Weapons
This is a text-only preview that omits formatting, video, pictures, and portions of the chapter.
Gun Attacks
If someone pulls a gun on you, never go where they want you to go, particularly if you are in a place where someone can hear or see you. They are not putting a gun on you to take you to the prom or a birthday party with cake and ice cream.
Create a distraction by throwing something they may want on the ground near their foot (a purse or wallet) and as s/he glances down at it, RUN fast. Wearing shoes that make it hard to run can be detrimental to your safety.
If you have nothing to throw at their feet, look over their shoulder and yell out “Dad, don’t come any closer! He’s got a gun!” When s/he turns to look, RUN fast.
In a public place, you are better off trying to run than going with your assailant. Playing the odds, your assailant is probably not that good of a shot, and if your assailant wanted to shoot you then and there, s/he’d have already done it. Playing the odds, if your assailant is a stranger to you, s/he has no interest in killing you outright and does not like the idea of standing in the street over a dead girl holding a smoking gun. Your assailant is more likely than not to lower the gun, pick up what you dropped, and either flee or wait until another girl comes along.
Run as fast as you can toward cover (something between you and the gun that will stop a bullet). Do not run away zig-zag. A study shows it does not make you harder to hit than running straight, and the shooter can easily run you down by running in a straight line to shoot you point blank. Once you are safely away, call the police.
Obviously, you have to assess the situation for yourself and there are times when no escape is possible. Personally, I’ve made the decision to get out of there and take my chances with being shot, and I’ve lived that situation. I was in a store with a friend when armed robbers came in demanding money. One pointed a gun directly at me and demanded that I get on the floor. I saw an escape route, so I grabbed my friend and pulled her quickly down the aisle to safety. There is no way I was going to lay on the floor so I could be shot execution style in the back of the head.
This leads to two interesting dilemmas, one of which I lived that night and one of which a fellow S/HE program trainer lived. The first is that my friend had a handgun in her purse. Once we were safely away, she asked me if we should go shoot the robbers. I said that if we hear gun shots, we have no choice but until then it is safer for everyone if we don’t insert ourselves into the situation. There were a fair number of people in the front of the store and any of them could have taken a stray bullet or been used as a human shield in a gunfire exchange between us and the robbers.
The second dilemma is what I should have done if my friend could not escape but I could. Should I run to safety and leave her there? I debated this for many years until I heard the following story from Ann Vierkorn, one of the many great PE teachers who learned to teach our program in the Virginia public schools. Ann was living in a house in Arizona with her husband and a roommate. While the roommate was at a convenience store, a man knocked on the door asking to use the bathroom. Her husband grew up near Amish Country and trustingly let the man in because that is what you do in rural Pennsylvania.
The man came out of the bathroom with a gun and started ordering them around – pull the shades, lock the doors, etc. The man shot Ann’s husband in the abdomen and Ann saw an opening and ran out the back door. Ann heard the report of a gun and a bullet whiz by her. She dove, Superman style, over a fence and then ran out to the street, laying out on the hood of a passing car and begging the driver to let her in and get them out of there. He did so, and she was able to call the police.
As Ann’s roommate got back, the neighborhood was swarming with police. The man had run away and was caught. In his possession was a manifesto about how he intended to rape all the women and kill all the men. Ann’s house was the first stop on his intended crime spree.
Ann told me, “Had my roommate been there I never would have run and we’d all be dead.” Her husband survived despite being shot twice.
The bottom line is that if several people are being held hostage and one of them has the chance to escape, that person should do it and get help for the others. The alternative is that everyone remains at the mercy of a criminal. That typically does not end well. It is probably smart to have a “family rule” that if you are ever captured as a group, whoever can escape should do so and get help for everyone else.
Disarming someone who has drawn a gun is extremely difficult unless the person holding the gun is hesitant about pulling the trigger. Our own experiment pitted a 275 pound 7th degree black belt who holds the world record in instep board breaking against a 11 year old girl with no firearms training and a drawn “gun”. The black belt was “shot” every time he tried to take the gun away. Guns get taken away from people who draw them and are not willing to use them, like someone who pulls a gun on their abusive spouse but “loves” them too much to hurt them. Guns almost never get taken away from people – good or bad – who are willing and able to pull the trigger.
This is a preview that displays only a limited number of pages. A large portion of the chapter is omitted.
Pepper spray
Pepper spray is of little value during any attack. Not as potent as the gun, it may be useful as a deterrent when you know an attack is coming and there is space and time between you and your attacker, like when your crazy ex is approaching. But if your crazy ex is highly motivated, even a full blast of pepper spray may not incapacitate them sufficiently to keep them from killing you.
And in a sudden attack, an experiment shows pepper spray has a 100% rate of failure. The news show 20/20 had women who attended a tear gas school walk a parking lot knowing an attack was coming from a deputy who was playing the “bad guy”.
The tear gas failed to stop a single attack. Even with the tear gas canister in their hands and the advantage of knowing something would happen, the women only hit the deputies 20% of the time, and almost never hit the deputies in the face. In those rare cases, the deputies felt some ill effects after a minute, long after the attack had been completed. Prior to the experiment, the women were ignorant and arrogant – a dangerous combination that often precedes death or serious injury. “We’re going to wipe you guys up,” one of the women told a deputy. After the experiment, the women’s primary emotion was dismay that the tear gas school misled them. The school’s promotional videos showed instant incapacitation.
That doesn’t happen in real life. In 1989, I was at a football game at the University of Washington where a large number of students stormed the field to tear down the goalpost. Police used pepper spray in an attempt to fend off the crowd to no avail: the goalpost came down and wound up in Lake Washington. The police sprayed about 100 students that day. I don’t recall seeing anyone who got sprayed appear so incapacitated that they were unable to function or strike back had they so desired. Yes, it clearly hurt them, and one of the 100 students who were sprayed went to the hospital, but I was not particularly impressed with Mace as a defensive weapon.
In one recent video, a robber gets a sustained blast of bear repellant in the face and is able to run out of the pharmacy and even make it home. He later wound up in the hospital, of course, and was arrested, but the claim that these products produce instant incapacitation appears inaccurate. If you must buy pepper spray, buy the type that comes in a baton, and if the pepper spray fails to give you a chance to escape, use the baton to beat your assailant like we illustrate in the weapons techniques below.
Bedtime weapons
It is smart to have next to your bed something that doesn’t look like a weapon but can be used as one. Keep it concealed but available should you wake up with someone on top of you or in your bedroom. A heavy flashlight that can be used as a club is a good option, but again, make sure it is concealed so it isn’t used against you in your sleep.
One of the many tragic murders I counseled on working in maximum security involved two teenagers who broke into a house while the occupants (an older couple) were sleeping. The teenagers discovered a handgun on the nightstand and took it out of the bedroom. They went into the living room and had a conversation about whether or not they should shoot the sleeping elderly couple. They decided that would be a good idea, returned to the bedroom, and murdered the sleeping elderly couple at point blank range.
Would the couple have died but for the handgun on the table? We’ll never know. These were cold-blooded killers, obviously. Absent the handgun, they might have stabbed the elderly couple to death with knives from the kitchen or smothered them with their own pillows. That said, maybe the easy access to the weapon precipitated the death of this innocent couple. Maybe the couple would have woken up as the teenagers opened kitchen drawers looking for knives.
I tell the story not to blame this couple for their death, because the teenagers were solely responsible, but to graphically illustrate a point: don’t leave weapons where your attacker can use them against you, particularly when you are asleep or not paying attention. For example, if you play field hockey in college, don’t lean the stick up near your dorm room door. Conceal it under your bed where you can reach it in the event of an attack and an intruder cannot easily find it while you are sleeping.
Another good option is to keep a metal butter knife with a heavy handle under your pillow. You can pound hard areas (like the skull and ribs) with the handle and stab soft areas (like the eyes or throat) with the blade.
Walking weapons
When you are walking across campus or in town, particularly when you are alone, pay attention to where you are going. Do not walk down the street staring at your phone! Every time I see someone doing that, I want to slap it out of their hand, and I could, quite easily, because they are not paying any attention to their surroundings.
Never let someone walk right behind you where you can’t see them. You are defenseless against being hit on the back of the head or having a knife jabbed into your back. Walk confidently and quickly. Criminals look for uncertainty of movement or distraction (e.g., staring at your phone) when selecting potential victims. If you get stuck in a sketchy area, buy a glass bottle of something (like root beer) and carry it upside down by the neck like you’re ready to club someone with it.
You should always have a weapon available to you. If I were to choose a weapon most suitable for college or work, I would choose a box cutter with a solid metal frame or attach a kubotan, like the Survivor Stick, to my keychain.
Keep one in your purse and hide one by your bed where you can reach it. Never tell anyone where it is. Do not leave it out in the open on your nightstand. If you are walking across campus and feel threatened, carry it in your hand. Even without the razor-sharp blade extended, the metal frame alone can produce serious injury to the ribs or skull. It is also very useful for crafts and opening care packages from home, which is the only reason I hope you will ever need to use it!
This is a preview that displays only a limited number of pages. The remainder of the chapter is omitted.