Defense and the Potential Weapon

The War on Guns points to this article and one based on the Cooper Color Codes. I think the Cooper info is more helpful. The Gardners give some good advice, and some bad.

Although the Gardners' clients have included law-enforcement organizations such as the FBI and large companies such as Procter & Gamble, the Gardners say their mission is to "teach what most law-abiding citizens can learn rapidly and remember forever that works most of the time, with no physical practice."

Debbie Gardner says: "If you are overwhelmed with 25 ideas, you will do nothing in a crisis."

That's why she advocates a three-letter "simple but not easy" crime-survival plan: BST - Breathe, Space, Throat.

No doubt these are good steps. I got into my first fight and froze, but only long enough for the guy to punch me in the mouth. That was enough for me to go off the scale and give him a fairly good pummeling. Never froze again.

But this is poor advice:

That means hitting with the intention of causing incapacitating injury, not just pain, she said - and that's the part of her crime-survival plan that's not easy. It takes courage. She tells people to think of their loved ones when they strike back at an attacker - and to do what golfer Tiger Woods does: envision themselves "winning."

Winning? No you should be thinking about surviving. Attackers don't choose victims that they think they can't overwhelm. The tact is to make them realize that the cost-benefit relation of their action is now untenable. You don't have to win, you have to make them realize that they will pay more than they are willing to risk. More likely than not your "win" will be very painful.

Then there's this:

If an assailant is armed, grab the barrel of an assailant's gun or the blade of a knife to get it away from your body's "kill zone" - head, neck and torso - then strike the attacker squarely in the throat, which can collapse his windpipe, Gardner said.

"We are not wrestling the gun away," as we so often see in movies, Gardner said. Instead, she said, the goal is to redirect bullets and give the victim a chance to strike the attacker's throat. "Because when he stops breathing, the gun stops firing."

If you grab my gun, what do you think my first action will be? I'm going to pull the trigger. You won't be holding it after that. You honestly believe that you can reach and control my gun before I can pull the trigger? This is a miniature Tueller drill. If this is the worst of situations, you dodge and block the gun aside and get control of the assailant's arm. Then strike. Grabbing a knife or gun is trying to take control of a small item that you'll likely miss.

I also thought this rather silly:

Another surprise: textbooks or even stacks of magazines can be used as shields that offer nearly the same protection as a police officer's bullet-resistant vest, Gardner said. Test-firings show that 2½ to 3 inches of compressed paper can stop most types of handgun bullets - including the 9 mm rounds fired by the Virginia Tech gunman, Gardner said.

Right. I'm going to hold up a book to stop the bullets? I'm moving, not shielding. Just think like the shooter for a second and you can see that they're not going to aim for the book.

Realize it's going to hurt a lot, and realize that it's going to be better than being dead. Then make the MF bleed.