Assuming that if there's one thing martial artists agree on, it's that if you can't avoid violence, and you can't run, you should defend yourself with violence...

should we be aiming for:

1) Maximum violence on your attacker to ensure that he can't continue?
2) Optimum violence on your attacker to ensure he won't continue?

I know this topic has been covered before, but reading some of the more recent leanings, like on the Hiroshima thread, anti-pussification, BJ's recently stronger insistence that you should be getting rid of a defensive mindset , plus Berserker's comedy assertions that you should kill first and ask questions later etc... it seems that the mood of a lot of people on KFO is changing a little.

Personally, I have always aimed to preserve myself first, and pretty much gone out the way not to kill my attackers! Ie, to preserve them too.

The problems I have encountered with this are:

1) Once, after I'd fought him off and put the fear of life into him (actually I wasn't trying to preserve him, I was trying to take his head off on reflex, but I slipped, he got a palm to the point of the chin... and then I let him recover, choosing not to 'finish him off'...) an attacker pulled a knife on me. I got away safely, but I couldn't help thinking that my decision to not put him down and out properly, helped contribute to a dangerous armed man going free. In future, I think I'd probably try to put him out of action, but again, I wouldn't want to kill him...

2) Another time, I was trying to avoid hurting someone drunk guy in the street who had gone ape**** at me, and he very nearly beat the **** out of me. In the end, my old man (a very big guy!) picked him up by the throat and shall we say 'neutralized' the problem.

OK, so first guy: should I have dropped him so he wasn't going to get up again? I didn't know he had a knife, so would that have been an overreaction?

Second guy: he had the opportunity to do me some real damage, but was obviously just drunk and wanting a fight, not wanting to kill anyone. For me to have stopped him, I would have had to have done him some serious damage, which would have probably been an overreaction in the eyes of the law, and my own conscience... but how did I know his intentions?

Any thoughts?