Sunday, June 23, 2019

Relative effectiveness

So the situation has come up again where people are advising others that X is good and Y is bad. The truth is, there is no solution out there that will work all the time. We always apply some kind of force in the hopes that it will work, but always with the expectation that it will not. Therefore, we should always be ready to immediately apply the next step, and the next, and the next, etc.

Firearms are a good idea, but will it work all the time? No. If you have 30 minutes to watch a YouTube video, here is a really good example of a situation where the bad guy still ended up taking quite a few shots before going down.

Conversely, pepper sprays are also a good idea. Not all situations call for lethal force, and I've seen plenty of people go down due to being sprayed. Also, please remember that you do not have to engage the assailant as you are spraying. Just spray and run. However, will this work all the time? Again, no. The same is true for knife and unarmed fighting also.

The reason why I am making this post is not so much to say that people are right or wrong about the advice they are giving, but merely to keep the context in mind. Nothing is good enough to just rely solely on this or that one thing. Rather, the real question we should be asking is this: If there are no magic silver bullets out there, then what is the next best thing? What is at least worth training and carrying?

The answer is a mix of unarmed skills, pepper spray, knife, and firearms. Every piece of gear and skills set has their pros, and their cons are covered by the pros of the other gears or skill sets. The point is, instead of separating ourselves into distinct camps of unarmed vs pepper spray vs knife vs firearms, we should all be coming together and adopt a philosophy towards mixed self defense. We should all be checking E: All of the above.



Submitted June 23, 2019 at 09:42AM by Gback http://bit.ly/2IAz9Ir

No comments:

Post a Comment