When Does Self-Defense Begin?

Let's discuss another indomitable truth in self defense:  Reaction is always slower than action.

In the case of the unexpected attack, it logically assumes that the defender is going to find him/herself on the reactionary side of the equation. It is, after all, a defining feature of a surprise attack - that you never see it coming in the first place - which is why situational awareness is paramount.

But what about the attacks that you DO see coming? That stranger who is following you down the dark sidewalk? How about that guy coming at you in the parking lot? This is where my advocacy for preemptive self defense comes into play.

Let me preface the rest of this blog with the following disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Nothing in this post (or any other post on this blog) is intended as legal advice - advice that should logically be sought from a qualified and certified legal professional. If you take my advice as legal counsel, then you've made a mistake for which I and mine are in no way responsible.

OK. Now that we've got that out of the way...

Preemptive defense is just that - striking before being struck. It's employed only when other attempts at deescalation have failed or are not viable options. Let's discuss this idea anecdotally:

Jane is minding her own business as she walks from her office building to her car parked in the adjoining parking deck. As she's approaching her car, she gets that tingle of perception up her spine. She turns to see a black-clad man staring at her and tailing her closely.

Jane stops in her tracks and turns to face the approaching man. She puts her hands up in a defensive ready position (hands at chest height, palms out) and takes a ready stance with her feet. She loudly demands, "Stay back!"  The man hesitates briefly, then resumes his approach, albeit more cautiously.

"I'm telling you to stay back! Don't come any closer!"  No change in the aggressor's gait or approach.

As he gets within Jane's predetermined personal bubble, what is her responsibility as far as defending herself is concerned? Must she wait until this person actually shows an aggressive action (grabs, slaps, or punches her) before she initiates her defense? Does she need to see a weapon before acting?

In my estimation, no. It would be reasonable for Jane to believe that her safety is threatened. Her initial demands that the man stop approaching her have been disregarded multiple times. She has few remaining options under the circumstances (run, scream for help). Once it is clear that he has no intention of changing course and avoiding her, it's time for Jane to employ some defensive response.

Hopefully Jane is carrying a force multiplier of some sort that will be in play, be it pepper spray, a stun gun, or some other tool that will make clear to this person that he's picked the wrong woman to be his victim.

No matter the response, Jane is in no way obliged to wait until an aggressive action has been made against her before she employs her defense.

And that is the thrust of the anecdote. Sometimes striking first IS justified when there is an expectation that physical harm is imminent. That is when self defense begins - when there is a reasonable assumption (though the definition of reasonable is a floating target, I assure you) that physical harm will result if no action is taken.

There are a thousand variables that can be taken into account when discussing the concept of preemptive defense, but it all boils down to one simple concept: you believe - and you can explain why you believed - that your safety was in imminent danger when you acted defensively. That belief can derive from direct observation: you saw a weapon, for instance. The belief of imminence can also be assumed by inference: the threat is approaching directly, not responding to verbal prompts ("Can I help you," "Stop," or, "Stay back," for example), and/or staring down his apparent victim.

The level of preemptive defense is a much trickier situation. One must be ready to employ a degree of defense that is justifiable when authorities start inquiring about the sequence of events that led up to the defensive encounter. It is difficult (but not impossible) to justify drawing down on a threat and punching 9mm holes in him without first seeing a weapon. This is when it is advisable to have a nice long conversation with an attorney about what constitutes justifiable defense under a variety of circumstances.

Something to consider in all of this is disparity of force and disparity of size. If one were to think about it linearly, the approach would be Force +1. It works something like this:  the threat is empty handed, so the defender uses a non-lethal defense (pepper spray, stun gun, etc.). The threat has a stick or a club, so the defender uses a more lethal response (a bladed weapon, for example). And so on.  When the threat's force continuum is at its peak, it stands to reason that the best defensive response, absent any opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge, is to shoot him before he shoots you.

Disparity of size, which is the affirmative defense employed successfully by Officer Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, MO, is easier for women to employ than men. A 185-lb man confronting a 125-lb woman represents a considerable size disparity that would allow for a preemptive defensive response with justification. However, men can employ the disparity of size justification under similar circumstances, as was seen in the Ferguson case. Wilson's reported weight at the time was 210 lbs to Brown's 290. Both men were the same height (6'4") but Brown had the weight advantage in addition to positional advantage (standing vs. the sitting Wilson, who was in his cruiser when the melee started). By his estimation, Wilson felt that disparity of size was justification for shooting Brown.

Self defense can be a very fluid and unpredictable event, exacerbated by the fact that stress-induced hormonal dump can muddy the decision making process. One should not, however, buy in to the belief that self defense is exclusively a responsive event. Upon the assessment that a threat is imminent and grievous bodily harm might result if no defense is employed, it is a perfectly reasonable act to defensively strike first.

And that is when self defense begins - at that final assessment that harm is imminent, not after the threat has initiated his attack.

Our Top 4 Human Weapons

To keep from over-complicating the process of personal defense, it's better to remember that less is more. Reflecting back to my post on Hick's Law, teaching too many responses to any given situation decreases the overall response time of the defender. Thus, it becomes important to teach as few techniques as are necessary to offer sufficient defense under a given threat.

Let's extend that same concept to human weapons - that is, the empty-handed weapons we have on us by virtue of our anatomy. Our karate dojo teaches an extensive array of kicks and strikes ranging from a simple jab to flying double kicks. From those basic techniques, one can derive thousands of variations that are practiced over and over until they become second nature.

Unfortunately for a self-defense student, learning that much material in a 16-hour series of classes is impractical and, frankly, ineffective.

Here are the basic self-defense strikes that I teach to students. Sure there are variations on these strikes, but exploration and practice will allow individual students to discover them on their own when they are ready. Personally, I just want to give them what they can use in and effective and practical manner within moments of learning them.

Hammer Fist
Teaching students to punch is tricky at best. The biggest concern with teaching a traditional punch is assuring that students are striking with the appropriate part of the fist (the knuckles of the index and middle fingers) to protect themselves from breaking their hands. Further, since most people have a tendency to focus on the head at the sole target for striking, using a traditional knuckle punch is practically a guaranteed trip to the hospital to put the bones of the hand back together.

Instead, I teach my students to make a traditional fist and, rather than striking with the knuckles, hit with the meaty surface opposite the thumb. Using that surface protects the hand from damage and metes out a pretty healthy dose of pain in the process. It is an effective weapon to use on the jaw, the neck, the rib cage, and a number of other viable targets.

When I don a body suit and have students use the hammer fist on various targets, they find it to be a fairly pain-free way of striking. They can really put themselves into a strike and walk away realizing that hitting something isn't necessarily dangerous or painful to themselves.  The only real caveat that must be expressed is that they have to hit with the meat of the hand, not the pinkie finger.  Hitting with the tiniest digit on the hand will be both painful and ineffective.

Palm Heel
I teach this particular strike as a better alternative to the knuckle punch. Simply put, if someone can land a punch on the jaw, (s)he can land a palm strike on the jaw and probably do more damage in the process. As a small aside, the worst bleeding I've ever done in the dojo came from being palmed in the face with a pulled shot. The person throwing the strike tried to bail on the technique, so it landed with only partial power. My nose still went *crunch* and the blood flowed.

The palm heel can be delivered with power or it can be used to push an attacker's chin to break balance. It is also a useful weapon for solar plexus, abdomen, and rib strikes.

Elbow
Elbows are a terrific close-range weapon that can easily follow larger movements. Elbows are less of an initial attack and more of a follow-up strike. For example, a well-placed knee to the groin can be followed with an elbow strike to the head, neck, or back as the attacker doubles over in pain. Elbow strikes also natural follow-ups to wrist-releases.

There are two weapons on the elbow - the two-inch area above the point, and the same space below the point. When I teach the elbow strike to my students, we use both surfaces to strike pads before actually employing the strike against a simulated attack. Using the elbow takes a little more instruction than the palm heel or hammer fist, but once a student has a feel for properly applying the technique, they like its effectiveness.

Knee
Knees are so easy it's almost cheating to tell students to use them defensively. From the time many of us were small children breaking sticks over our knees, we've known that the flat surfaces around that joint are a weapon sufficient to do damage.

The key to knees is remembering that they can be used to strike more than just the groin, which inevitably seems to be the target of choice. Knees are nasty when attacking the inner and outer thigh area, the rib cage (when an attacker is on the ground), the head (also when the attacker is down), and the shoulder/armpit.

That's it. Those are my go-to weapons in self-defense instruction. Adding any more natural weapons to that list just muddies the waters further and only serves to slow the defender's response time.

Keep it simple.

On Being Violent in a Violent World

As far as nice, polite, functioning adults in civilized society are concerned, some of the basic tenets of a self-defense course are harder to embrace. I see this same problem play out in every self-defense class I teach: I have to urge - practically beg - people to engage in the act of defensive striking.

One would think that teaching someone - especially a man - to physically strike a target would be the least of my concerns.  In fact, it is actually the most prevalent problem, and it manifests in two stages.

The first stage of the problem to overcome is getting students to actually breach the distance between themselves and their training partner. More often than not, students will attempt to stand just out of arm's reach and lean in to strike the uke (the person getting hit). Social etiquette demands that humans maintain an acceptable distance between ourselves and other people; we have an innate ability to determine comfortable social spacing and position ourselves accordingly.

Of course, a predator doesn't give a damn about social etiquette.

So early in self-defense training comes a lesson in violating social norms. As defenders, students have to know and understand that their best defense is going to take place at close range - ranges that normal socially adapted adults are just not comfortable with. Predators have no compulsions when it comes to closing the distance, so students have to train from 'inside the bubble' (our pre-set personal space boundary) in order to more effectively defend themselves.

This isn't the easiest thing to get students to do, so there's a bit of social reconditioning that needs to take place, usually in the form of instructor encroachment (when I put myself in their space intentionally). It has never failed that students cringe when I step inside their bubble and just stand there.  My first contact with a new student is usually to grab a wrist. Before the end of the class, the student is comfortable enough with my presence that they allow me to curl my fingers around their neck in a choke.

The social reconditioning is an ongoing process and is repeated in each class.  Once the student has gained a degree of comfort working in range, I can begin to address the second stage of the problem.

From the time we were small children, parents, teachers, and other authority figures have told us not to hit one another. Punishments (ironically including spankings) were meted out for any transgressions of this sacred law. Hitting is bad, and most of us have learned this lesson well. Unfortunately, we obey this social rule even to our own detriment.

The first time I ask students to hit me, our co-teachers, or their training partner, the results are very predictable: a timid and half-hearted strike that is usually followed by an apology. The psychological hurdle students must jump in the process of learning to hit another human being is unusually high, and few are the new students who can actually do it the first time out.

For that reason, it takes a bit of coercion to get students to commit to a strike.  It's easy with mothers; often it's a matter of telling her, "This man wants to hurt your child." Hell hath no fury, and all. Some men can be convinced to commit to striking with, "This a**hole wants to rape your girlfriend." Sure, it's a bit strong to say that, but it is quite effective.

It is the unattached man and woman who are a bit harder. Whatever the prompt, it has to be something that breaks the hold of their childhood training against violating others.

Interestingly enough, once that first crack forms in their mental wall, its collapse is fairly rapid. I've witnessed students who were completely adverse to hitting a padded uke start with tepid little strikes only to find that, with repetition, they actually enjoy it. A feeling of power that they had not realized they possessed has suddenly found its way into their consciousness.  By the time I call an end to the exercise, they almost always ask, "One more?"

There's no such thing as polite self defense when actual physical defense is needed. A lack of commitment in the actual practice is the primary ingredient in the recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, we have been conditioned for our entire lives to play nice and not hit. Breaking past that mental barrier takes time and intentional practice.

Hick's Law and Self Protection

Let's explore a concept that is all too under-spoken in self-defense/self-protection circles: less is more.  This is true whether it is being applied to the complete novice standing in a self-defense class for the very first time or the highly trained self protector who has spent years on the mat.

Less is always more.

To prove this out, we can explore Hick's Law (or Hick-Hyman Law).  Simply put, Hick's Law states that the time it takes to make a decision increases proportionally to the number and complexity of choices. The personal defender who is taught a dozen different techniques for defending against a bar-room haymaker is at a disadvantage to the student who is taught one technique to defend against the same attack.

When a new student walks into their self-defense class, there is already a high degree of incompetence.  That's not intended as a slight, it's just the truth. The student is so new, (s)he is experiencing a condition known as unconscious incompetence - they don't even know what they don't know. A less-effective self-defense instructor will try to fill that knowledge void with as much information and technique as possible. While the student might feel empowered with so much cool stuff, what the instructor has done is set his student up for later failure.

The 'empowered' student who has learned 12 defenses for that bar-room haymaker will likely still be weighing his defensive options in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. In the face of attack stimuli, it will take the new student too long to formulate a plan to receive the attack appropriately. The end result is being on the losing side of a physical confrontation.

Someone told me years ago, and over the course of a  22 year career in classroom education I've seen this played out more times than I can count, that confused people do nothing. They become inert observers of their surroundings as the brain attempts to formulate a response to stimuli.  Ever seen a kid (or have you ever been the kid) who had a question on the test that just seemed to come out of left field?  (S)he gets that (o.O) look on his/her face that precedes the lengthy stare down of the paper - as if boring a hole in the page with one's eyes is going to magically make the answer to the question appear.

The same thing happens in violent confrontations: the defender sees an imminent attack coming and hesitates just long enough to get hit.  The confusion of deciding which action to take in response to the attack has rendered the defender motionless. Unfortunately, violence happens quickly, so that fraction-of-a-second hesitation results in being punched in the head or driven to the ground.

The best possible defensive response will be derived from the least intrusive input - one response for one (or more) attacks.

My response to the haymaker (and the takedown attempt, and a double lapel grab, and several other frontal attacks) is always the same, and I train it redundantly.  Further, I'm going to teach my students that same defensive maneuver.  Multiple attack possibilities, one defense. It's more efficient and thus more effective. Do I demonstrate other options for my students? Absolutely, but that information will be delivered with one important caveat: pick an effective defense and stick with it.

There are other factors regarding Hick's Law that should be discussed (action under stress, the use of distraction techniques, and follow up strikes, to name a few), but I'll save those for other blog posts. For now, both student and teacher should be making strides to narrow the scope of applied defensive techniques.  To reduce the number of responses to attacks serves to raise the probability of victory in a defense encounter.

It is our good responsibility as self-defense teachers to ensure that our students are victorious when it matters most. Knowing, understanding, and applying Hick's Law is a necessary first step for both student and instructor.

An Unfortunate Truth About People and Violence

Let's call this a tale of two truths:
1) Violence is a relatively rare event that doesn't affect a particularly large portion of the population
2) We have a tendency to care about violence (and any effects on us) only AFTER a violent encounter has occurred.

The first truth is irrefutable and statistically verifiable: any individual at any point in time has a fairly remote probability of experiencing a violent encounter (work and personal life choices notwithstanding).  Joe and Jane Citizen have relative surety that they can walk down a city street, enjoy a day at the park, go shopping at the mall, or wile their time away at home with a low probability of experiencing violence.  That truth assumes, of course, that people aren't operating a crack house or running with gangs.

It's the second truth that is more compelling, and that is the nature of the human mind when it comes to violence. We are, for the most part, fairly content to go about our daily lives without giving thought to the idea that, while not happening to us, there is violence occurring in our immediate area.  We live in a fairly small southeastern town in rural North Carolina. For the most part, it's a sleepy little town where most people know most other people.

However, there's a dark little secret lurking in our quiet little town. On average, we have an assault rate that outpaces the national rate by 134 people per 100,000 residents.  An individual has nearly a 60% higher likelihood of being assaulted in our town than in the US as a whole.  Further, our town out-paces the national average in the areas of burglaries, thefts, and overall crime.

The stats are even worse for the 'Big City' just 15 miles away.

I have taught self-defense classes at varying points in the past (something we're trying to expand with DefCon Security), and I've noticed a glaring trend: many of the participants are there because they've experienced a violent or potentially violent event. These students include women who have been stalked in a store and came to realize that they have no idea how to manage the situation, teens who have been physically bullied, and young women whose significant others grew physically abusive.  Even my oldest son started to take his safety more seriously when the crazy neighbor threatened to shoot him when our dog got in her yard.

It's a difficult task to get people to see beyond their normalcy bias to understand that preparation before a violent encounter is superior to waiting until we've survived violence to learn how to manage it.  Operating on the assumption that, "I've never experienced violence before, so I have no reason to believe that violence will impact my life," people find themselves caught flat-footed when violence does find its way into their lives.

There are a good many preparatory steps that we take to protect ourselves and our property from harm. We wear seat belts in our cars. We put fire extinguishers in our homes.  Some of us install car alarms to ward off thieves. We put up security cameras, install alarm systems, and lock our doors to deter home intruders. All of these things we do with the knowledge that we are highly unlikely to be the victims of a car crash, vehicle theft, or home invasion.

It seems that the only thing we're unwilling to proactively protect is our person.

And that is the unfortunate truth about people and violence. It appears that we have to survive violent encounters before we take steps to avoid violent encounters.

Even more compelling is that people are so comfortable with the absence of violence in their lives - so inured to the potential that they could be victimized - that they take unnecessary risks that make them even more likely to be victimized. They glue themselves to their phones in public rather than observing their surroundings (remember the woman who sued a mall when she fell into a fountain while texting?). They occlude their hearing with headphones. They stare at their feet as they walk rather than taking in what is happening around them.

I'm still searching for the magic words that can get people from the point of blithely going about their lives without concern for their safety to being active participants in their own protection. Self defense isn't just for survivors; it is the domain of every human to protect his or her right to life.

5 Things Your Self-Defense Class Must Include

This coming week, I have the opportunity to start a new self-defense class with our local community college. I've been reading books on the topic like a fiend for the last couple of months to gather as much relevant content as I can. Over the course of the 8-week program, I hope that I can send my students into the big wide world with a newfound respect for the topic of violence and a healthy understanding of personal protection.

When I first pitched the class to the college in August, I had to take the time to consider the curriculum I would teach. The college expected it as a natural part of the process of offering the class to the public, so I sat down with a notepad and began to jot down my initial thoughts. Not surprisingly, a lot of the material I put on the paper was attuned to the idea that self-defense is a physical event and thus included such things as defense against a wrist grab, headlock, bear hug, and a bunch of other maneuvers (which I've subsequently dubbed 'parlor tricks') that are expected to free a 'victim' from an aggressor.

Since that first list, I've done a lot of reading, and much of the curriculum has changed as a result of what I've read. I'm going to boil all of those pages down into the following 5 points outlining exactly what you should be looking for in your next self-defense class. Not having these specific elements has the potential to create a world of difficulty for you. At best, the class could put the instructor in the unwitting position of accessory to a criminal act with you as the primary perpetrator. At worst, the class could wind up getting the student - you - killed should you find yourself in a defensive situation.

So let's take a serious look at why you should take a serious look before signing up for the self-defense class advertised down at the 'Y'.

1 - A Certified Instructor
I started learning martial arts from books I found at the library when I was 14. I practiced what I read in my back yard until I went away to college at 18. In college, I took karate classes at the student rec center. I started teaching self-defense in my junior year to college and high school women.

I was a yellow belt at the time.  Not exactly the pinnacle of martial training, if you catch my meaning. Hopefully all of the students I had back then survived any threats they may have encountered.

Your instructor should have (at the very least) a legitimate certificate indicating that they've gained a proficiency in martial arts after several years of ongoing training. The style of martial arts that awarded the certificate is fairly immaterial (but only fairly); it's the level of training that is important here. Be wary of anything that smacks of an online course or correspondence training. Instructors who learned their craft by watching YouTube videos or DVDs or filling out online forms can be detrimental to your future.

The instructor's certificate should be ready for your inspection at a moment's notice.  He or she should be able to tell you who his/her instructor was, where the school is located, and provide you with a phone number that you can call for more information.  Anyone who balks on giving you this information is someone from whom you should distance yourself.

After you've started learning from this instructor, you should still maintain a healthy dose of skepticism.  After all, there are still 4 more items on this list.  If any of these are missing, you might choose to reconsider your affiliation with that particular teacher.

2 - A Clear Disclaimer
It seems that every instructor who teaches a self-defense course feels compelled to say that his class is, "The only self-defense course you'll ever need," or that his course will prepare you for any attack with little effort on your part.  "Destroy your attacker in seconds" is pie-in-the-sky sloganeering that, honestly, could have pretty devastating consequences for the defender.

Self-defense is not a static event.  It is ever-changing, always dynamic.  Just like the violent perpetrators who devise new and creative ways to separate people from their property, money, or chastity, the defender must be willing to hone his/her defensive skills against the seedier elements of society.  No single class can cover everything, no matter how many hours it spans.  As I mentioned earlier, I'm getting ready to start a 16-hour self-defense (I preferentially call it self-protection, but that's a topic for another blog) with our local community college.  16 hours is a long time to teach students, but I can only begin to scratch the surface of violence, defensive psychology, awareness, avoidance, developing a defensive presence, and basic physical techniques.  There's a lot of 'defense' left out that a student might need in a violent encounter.  I've got to do the best I can with the time I'm allotted.

Besides, violence is not instinctive to normally docile people, and trying to deprogram a student's sense of passivity in a relatively short self-defense course is not possible.  Just getting my students beyond the point of being polite when they should be gouging out their attacker's eyeballs is going to take time.

For those reasons (among others), a self-defense seminar should have a clear disclaimer that states something to the effect of, "There are no guarantees."  Any course that fails to tell you that there is no super-secret technique that will stop all attackers in their tracks is not worth the money or time you invest in it.  Further, planting seeds of invincibility will leave a defender horribly confused when the super-secret technique fails to drop an attacker.  The ensuing beat down of the hapless 'defender' will be the stuff of legend, I'm sure.

3 - A Minimum 50/50 Mind/Body Curriculum
I'm known to just drop in on random martial arts schools when the opportunity avails itself, and as fate would have it, I did just that a couple of weeks ago.  The school was just starting its first night of self-defense for beginners, and, true to form, the first thing students learned was on-the-mat techniques (rising blocks and elbows, from what I saw).  Granted I did not stick around to watch the entire class, but what I saw was pretty typical of most self-defense classes I've seen over the years: let's learn how to beat people up to make them leave us alone.

Where most self-defense classes fall short is in the mental preparation for self-defense.  Just as an example, Rory Miller in his book Facing Violence does a superb job of describing what happens to an average person confronted with an unexpected violent encounter: (s)he freezes.  That act (or, more precisely, inability to act) is sufficient to render a victim inert and easily overcome.  Just what an aggressor wants.

And that's just one element of the mental aspect of self defense that must be covered but is seldom (if ever) mentioned by the average self-defense instructor.

A well-balanced self-defense class will cover such cerebral basics as:

• Flight, Fight, or Freeze
• overcoming social barriers in a defensive encounter
• managing the survivor guilt associated with a defensive encounter
• normalcy bias (closely linked to the Freeze)
• non-physical approaches to defense
• awareness ('situational awareness' is the current buzzword)
• the OODA loop
• when to defend and when to run
• rapid decision making under duress
• and about a thousand other defensive details 

Note that not a single thing on that list requires an on-the-mat approach to being taught. And every one of those items is essential knowledge for self protection.

At a minimum, your self-defense course should spend half the time in a classroom-type setting during which the instructor teaches what I term 'defensive theory' (the mental side of self-protection). If all you do is learn a series of strikes, kicks, blocks, and joint manipulations absent an established and fundamental understanding of defensive theory, then you are being trained to be an aggressor, not a defender.

And that will end poorly for you.

4 - An Opportunity for Male Participation
This is actually an unusual requirement in self-defense circles. I did a quick Google search for self-defense flyers.  Of the first 50 images I scanned, there were 7 unisex course offerings.  The other 43 courses being advertised were offered exclusively for women (with that verbiage proudly emblazoned on the flyer).  There is a natural assumption that men don't get attacked (they get into fights) or, if they are attacked, they have a natural ability to fight their attacker.

Neat idea.  I wish it were true.

Violence prevention falls on the shoulders of both men and women.  To put the onus on women to defend themselves without equipping men with defensive skills is to deny the necessity for men to be equal participants in bringing violence to an end.  Further, by educating men alongside women, both genders get the perspective of the other where violence and defense are concerned.  The unisex class opens a whole new range of learning that can benefit all involved.

Also important is the opportunity for women to be paired with men for practice. As a male instructor, I get punched, kicked, slapped, and poked all the time by my female students. They're always reluctant to hit the instructor (or a relative stranger who is male), and it takes considerable prodding for them to commit to actually putting their hands on me. I seldom encounter the woman who is not willing to (playfully) punch, kick, slap, or poke her husband/boyfriend/male friend. She will have less reluctance to grab his shoulders and drive a knee into the bag he's holding (with the usual, "Now you better watch out at home," commentary), and she is far less twitchy when he curls his fingers around her throat for choke defense.

Putting men and women together makes them partners in their own safety as opposed to creating the illusion that self-defense is something that only applies to women.  If the class you want to attend is advertised 'For Women Only', it's perfectly OK to inquire as to why the instructor is excluding men from the class.

5 - A Specific Focus on Self-defense and the Law
Self defense does not equal a license to beat the stuffing out of someone just for being obnoxious.  However, to hear the instruction provided by some online instructors (who teach their on-site classes in the same way, I presume), one could easily believe that violence is always justified when exercised in a defensive manner.

Unfortunately, the law isn't quite so cut-and-dried where personal defense is concerned, which is why specific instruction in self-defense law is mandatory to keep the student from seeing the inside of a prison cell.  For example, I've seen enough videos that teach choking out an attacker.  Is that legal defense?  If you don't know, you run the risk of spending a night in jail.  Is it legal to slice your way out of an attack with a knife?  How about stomping on the opponent you just threw to the ground?

Failure to know your legal rights and responsibilities (which is a much more important area) can cost you years of your life in jail and/or thousands of dollars in legal fees.

I have the phone number of my local police department's public outreach officer. For any self-defense class that I teach, I give him a call and ask him to schedule an officer to come and speak to the students about their rights and responsibilities.  Further, I have a defense attorney with whom I maintain regular contact who advises me on the nuance of self defense and the law. If there's a question my students present for which I do not have an answer, I go to him.

Ask your instructor if he will be teaching about your rights and responsibilities under the law. If (s)he looks at you like you've grown tentacles from your forehead, you might want to reconsider attending the class.

Let's Skip the Formalities, Shall We?

We are DefCon Security Consultants.  Our mission is to provide the most comprehensive personal protection training to the public that we possibly can deliver.  From this platform, we will address numerous issues that arise in the realm of personal protection, including:

• individual personal protection
• understanding violence
• current events and news
• debunking the bad information that poisons the internet
• other concepts as we encounter them

So who are we?  We are a martial arts family with 6 certified Yudansha (Black Belts).  I (Keith) started training in martial arts at the age of 14.  I trained in a variety of martial arts styles in college. Our family started training in traditional Okinawan karate in 2009.  Three of our family have since been promoted to Nidan (2nd degree Black Belt), one is a Shodan (1st-degree Black Belt), and 2 are Shodan-ho (Junior Black Belts).

None of that really qualifies us to be champions of personal protection.  We've spent years outside of the dojo training in self-defense, firearms tactics, and active awareness.  I personally read on the subject of personal protection and violence as a matter of ongoing education.  Our oldest son, the brains behind the formation of DefCon Security Consultants, is a long-time student of military tactics and firearms.  He is scheduled to leave for Army Basic Training in March 2016.

We are not experts, we are students.  A part of the purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for our own thoughts and explorations in the areas of violence and personal protection.  Expertise derives from experience; this blog is a part of that experience.

We hope that it's as meaningful to our readers as it is to us as we create the content.

Now... let's get started.