blame the victim. Nobody is going to argue that the victim is responsible for the criminals actions. Peoples actions and decisions can make them vulnerable to predators. Blaming the assailant is both easy and just, but it is also useless. Yes, the assailant is completely morally culpable, but that doesn’t make anyone safer – the predators know they are predators and they are OK with it. “Blame” isn’t really the issue, dangerous actions and decisions are. Remove the front door from your house before you leave for a long weekend: it’s not your “fault” that all your stuff is gone, but it can’t be too much of a surprise.

Emotion. There is a lot of ‘feeling’ about self defense. Feeling intimidated, threatened, afraid, powerful, confident, etc. are generally present when women write about the topic. I do not see nearly as much emotion expressed by men writing on similar topics. I don’t know that this is positive or negative, but I do know that most of it is probably irrelevant on a practical level. I think that “feeling” rather than knowing, sensing, thinking, or proving should be guarded against. There is a big difference between being intimidated and recognizing that someone is trying to intimidate you.

Equality. In the physical sense there is no such thing. As a rule there is no physical parity between men and women, just like there isn’t physical parity between two women or two men. I don’t expect to be as large or a strong as my assailant. Generally, women tend to be smaller than men (this is called “sexual dimorphism”), so when I get asked “What is a good gun for a woman?” I say one that fits her hand, has sights she can see through, a trigger she can reach, and she is strong enough to operate. This is the same advice I give to men, but the gun usually needs to a little bit smaller for women. Saying “she can’t handle that gun” isn’t a sexist statement any more than “he can’t handle that gun.” If making your gear work takes effort, then you are diverting your energy from fighting the bad guy.

I care about people making their own decisions and fighting back. This requires that people take personal responsibility for their choices and their actions. Those choices should have a basis in reality, not in fiction or an idealized philosophy. Self defense is not gender specific, but the the tactics and techniques might be – because the genders face a different set of threats.

Use of Force

Posted by Mostly Genius – March 20, 2009

Use of Force Spectrum

The use of force chart is useful for private citizens to understand how the police (and the courts) tend to view a particular tool or technique. I make a lot of references to the use of force and forgot I hadn’t posted this graphic. There are a few inconsistencies: the order of pepper spray, taser, and arrest control/pain compliance techniques tends to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. An individual police departments use of force policy will dictate where these items actually fall on “their” version of the chart.

Three Battles

Posted by Mostly Genius – March 2, 2009

It is important for students of self defense to recognize that there are three battles that need to be won in order to be successful, and in fact loosing any one the battles is loosing the “war.”

The Physical Battle. This is the one that gets the most attention. All of the shooting, striking, grappling, knives and pepper spray happens in this battle. Losing the physical fight in a self defense situation could mean being killed, and the other two battles become moot. We need to win the physical battle in such a way that it sets us up for success in the other two. If you decided to end all social disagreements with gunfire you would win the physical battle and quickly lose the other two.

The Legal Battle. In our modern society if you use force above a certain threshold you will be exposed to the legal system. This exposure could be with both the criminal and civil courts. The old saying “better tried by 12 than carried by six” is true, but getting “tried” isn’t some kind of picnic. We tend to imagine some very obvious good/bad scenario where it is immediately clear to the jury that we were acting in self defense and anyone would have acted in a similar manner. By the time you are in front of a jury you have already paid huge sums of money (especially if someone was killed.) If you bankrupt your family and end up in jail cell for the long-term then you have “survived” but you really haven’t “won.”

The Moral and Ethical Battle. This battle is the most easily dismissed by people who haven’t thought this through. The gun community is full of references to “Scumbags” or “Goblins” and people who think they can kill them without remorse. Maybe that is so, but how will your friends and coworkers view the events? How will the other parents at your children’s school? None of them were there and they are getting the story from the media after the fact.

I recall one story of a private citizen that really did everything right in reporting a crime and only got involved when he felt he had to. He ended up shooting an adolescent male that had already beaten and shot a police officer. If the private citizen didn’t act that cop would have been killed. The local paper in this man’s community then released a fluffy piece about the troubled youth (with prior assault and drug convictions) who was so full of promise and love for his friends and family. This private citizen didn’t want to be a hero, he didn’t want to be a ‘gun fighter’, he didn’t want to shoot a teenage kid, but he wasn’t going to watch a cop get killed and do nothing to prevent it. His reward was having his hometown paper speculating that he was some kind of racist vigilante.

Self defense requires you to have an ethical framework that will let you look in the mirror everyday and know deep down that you did what was required. The actions you took were both appropriate and necessary. I imagine that most people with some kind of conscience will constantly reexamine such an event wondering if there was anything else that could have been done.