EFFECTIVE WEAPON DEFENSE

 by Phillip Starr

Defensive maneuvers/techniques that are to be applied when one is confronted with an armed adversary are, I believe, a very important part of contemporary martial arts training. Back in about 1983, I had two sheriff's deputies in my class when I was giving my “knife defense 101” lecture. I mentioned that if someone deliberately sought you out to engage you in a fight (which is the case in most self-defense situations), the odds were about 80% that he was armed with something to ensure his victory, I was quickly corrected by my law enforcement students who told me that the odds were actually better than 90%. And that was more than 30 years ago.... want to bet what the odds are nowadays?

I divide weapons into two very broads categories; striking and projectile. A “striking weapon” requires that the bad guy hits you with the weapon. This category includes everything from cudgels and knives to spears, swords, halberds, and baseball bats. Obviously, this is the largest category. Some of these weapons are easily concealed but many aren't. Our martial arts forefathers often faced such weapons and developed very effective defensive maneuver to be used against them.

The second category, projectile weapons, includes any weapon that can be used to launch a projectile at you while the adversary remains at a distance. The most obvious weapon of this type is one that our forefathers never had to face...handguns. Concealable firearms are a relatively new innovation, so the ancient arts were not designed to deal with them. All “handgun defenses” are rather recent developments but many of the principles of the traditional martial arts can be and often are applied.

I would caution those who practice defensive techniques against an armed assailant to adhere to 2 fundamental idea:

1. Gain and maintain control of the weapon at all times.

2. Destroy the aggressor.

I tell my students not to base any such defense on disarming the bad guy, If you do, then the two of you are involved in different forms of combat with the advantage going to the opponent; you're engaging your enemy in a sort of grappling situation and he's trying to kill you. You don't want to wrestle an opponent who's trying to stab you, believe me. Hollywood may make it look pretty easy to do but the truth is far different!