your path and then demands money.You nudge him away with your shoulder or hands.Your drunken uncle at the family party touches you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable.You grab his hand and push it back toward him.
In such situations, you can use a limited amount of force to escape a grab, clear a path, and knock away an uncomfortable touch. Then you proceed on your way while making quick glances back to watch the person.
Hands on with pain to control
The bully grabs your arm and resists your escape.You quickly maneuver his arm to where you can apply a pressure hold against his elbow.The street beggar steps into your path and slaps his hands on your chest.You knock his arms aside, push him into a wall and apply a control hold on his arm.Your drunken uncle grabs you inappropriately and pulls you into the bathroom.You knock his hands off you and push him down onto the floor.You sit on him and call for others to come and help.
Hands on with force, including injury, to stop the threat
The bully grabs your arm and resists your escape. He reaches for your throat with his other handYou punch him in the chest and kick him in the groin.When you push the street beggar against a wall, he spins around before you can apply a control hold and grabs a stick from his backpack.Since he is blocking your escape route, you kick his knee and follow with a backfist to his ear.Your uncle bucks you off and then tries to climb on top of you.You grab a vase off the cabinet and whack him in the forehead with it.
Lethal force
The bully absorbs your chest punch and groin kick without a flinch and pulls a knife from under his jacket. He lunges at you, nicking your arm.You grab his forearm, press it against his chest and then ram your fingers into his eyes.He screams, his eyes bleeding and squeezed shut in pain. But still he struggles to move the knife toward you.You slam a solid punch into his throat, which crumples him.The street beggar is only slightly phased by your knee kick and ear strike. He pulls an uncapped syringe from his tattered jacket pocket and stabs it at you.You grab his arm and are surprised by his incredible strength. He begins to maneuver the needle so that it pokes into your sleeve.You hammer fist his nose, and then sweep his leg, which drops him onto the back of his head.Hitting your perverted uncle in the head with the vase only makes him more determined. He grabs at you.You twist around so that your weight helps to pin his arms.With his head braced by the cabinet, you slam your knee into his temple to make him release you.
To reiterate, you don’t have to go through all the continuum steps in progressive order. If, say, a street beggar approaches you and you respond with a firm, “Not today,” and in anger he jabs a hype needle at you, it’s legally permissible for you to jump to the top rung of the ladder, the lethal force rung. That is, if you can’t run away.
“Avenue of escape”
Understand this legal term because not considering it can get you into trouble even when that street beggar jabs a hepatitis C-infected needle at you.
You’re going to get asked in court, “Yes, the street beggar poked a needle at you, and yes you had a right to use lethal force against him with your martial arts-trained feet and hands. But answer this: Couldn’t you have backed away? Could you have turned and ran? Isn’t it true there was an unobstructed sidewalk behind you?”
Your heart goes kuthunk, and you mumble, “Uh …”
“Yet you chose …,” the attorney says dramatically as he looks at each juror in the eye, “… to crush a homeless, hungry man’s face with your martial arts-trained fist and trip him with some martial arts-trained move that caused the man’s head to smash into the concrete.”
Suddenly, your life is about to change.
Instructors: don’t even joke about it
After I had been teaching the police academy for a number of years, the brass decided, and wisely so, that the instructors needed to use caution when making funny remarks about anything related to using force on someone. They were finding that some comments made in jest were coming back to haunt them.
While instructors always want their profound teachings to stick with a student, sometimes, according to anecdotal evidence, it’s the wisecrack, the funny comment, the exaggerated technique that some students remember most of all.
“Now that you have your opponent’s wrist locked, what do you do? You break it. Ha ha.”
“Okay, you’ve knocked the guy down onto his back. Now, run away. But as you leave, give him a nice kick in the ear. Ha, ha”
“You’ve trapped his knife arm. Twist his arm so that that he stabs himself in the gut. Hey, that was so fun why not make him do it two or three times. Ha ha.”
Might these little jests, underscored by humor and the mental image of the teacher’s exaggerated technique, remain in the minds of some students and reappear in their actions under stress?
Yes, and that is why we were ordered not to joke around in any class that involved functioning under stress: empty-hand fighting, police baton, and firearms. Some students will only remember that you leaned on your subdued attacker’s eye socket and forget that you did it for a laugh.
Important point: A private citizen has a legal duty to retreat. He or she must always explore evasion or escape first before getting physical.
Question, evaluate and research
I could give you dozens of examples and you could come up with dozens of: What if … Yeah, but … But can’t you just … That’s just not fair … So let me leave you with some advice that will not only improve your martial arts study, but just might keep you out of the slammer.
Question what you’re taught. Be polite about it but ask so that you understand how certain techniques and responses fit into the force continuum. If your teacher hasn’t thought about this, your questions just might get him to do so.Evaluate techniques and responses. Is this technique over the top? Not enough? Does it push the legal envelope? For practice, evaluate the techniques in this book as to where they fit into the continuum.Research the laws where you live. Remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Maybe you really, really believe that it was okay to hit the guy 42 times with a brick when he pulled a knife on you. Well, just because you thought it was okay doesn’t make it okay in the eyes of the law. Know the laws, know the continuum, and know what you can and can’t do in various situations.
Perhaps you have heard the saying, “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.” While there are lots of incarcerated folks who might debate that, by questioning, evaluating and researching you give yourself one other option that is better than being carried or judged:
An informed, intelligent and highly-trained response.
Loren W. Christensen’s biography appears in the “About the Author” page at the back of the book.
