When looking at the increasing numbers of reports about violence against women, it is clear that women’s self-defense against men is becoming an important issue in today’s society. There are many products and techniques designed for women’s self-defense against men, from mace guns to judo and assertiveness training. Unfortunately, these things are becoming increasingly necessary, and it is essential to stay informed of the most effective strategies for women’s self-defense against men.

I guess they are repeating the title over and over again to try and improve the search rank of the article. Otherwise there really is no content in the opening paragraph other than a vague reference to “increasing numbers of reports about violence against women.”

Since more and more women are working overtime and at late hours, extra attention should be given to women’s self-defense against men. Dark parking lots are among the most dangerous places, and it is good idea to walk into a parking lot with a special device, such as a small alarm, whistle or light, or where it is legal, a mace gun or stun gun. The mace or stun guns should not be shaped like actual guns, but should be disguised as cell phones, pens or key chains which can be carried by hand without attracting undue attention.

So having a weapon that looks like a weapon would cause undue attention, and women should have a James Bond-esque cell phone that shoots electricity or pepper-spray? Clearly a concealed firearm isn’t even considered by the author.

It is important to principle of women’s self defense against men always to look straight ahead and always to appear alert. Potential attackers are always on the lookout for women who seem unaware of their surroundings, so give an impression of confidence.

I guess that in the authors opinion nothing projects confidence like locking your gaze on the horizon and marching in a straight line.

Women’s self-defense against men is not always focused on strangers, but, more often than not, an attacker is someone the woman knows. Before making the attack, the person usually stalks the woman to find out her habits and where she is the most vulnerable.

It is therefore a good idea to change your route frequently if you jog or walk for exercise. Be on the lookout for people who are watching your activities and make sure that you are aware of potential dangers. Like fire drills, women’s self-defense calls for identifying potential danger spots, so, as you go through your day, look for those places where a person can easily intrude.

Actually, the non-stranger attacker doesn’t do a multiple day reconnaissance and surveillance, but rather becomes “familiar” and exploits a convenient vulnerability. This isn’t a guy hiding in the bushes with a spotting scope and a notebook. This is the guy she lets carry her groceries because he lives across the street.

Many strategies for women’s self-defense against men include some kind of martial arts training. Although many critics complain that techniques learned in classes can not be adapted well to the street, martial arts give women strength and confidence to be able to ward off an attacker.

The rest of the article goes on to try and sell a number of different martial arts without an real knowledge or analysis. The whole article is just a little bit of fear-based marketing copy designed to pad someones website and sell pepper spray disguised as lipstick or a block of Tae Kwon Do classes.

So why am I bothering to call this out? Because there are a lot of people who have a scary experience, throw a few keywords at google, and end up buying a stun gun (that doesn’t work) or enroll in some less than reputable martial arts class for a couple of weeks.

Because the knife is suspended like a pendulum by neck cord, it is always going to be in a different place. As soon as you start moving the knife is going to begin to swing. If you are taken to the ground there is a good chance that the knife is going to end up in your armpit.

Most neck knives are suspended from a break-away chain (to prevent you from getting choked with the cord) but if grabbed you stand a fair chance of loosing the knife because of the breakaway chain.

If the neck knife is worn concealed (under a shirt) I don’t think there is much chance of getting to it once the fight starts. If the assailant gets any sort of “mount” (what was once called the “Schoolboy pin”) It’s going to be a challenge to get that knife working. If the knife isn’t concealed it is pretty inviting for the assailant to grab, especially since it is pre-positioned over your vitals.

Crime rates in the national parks are down significantly. Yet the international trade in animal organs may be pushing poaching to new heights. The National Parks Conservation Association reports poaching is partly responsible for the decline of at least 29 species of wildlife in national parks. Nineteen species — including grizzly bear, lynx and the desert tortoise — are in danger of being eradicated.

I think that people attempting to poach grizzly bears with handguns are going to be a self-correcting problem. I should ceased to be amazed by journalists who have opinions but no facts on which to base them.

If you really need a “fatter” a grip then replace the grip panels, but for most people this isn’t really necessary. I replaced the grip panels on one of my 1911s in favor of panels that were even slimmer than stock. If a single stack pistol is too slim for your hands then why not get a double stack gun?

If we follow Rule 1, we could call it an “empty chamber indicator” but why would we want to put our faith in a mechanical gadget when we can confirm the state of the weapon with a much more exact manual procedure? (Check condition of readiness or “press-check”) I know that no gun manufacturers were clamoring to add this “feature” to their guns but were forced to either by contract requirements or gun “safety” laws.

This is one of the most dangerous safety features I can think of. By creating a mechanical widget (that can fail) for people to depend upon instead of good gun handling like Rule 1, situations become more dangerous. If Rule 1 is followed the loaded chamber indicator is irrelevant, and if Rule 1 is ignored then we are putting a lot of faith in a spring-loaded little nub.

So people turn in roughly a 1000 guns and get roughly $1000 in gift cards for each one. Why is this supposed to be a good thing?

Most of the guns collected belonged to people who never used them, deputies say.

“We’re not naive enough to think that criminals will come in and give their guns,” Tellez said. But he said that because many crimes were committed with firearms stolen in home burglaries, getting guns off the street would help decrease violence.

Maybe if the city wasn’t fencing stolen property for greater than market value there wouldn’t be so much demand for stolen firearms. Creating an incentive for criminals to steal guns, use them in crimes, and then dispose of the evidence at a profit is just stupid. Instead of putting another police officer (or two) on the street they are wasting money on programs like this.

Along with the guns, deputies collected 80 pounds of ammunition and two grenades.

Grenades? Doesn’t somebody want to track down the source of those? Isn’t a hand grenade amnesty going a little bit too far?

I don’t think this guy is the sharpest knife it the drawer, but I don’t think I’d bother sending him to jail. I am just glad that the media is warning of the dangers of the sub-millimeter handgun.

Kendrick, of Asheboro, N.C., had a loaded .9-millimeter handgun on the dashboard of his 1998 Dodge pick-up, police said.

(Emphasis mine)

Mr. Vanderboegh has responded to my previous statements here: Pragmatism is as pragmatism does

Hopefully I am fairly paraphrasing the 3% position about the “front door” as referenced above, in the comments, and in Vanderboegh’s previous writings:

After some new edict the government will begin some level of house to house actions, and if caught alone (one of the early houses) a 3 percenter intends to shoot it out as best they can. As these raids become more frequent and commonplace, local 3 percenters will band together into fire teams and squads and shoot it out as a group. Eventually this scenario will become cyclical with more resources of government being deployed to deal with a growing resistance until we reach a point of civil war, with the goal of the resistance being a revolution/restoration of the framers republic.

The threat or fear of this cycle of violence is supposed to chasten the government in it’s actions and/or make the agents of the government reconsider taking that action.

Finally this plan is supposed to put everyone on notice that the actions of the government might well push things to the point of kicking this whole course of action into gear.

I hope that is an accurate summary of the 3 percenter position as put forth in your writings and comments. I would say that is a very different and much more limited position from you earlier statement in your much celebrated letter to the editor:

There are some of us “cold dead hands” types, perhaps 3 percent of gun owners, who would kill anyone who tried to further restrict our God-given liberty. Don’t extrapolate from your own cowardice and assume that just because you would do anything the government told you to do that we would.

(Emphasis mine)
The “front door” position is about fighting when the government raids your home. The “further restrict” position I would assume has a much broader application? Repealing concealed carry would be a further restriction, but it is unlikely it would cause house to house raids. Which side of the line does that fall on? Are you expanding the position of defending the “front door” or are you retreating from the “further restrictions”?

It seems a common theme amongst the 3 percent that they will not be the ones to start the violence. “No Fort Sumpters” as it were. This presumes that there is some agreed upon triggering event (either “further restriction” or “front door”) that gets the ball rolling, and then we get open civil war:

People don’t AGREE on revolution, they are FORCED into it by events. And there are enough of my kind, the three percent, to create the events. Have you learned nothing from history? It is made by determined minorities. We may be a minority but we are determined. If you want to hang onto ANY of your guns or other liberties, you will HAVE to fight. We will make sure of that.

(Emphasis mine)
Am I wrong to read this as once some arbitrary block (or set of blocks) is checked that the 3 percent is then going to “force” civil war? I am guessing through an ever increasing number of independent and/or small group actions as outlined in the “front door” portion. Or does this occur after the government has continued it’s actions and things have escalated to “red dawn” purportions?

As for us Three Percenters, this is as far as we’re backing up. If they draw the line behind us, we will stand where we are. After they come to compel the first few in our homes and succeed in killing us, in effect declaring war upon the lives, liberties and property of the entire American people, the rest of us Three Percenters will defend ourselves by a war of manuever that will make them wish they’d never thought of it.

(Emphasis mine)
I think there has been some slight of hand with the term “defense.” It has not been used incorrectly, but has been used inconsistently. We have gone from defending homes and families (direct protection) to a defensive war of maneuver (defense by a good, tactically adept, offense.) If you are going to fight a war then maneuver is the way to go, assuming that your forces can actually operate like that. I can not really speak to skill, training, and readiness of the 3 percenters, but we can all agree that attrition warfare would probably not work out for them. According to the “front door” scheme of maneuver attrition seems to be the “go signal” for opening the wider war.

Regarding what the modern militia movement has done: I can’t think of anything, especially in terms of fighting off tyranny by force of arms. Vanderboegh has suggested a book I need to read that will disabuse of this notion. I have my doubts, but fair enough.

Regarding name-calling: I certainly don’t have the time or effort to go through all of the posts and comments and find all of the references to anyone who doesn’t drink the kool-aide as being some flavor of coward, statist, enabler, traitor, or pany-waist to name just a few. The only name that I have called anyone was “blowhard” and I did so because it was (and remains) accurate.

Regarding references or associations to past military glory: I don’t see how Vanderboegh can deny attempting to bask in the reflected glow of these historical references when he attempts to draw allegorical parallels between the parties involved. I am not an expert, but I think this the propaganda technique known as “transfer.” Apparently it is all just an inspirational style derived from historical facts and anecdotes. It is generally the best thing in all of his essay pieces.

In summary there is a widely scattered disorganized group with a lot of different ideas about where the line is drawn, when action is going to be taken, and what that action will consist of. These variables change not only from individual to individual, but from time to time as well. There are some that are already claiming credit for being “resisters” and a lot that are calling other people cowards over the internet.

As always please feel free to comment, but really try to keep things on point. More that likely I will approve any comment, but unless you are covering new ground I am probably not going to answer it.

Update:

Vanderboegh has left his pathetic, straw-man response here. He addresses none of the points above, nor does he clarify, amplify or defend any of his previous statements. Vanderboegh remains a do-nothing blow hard.

Update: All of my posts on this topic:
The 3 percenter Nonsense
More 3 percenter Nonsense
The latest round of the 3 percenter Nonsense
Questions for the 3 percent

“This is as far as the bastards are getting.”

It is risky, I know, disputing someone with the humble title of “MostlyGenius,” but I will chance it.

Let us start the ball with your last statement:

“My argument is not that the 3% doesn’t have the right goals, it is rather that the tactics they espouse will not improve the rights of citizens or achieve their aims.”

Our aims are:

a. to defend ourselves and our liberty and property at our front door steps. We will not back up any more. It is the feds who will bring the war to us, first.

b. to warn anyone who desires further encroachments upon our liberty and property that there will be consequences for their actions, thus, hopefully, to reduce the threat becoming reality.

c. to make it plain to every one, prags included, that the time is fast approaching — thanks to the “authorities” — when they will have to choose, so they’d better get ready to shoot, shit, or hit the fence.

Our tactics are defined by those aims.

The Founders would be entirely at peace with those aims, and our tactics. If the defense of liberty is not YOUR aim, then I suggest you look in the mirror and quit pretending to the rest of us. How else, other than resistance, will you defend our traditional liberties in the coming period? The possibility of further predations of liberty like an “upgraded” AWB, or the seizure of control over the private sale of all firearms (”Loophole”) is upon us. What will you do when they pass and begin to be enforced?

Will you just roll over — again?

We are done rolling over. We are finished backing up. You will have to decide what YOU will do when the feds come to enforce compliance on ME at the point of a gun. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I will resist, also at the point of a gun. If the Olofson case proved anything it proved that you can no longer even count on a fair trial in the federal courts. So, if I refuse to go to federal prison for the crime of being innocent, my only rational response is to sell myself as dearly as possible to prevent others from suffering my fate.

I will die, at least, a free man. And if you do nothing, you will live . . . as nothing. Your choice.

It is our enemies who are in the driver’s seat. It is the enemies of the Founders’ Republic who will be on the offensive. We Three Percenters are merely in the position of the 82nd Airborne trooper up on the Elsenborn Ridge in December, 1944. As he dug his fighting position, some refugees from the 106th Infantry Division were streaming past him and his buddies, fleeing the destruction of their division at the hands of the Germans. One of them, overcome by curiousity at the sight of somebody who wasn’t running, called out, “Who are you guys?” The paratrooper answered, “I’m 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are getting.”

Mike Vanderboegh

Allow me to proceed directly to the first stated aims above: “to defend ourselves and our liberty and property at our front door steps.” This is sophistry. If these ‘front door steps’ were an actual physical threshold then all of the talk about organizing into fire teams and the like becomes nonsensical. The lone householder against the government doesn’t generate much news or political change as is evidenced by the gangsters who shoot the police in the course of their drug raids.

Rather these “front door steps” actually represent some ever changing line in the sand. There is some set of criteria that means it’s time to load your rifles and take to the streets, but Vanderboegh doesn’t want to get into details about that. The Vanderboegh and his ilk stood idle during the last wave of gun control laws and the major government over-reaches of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Now apparently they have had enough and are going to do something next time, or maybe the time after that.

The deterrent value of this action (mentioned in item B) is pretty low since there is no action. As to it being the point of decision (mentioned in item C): one could certainly argue that the time of decision is long past, but Vanderboegh’s short list of courses of action are not all that is available.

Olofson, Ruby Ridge, Waco, and countless other encroachments and atrocities that the government is responsible for is certainly cause for alarm. We can agree that this represents unchecked government tyranny. We differ as to what is the course of action to reverse this encroachment.

True to form, Vanderboegh appeals to the founding fathers, ignoring that the founding fathers resisted a government that they had no voice in, and that they created a system that doesn’t require bloodshed to affect change. As I have said before I think we are largely in agreement on what we would like to see as “change” but I certainly disagree with how he thinks it can be achieved.

And finally the cheap rhetorical trick that is his hallmark: the out of context, ‘bad ass’ military quote. The subtext is that he and his supporters are just like these bloody heroes, and anyone who disagrees is a rifle-dropper. I find it highly presumptuous to compare a icy foxhole on foreign soil with your own hearth and home (assuming it was under assault) and say they are the same position. Today they are like paratroopers, they have already been Spartans and minutemen.

Update: All of my posts on this topic:
The 3 percenter Nonsense
More 3 percenter Nonsense
The latest round of the 3 percenter Nonsense
Questions for the 3 percent

The sad thing is that SOG doesn’t make bad knives, but the marketing department needs to dial it a back a notch. I have never wanted a knife that I absolutely couldn’t open.