Get the Facts: Guns Don't Protect You By Themselves

I got an email the other day that read:

I think the best thing is for a woman to buy a gun/dont matter how much martial arts training a woman is simply not strong enough to win in a fight against a male/Did you ever use your skills in a real life situation?

As regular readers of this blog know, I don't agree with the writer about guns for several reasons. First of all, just buying a gun won't make you a bit safer. You have to really learn how to use a gun, and how to handle it properly when you're not using it. Otherwise, you're more like to have that gun used against you.

Weapons are tools, and tools are only useful if you know what you're doing.

Secondly, the writer reveals his or her ignorance about martial arts training. A good martial artist of either gender can defeat a bigger and stronger opponent. One of the advantages of martial arts training is that it teaches you how to use an attacker's strength to your advantage. Women can learn to do this. In fact, women often have an advantage in learning to do this well, because they don't assume they can use muscle to defeat their opponent. Men who are little larger than average tend to assume they can rely on muscle, which doesn't help them much when they run into someone bigger and stronger.

And there's always someone bigger and stronger, no matter how big you think you are.

Thirdly, the real advantage of martial arts training -- and what makes it better self defense training than learning how to use any individual weapon -- is that it teaches you how to pay attention and avoid trouble. Actual fighting is a tiny part of self defense, though knowing how to fight will help give you the confidence and awareness to avoid trouble.

As to the question of whether I've ever used martial arts to defend myself: Yes, I have, but it was a long time ago when I only had a year or so of karate under my belt. I was walking home about 10 PM on a deserted residential street in Washington, DC, when a large guy jumped out of the bushes and threatened me with an open pocket knife. I knew I couldn't turn and run -- he was between me and my apartment, plus I'd seen a guy earlier behind me who gave me bad vibes -- so I stuck up my left arm to block the hand that held the knife and kicked him in the groin. He was stunned, and I got around him and ran full tilt for home. He didn't chase me.

Yeah, he was a lot bigger than me, and no, I didn't stand there and beat him into the ground. I didn't have the skill for that at the time, anyway. I used what I knew and got away. That's what self defense is all about. By the way, I later learned that his attack -- standing directly in front of me with his center wide open -- was a classic rape attack. He didn't expect a fight, which gave me an advantage.

You can't prove a negative, but I think the fact that I haven't been attacked on the street in long time has a lot to do with my martial arts training. Given that I lived in a major urban area -- Washington, DC -- and worked in some dicey neighborhoods for many years, I credit my presence and my awareness with keeping me out of trouble. That's self defense.

Guns have their place, but they don't do much to protect ordinary people in ordinary situations. If you're in a particularly dangerous situation -- for example, you're being harassed by a stalker -- and feel the need for a weapon, don't just go buy a gun. Go get serious training in how to use it.

Guns don't protect you by themselves.

Get the Facts: An Object Lesson in Stupid Gun Behavior

The Dallas Morning News reports on a man who accidentally killed his girlfriend while teaching her how to handle a gun.

It's a classic story: He took out the magazine, thought the gun wasn't loaded, and pulled the trigger. Now a 19-year-old woman is dead and the 22-year-old man is likely headed for jail.

Unfortunately, this isn't unusual; while looking for statistics on accidental gun deaths just now, I came upon another story about a 19-year-old woman killed accidentally by a gun she got from her boyfriend. That one happened about three weeks ago in Arizona.

Now unintentional shootings aren't a huge cause of death in the United States. The CDC gives a figure of 789 such deaths for 2005. That's just a drop in the bucket out of 30,694 firearm-related deaths in that year. It's particularly tiny compared to 12,352 gun-related murders or the very disturbing figure of 17,002 suicides by firearm.

But that doesn't make such deaths any less stupid. And the number of unintentional shootings that didn't kill anyone is more sobering: 15,698 in 2007, according to the CDC.

That's more than 16,000 instances per year where something bad happened because someone was being stupid with a gun.

Readers of this blog know that guns aren't my first choice for self defense. But there are circumstances where they can be valuable tools if you know how to use them.

If you're going to keep a gun around for self defense, learn how to use it -- and from a professional trainer, not a drunk boyfriend. Keep it locked up and away from children. And don't ever point it at anyone you don't intend to shoot!

Learn to Fight -- But Not From Bad Videos

According to the Dallas Morning News, there's an armed serial rapist attacking women in the greater Dallas area. In what I'm sure is an effort to help women deal with this threat, the newspaper posted a video giving advice from a police officer and a couple of self defense experts. (Note: the video plays with Flash or the Windows Media player -- it doesn't work with Quicktime.)

Unfortunately, the advice on the video is all but useless to an untrained person. In the first technique, a woman is trapped under a man who is trying to undo his pants. The video shows how she twists her hips to get loose, and then kicks the man.

While this is a good ground technique -- often taught in the Impact and Model Mugging classes -- it's not something you can pick up watching a video. For one thing, you need to learn how to stay calm throughout an attack so that you can identify those moments when an attacker -- even an armed attacker -- is vulnerable. Responding at the wrong time can be dangerous, but if you're calm and relaxed, you will see a good opening.

Secondly, it's not the first technique taught in self defense classes. You work up to material like this. Further, it's useful to practice it in a safe class setting before trying this kind of move. You need to let your body learn that it can do this kind of move before trying it for real.

But what really worried me is that the video contained a couple of scenes showing defense against a gun. Again, these are legitimate techniques, but they're not techniques for beginners. The first one involves moving inside against an armed attacker; the second showed a similar defense when the gun is held at your back.

I might try either of these moves, if I sensed an opening or felt like the attacker was going to kill me regardless -- if you're calm, you'll be aware of these things. But I've spent 20 years in Aikido learning how to enter against an attack. In my experience, most beginners don't do this right immediately.

Not only do I think this video showed techniques that are too advanced, I also think it picked ones that are too intimidating. I would guess -- and I'd love to have readers look at the video and share their own reactions -- that most people would look at these techniques as shown and immediately say "I could never do that."

That's not true -- most people can do these things. But they need to learn them gradually, not be confronted with the scariest techniques right off the bat.

I grant it's better that the police are acknowledging that women can defend themselves. It wasn't very long ago that the standard police response to rape attacks was for women just to go along and not try to do anything.

But I don't think this video is going to help anyone who hasn't had any training. I suggest women look for a good self defense class instead. I'll be providing more links to upcoming classes soon and I'd be glad to post links to training available in the Dallas area specifically, if teachers will send me information.