How effective are Martial Arts in Self Defence

[PangQuan]

no i totally get what your saying.

i would only attack a guy weilding a knife, if i had at my disposal a means of killing or incapasitating him quickly. a blade of my own, or a bludgeoning tool.

but keep in mind, i generally carry a weapon everywhere i go. from a knife to a pair of nunchaku.

on my way to and from class i always have a 6' ratan staff. or as i like to call it, the ol' bone breaker.

[dwid]

You have to consider that a gun isn't the holy grail of self defense.

Don't get me wrong. I have a permit and I carry, but when sh!t jumps off, there are issues of being able to draw and retain. You need to exercise a certain level of vigilance in order to see a threat before it invades your space, at which point, drawing and retaining are substantially more likely to be compromised.

So, while a gun may be as good a defense as you can get, I look at it as a piece and not the entirety of my personal protection.

As far as legal issues go, you're more likely to go to jail for beating someone than for shooting them if you follow the law and don't pull your gun unless your life is seriously threatened. Let me give an example to illustrate from a case that actually happened here in Columbus.

A guy wakes up in the middle of the night to noises in his house. He is on the second floor and hears people on the first floor. He grabs a bat and catches the first of two burglars off-guard. The perp was armed with a shotgun and so the guy hit him with the bat until he went down, and maybe a few more times until he seemed incapacitated. He then grabs the shotgun and shoots the other guy. I believe both burglars died. However, he was only charged with the first assault, as even though the fight was bat vs. shotgun, it was deemed that hitting the guy as many times as he did was excessive force, whereas he only shot the other guy once - not excessive.

If you carry, even legally, you may well find yourself having to go to court over shooting someone, but you will be no worse off (and quite possibly better off) than if you beat the sh!t out of someone or cut/stab them. The law is funny that way.

[Cobra Commander]

You have to consider that a gun isn't the holy grail of self defense.

Don't get me wrong. I have a permit and I carry, but when sh!t jumps off, there are issues of being able to draw and retain. You need to exercise a certain level of vigilance in order to see a threat before it invades your space, at which point, drawing and retaining are substantially more likely to be compromised.

So, while a gun may be as good a defense as you can get, I look at it as a piece and not the entirety of my personal protection.

As far as legal issues go, you're more likely to go to jail for beating someone than for shooting them if you follow the law and don't pull your gun unless your life is seriously threatened. Let me give an example to illustrate from a case that actually happened here in Columbus.

A guy wakes up in the middle of the night to noises in his house. He is on the second floor and hears people on the first floor. He grabs a bat and catches the first of two burglars off-guard. The perp was armed with a shotgun and so the guy hit him with the bat until he went down, and maybe a few more times until he seemed incapacitated. He then grabs the shotgun and shoots the other guy. I believe both burglars died. However, he was only charged with the first assault, as even though the fight was bat vs. shotgun, it was deemed that hitting the guy as many times as he did was excessive force, whereas he only shot the other guy once - not excessive.

If you carry, even legally, you may well find yourself having to go to court over shooting someone, but you will be no worse off (and quite possibly better off) than if you beat the sh!t out of someone or cut/stab them. The law is funny that way.

The law only works for Mike Tyson, who can literally at the drop of a hat exit his vehicle enraged and,
beat the living daylights out of you or me and get away with it.
Hell he can even throw in some knee blast to your testicles and headbutt you. Add a lethal bite to your thigh or ears and he gets cuffed the same week and, the next week he'll be having his photo's taken with some pretty women in Brazil.

On the other hand, I'm sure if Mike Tyson was shooting people from a roof top or committing drivebye's, he'd be either serving a triple life sentence or be facing the death penalty.

Yeah the law IS FUNNY.

[Samurai Jack]

I'm not all that certain that a gun represents the best defensive value for most self-defense situations. In cases where your opponent isn't threatening lethal force i.e. armed with a knife or gun, then YOUR weapon represents a serious liability.

For example, if you draw your weapon against an unarmed assailant and the moron dosen't back down (seen this happen in my youth), what the hell do you do? Shoot him? What if you shoot him accidentally? It's happened before. Either way, that's murder in the eyes of any court. And if he starts fighting you and you haven't drawn your weapon, how much harder is it to fight him while keeping him from taking your gun? Not to mention what happens if he succeeds in grabbing it.

The only time you'd want your gun IMO, is if your opponent has one. In which case you're pretty screwed anyway because you stand a very good chance of being killed or accidentally killing a bystander should you choose to deploy your weapon rather than just meet his demands.

Just playing devil's advocate...

[dwid]

Well, I'll be honest. I don't get into brawls. I haven't been in a for real fight (outside of the gym) since Junior High School.

Any situation in which I am being physically assaulted and I cannot get away is a situation in which lethal force would be justifiable in my mind. People die or are permanently disabled from complications from unarmed assaults all the time. Furthermore, people often survive being shot, so you can't assume that just because you shoot some guy, he's going to die.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who puts the lives of me or those I love in danger, whether wielding a weapon or not, is doing so at great personal risk.

Finally, while the argument about having a good chance of being killed or killing a bystander simply doesn't hold up. Show me the statistics on people who legally carry firearms accidentally shooting themselves or others. It doesn't happen. Furthermore, cops get in gunfights all the time without injuring bystanders or being killed themselves, and cops are by and large some of the worst shots imaginable. I spend more time at the shooting range than the vast majority of police officers do. Use common sense, good judgment, gun safety, and be ever mindful of your lines of fire, and it's highly unlikely you'll shoot anyone you don't intend to.

[Kapten Klutz]

Use common sense, good judgment, gun safety, and be ever mindful of your lines of fire, and it's highly unlikely you'll shoot anyone you don't intend to.

Have you ever tested this when the bad guys were also shooting at you?

[dwid]

The point is, that it's not a given that you're going to kill some innocent bystander or get shot yourself. No, I've never been under fire, and I hope that I never am. I hope I'm never in a situation where I have to choose between injuring or killing another human being or being injured or killed myself. It's a terrible position to be in. Even police officers and soldiers are traumatized when they have to take a life - it's a terrible thing.

However, I'm not going to let the fear of unpredictable outcomes in such a scenario keep me from taking steps to protect myself and those I love. The point I was trying to make was that perhaps Samurai Jack was a bit extreme in his predictions about the likely outcomes of having to use a firearm to protect yourself. As I stated early in this thread, I agree that firearms aren't the be-all end-all solution to every self-defense problem. However, I do believe they are an important component to practical self-defense. It is simply naiive to believe that you can counter every attack scenario with empty hand tech's or melee weapons. Guns are a reality of the modern era, and people ignore this reality at their peril.

[Samurai Jack]

Finally, while the argument about having a good chance of being killed or killing a bystander simply doesn't hold up. Show me the statistics on people who legally carry firearms accidentally shooting themselves or others.

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. I've been out of the country. Here are some quotes, and thier sources:

"The issue of "home defense" or protection against intruders may well be misrepresented. Of 626 shootings in or around a residence in three U.S. cities revealed that, for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides (Kellermann et al, 1998). Over 50% of all households in the U.S. admit to having firearms (Nelson et al, 1987). It would appear that, rather than being used for defense, most of these weapons inflict injuries on the owners and their families."

http://medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/T...S/GUNSTAT.html

"From 1993 to 2002,1 data from the BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) show that 175 workers were killed on the job as the result of an accidental gunshot wound. While this total represented only 0.3 percent of the 61,146 workplace fatalities suffered by all workers during this 10-year span, these fatalities are especially alarming because they involve firearms and are prevalent in military and protective service occupations."

Below is a chart showing the rates of accidental gunshot deaths between the years 1993 and 2002. Note the fact that these individuals were police, government agents, and military who shot and killed themselves or a by-stander in the course of doing thier jobs. These statistics do not include either gulf war, for obvious reasons.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/tables/sh20040903ar01t1.htm

"Research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder.(Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay. "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm Related Deaths in the Home." The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 314, no. 24, June 1986, pp. 1557-60.) The use of a firearm to resist a violent assault actually increases the victim's risk of injury and death(FE Zimring, Firearms, violence, and public policy, Scientific American, vol. 265, 1991, p. 48)."

"Keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one. That is, excluding many other factors such as previous history of violence, class, race, etc., a household with a gun is 2.7 times more likely to experience a murder than a household without one, even while there was no significant increase in the risk of non-gun homicides. " (Arthur Kellermann et. al., "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home," The New England Journal of Medicine, October 7, 1993, pp. 1084-1091)

"The present study, based on a sample of eighteen countries, confirms the result of previous work based on the 14 countries surveyed during the first International Crime Survey. Substantial correlations were found between gun ownership and gun-related as well as total homicide and suicide rates. Of the recorded homicide rates, 16% were commited unintentionally. Widespread gun ownership has not been found to reduce the likelihood of fatal events committed with other means. Thus, people do not turn to knives and other potententially lethal weapons less often when more guns are available, but more guns usually means more victims of homicide and suicide." (International Crime Victim Survey 2004)

So there you go. Some statistics and comments from our governement, the National, and International Crime Victim surevey (used by law enforcement to track trends in crime), Scientific American, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

[dwid]

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. I've been out of the country. Here are some quotes, and thier sources:



Below is a chart showing the rates of accidental gunshot deaths between the years 1993 and 2002. Note the fact that these individuals were police, government agents, and military who shot and killed themselves or a by-stander in the course of doing thier jobs. These statistics do not include either gulf war, for obvious reasons.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/tables/sh20040903ar01t1.htm



So there you go. Some statistics and comments from our governement, the National, and International Crime Victim surevey (used by law enforcement to track trends in crime), Scientific American, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Thanks for all the data. I have to admit I see some weaknesses in the way the data are interpreted in the reporting, but it is something we'll likely have to agree to disagree on. The fact is that the base rates for accidental shooting deaths are extremely low. 175 over a 10 year period, many of which occurred in occupations where firearms were regularly carried is not very many. Further, if 50% of American homes contain firearms then it is erroneous to claim, as one of the above mentioned authors do, that "most of these weapons inflict injuries on the owners and their families." Clearly most of these weapons are never used in any violent way whatsoever. Including data on intentional suicides is just a way to inflate the numbers, as it is irrelevant to the topic of accidental injuries and fatalities. Anyway, yes firearms can pose a danger. Certainly lots of people buy guns and store them unsafely in homes with kids, etc... and I would never advocate any of that. However, you'll note in looking at my original quote that I was specifically referring to people who legally carry firearms, as in those with concealed carry permits who have gone through the required training and people who are otherwise permitted to carry firearms. I suppose these people would fall into the 175 work related accidental firearm fatalities, which again, is not very many given that the data included police officers and such. Data on injuries and fatalities related to guns are some of the most manipulated data there are - both sides of the fence (the gun owner people and the gun control people) have their extreme supporters and both are certainly guilty of skewing the stats in their favor. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle and is basically common sense.

[SevenStar]

I'm not all that certain that a gun represents the best defensive value for most self-defense situations. In cases where your opponent isn't threatening lethal force i.e. armed with a knife or gun, then YOUR weapon represents a serious liability.

For example, if you draw your weapon against an unarmed assailant and the moron dosen't back down (seen this happen in my youth), what the hell do you do? Shoot him? What if you shoot him accidentally? It's happened before. Either way, that's murder in the eyes of any court. And if he starts fighting you and you haven't drawn your weapon, how much harder is it to fight him while keeping him from taking your gun? Not to mention what happens if he succeeds in grabbing it.

The only time you'd want your gun IMO, is if your opponent has one. In which case you're pretty screwed anyway because you stand a very good chance of being killed or accidentally killing a bystander should you choose to deploy your weapon rather than just meet his demands.

Just playing devil's advocate...

another thing to think about is the time it takes to draw the gun. I saw a study somewhere that read to the effect of, from 20 feet or less, knife vs gun, the knife will usually win if the gun isn't already drawn. given that statistic, I would guess that it's the same for gun vs ASP. coincidentally, over the weekend, a guy claimed to have a gun (he didn't), but he was grabbed by someone from behind and I had drawn my baton before he even finished pulling his hand from under his shirt. Had I hit him, he woulda been KOed before he was even close to drawing his gun - I was within 20 feet of him, and it's a 21' extendable baton.

[Pork Chop]

I was within 20 feet of him, and it's a 21' extendable baton.

21 foot extendable baton?
Mine's only a foot long.