I know there is a general assumption that people don’t change who they are or their actions. For the vast majority of folks, that is probably true. However, I don’t think it is a fact for everyone, and I don’t believe that it is impossible for someone to alter their life. History gives us many examples. My personal favorite may be Chester Arthur.
Chet Arthur was the 21st President and he is overlooked by historians and popular culture, and that is a shame. His story is very interesting.
He spent the better part of his life a lazy dilettante who only got a government job through the incredibly corrupt patronage system then ruling how civil jobs were granted. He was a crony of the most powerful Republican senator Roscoe Conklin and got a post as Customs Inspector. Eventually he was fired by President Rutherford Hayes who was one of the first Presidents to try to dismantle the “spoils” system.
Arthur made little contribution anywhere and was fairly lazy who liked to enjoy the fancy life. Through political wheeling and dealing by others, he ended up by the Vice President under James Garfield. Garfield was a brilliant man and incredibly moral and ethical and took on the spoils system very aggressively. After only four months in office, he was assassinated and Arthur succeeded him.
Not one person anywhere thought any good would come of this. As a follower of the patronage method of politics, everyone assumed he would reverse all of Hayes and Garfield’s actions and be a minion of the party. Instead, he made a 180 degree turn.
While he was not a friend of Garfield’s before becoming part of the administration, Arthur became an admirer and deeply respected Garfield, and rather than go back to his own ways, he decided to emulate Garfield instead.
Not only did he continue the fight, he actually made the first significant hit that began the actual replacement of the spoils system. He also was an early fighter for civil rights. HE vetoed the original Chinese Act (that stopped Asians form immigrating to the US and took away all of their fights), and he also stopped a racist attempted court martial of a black West Point Cadet. And when the Supreme Court ruled the Civil Rights act of 1875, he badgered Congress to send him legislation to replace it, but they failed.
When he left office, a famous journalist wrote “No man entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Arthur, and no one ever retired more respected by political friend and foe alike”. That is a pretty damn good political epitaph.
So when you don’t think you can change your behavior or actions and are doomed to keep repeating bad things, think of President Arthur and be like Chet.
June 22 – 5:30pm-7:30 AZ timeGrappling For Self-Defense 2 – Escaping From Underneath
We can all agree that the nightmare grappling scenario in the street involves a bigger, stronger, more physically dominant attacker on top of us and no help in sight. Being able to get out from the bottom position is crucial for any grappling situation, whether it be self-defense or competitive sport. In this webinar, not only we will look at the essentials of understanding how to escape and improve our position, but we will give the viewer the keys to create their own escapes in the heat of the moment that work best for them.
We will examine how you may find yourself on the bottom on the ground when you have no intention of being there, how to first be safe, then look to get out, and to understand the hierarchy of goals. We will also build the appropriate skill to fight on the ground or to get back to our feet based on the contextual best practice.The first 90 minutes will be lecture and demonstration, and then we will have 30 minutes to go over any questions and clarify any point brought up. The webinar will be recorded and the recording will be available free afterwards to all paid attendees.
I am pretty agnostic on how someone carries the tools that they rely on for self-defense. Mostly that stems from the fact that I’m not a narcissist, nor am I a child that thinks that my personal context and situation are the only ones that matter and that everyone’s lives are exactly like mine. I also have no need to have my own personal decisions validated by anyone else’ choices.
I may find a particular handgun carry method to not fit into my life at all but that does not mean that it is a poor method in and of itself. Someone else might find it to be the best fit for their lives. I try to ignore those kind of discussions on the internet where people are told in a very black and white manner on how they should conduct their personal matters and if they don’t walk in lockstep with the original commentator then they are stupid. Or poor. Or lazy et al.Who am I to assume that while I have little use for something like a shoulder holster that someone else may find great use for it and can put it to great effect. And most importantly in the great scheme of things, what they do or do not do in no way affect my life so I don’t need to put any time or effort into thinking about it.
The only issue I have in these discussions is when someone does not think through everything and has left either a positive or negative uncovered. The most glaring example for me that comes quickly to mind is the use of ankle carry for small handguns.
Now before we go much further I would like to make it clear that I myself have a definite use for ankle carry. There are times when my own personal environment and context dictate that the most functional means to carry the handgun is on my ankle. What I’m about to discuss in no way diminishes ankle carry as a potentially beneficial tactic.
What I’m going to talk about is a very specific part of ankle carry that many people in the Firearms self-defense community will cite as a strong reason for ankle care, when in fact it is the exact opposite.
There are many times when you will hear someone give one of the justifications to carry on the ankle is that should they find themselves on the ground and in a grappling situation, they can easily reach the gun on their ankle and use that to fix the problem. From the comfort of a keyboard and with no understanding of what grappling actually entails, this sounds like a really good tactic. And even better (and possibly more importantly for some folks), it is a way to compensate for a lack of grappling skill which means that we don’t have to spend any time rolling around on the ground with other sweaty people and potentially looking less than John Wick-like.
I know this may be very appealing, however it is completely lacking any foundation in reality whatsoever. All it takes is a month or two of training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu against a variety of training partners and you will quickly see for yourself. Any of the positions you will find yourself in whenever you don’t know anything about grappling and you were up against either someone with grappling skill or superior physical attributes ( or even worse a horrific combination of both) will graphically demonstrate this fallacy. If you’ve never put yourself in this kind of situation against someone legitimately trying to control you it is very easy to drift into Fantasyland. When you don’t know how someone is going to control you from the top you can visualize all sorts of ways to deploy firearm and have no basis in reality to support your construct.
Please take a look at the accompanying pictures. What I would especially like to point out is that every position shown is straight out of BJJ 101. The top guy is doing nothing different or special for these pictures that he would not be doing normally at any time in any BJJ academy anywhere in the world. When I asked my demo partner to participate, I did not give him any specifics. I just told him to control me that same way he would in order to set up a finishing move such as a choke, an arm break, a shoulder dislocation, or any other kind of end state where I am either unconscious or suffering from catastrophic injury and incapacitating pain . I take the time to explain this because a ton of people will look at these illustrations and they will immediately try to rationalize them away.
One of the ways non-grapplers attempt to minimize the usefulness of grappling in a weapons based environment is that they will say something along the lines of “BJJ guys don’t train against weapons so they will not see it coming and be totally unaware of the gun”. First of all, that is a mighty big assumption that all BJJ players do everything the same and that none of them will ever think about applying this while carrying a gun. Second of all, as you can easily see from the photos, it is irrelevant. Look at how the top guy is controlling the bottom person. In the mount depiction for instance, the top guy has the bottom guy’s back pinned solidly to the mat, and is stretching forward. Both of those prevent the bottom guy from being able to stretch his arms far enough to reach far, and with the top guy posting on his leg to strengthen the pin and choke, he blocks the bottom guy’s legs from being able to come close to the hands. Without the bottom guy having extraordinary flexibility, he is stopped from accessing the ankle gun. And, to add to the problem, desperately reaching for said gun, he does nothing to prevent the entire weight and strength of the top guy being applied against his neck. The choke will happen in 2-5 seconds at the maximum. For those who have never experienced that particular move – called an Eziquiel choke – it is excruciatingly painful in the couple of seconds of consciousness you have. I guarantee you that your ability to withstand the pain and the choke is close to non-existent.
For the knee on belly shot, it is similar in pressure and control to the mount. In order to direct the bottom guy and to keep him in place, the top guy has to manage the arms while putting massive pressure into the bottom guy’s diaphragm. Top guy also has an easy view at everything that is going on and the freedom to move and react in any way. Even if the bottom guy can somehow manage to reach for the weapon, the top guy will see it and realize, even if he is not thinking about the gun or pays attention to that possibility, what is happening and can deal with it. And I leave it to you to decide that if the gun does come out, which of these two people is in a better place to use it?
Finally, for the side control illustration, again take note of the top guy’s control. Bottom guy’s right arm is completely out of the game and is killed. His left arm is being underhooked which means he has little freedom to move or reach, and even if he does, the top guy is looking right towards where that gun will appear and is in a much superior place to dictate the end result. And again, the top guy even in a straight BJJ situation will look in that direction because he has to determine if he can go to a better position (i.e. mount or knee on belly) as well as seeing where he can adjust if he decides to attack the arm or neck. All standard stuff that puts him in the perfect place to deal with a weapon being deployed. None of this is being done because he knows a weapon is in play, but rather because this is how you deal with someone in BJJ.
So let’s dispense with the demonstrably incorrect argument that the grappler will be easy prey for a trained person carrying on the ankle. It won’t happen, and only serves to delude someone and leaves them defenseless should they find themselves in that situation. Gear will not fix the problem. Software (skill set) will.
And as I said, this is not a categorical indictment of ankle carry. I have already stated I use it for myself at times. It has a definite place of purpose for many people. However, that does not mean it solves all problems. It may make some things worse. But there is nothing wrong with that as long as we understand the pros and cons of a particular method or concept and can plan accordingly. Fantasy does not help any of us in the world of self-defense.
You do not have to spend much time perusing the internet for advice in the training community to realize that there are a lot of short and pithy phrases that are continually trotted out and substituted for actual advice.
We’ve all heard them. “Don’t go to the ground in a street fight”, “don’t jerk the trigger”, “just walk away”, “if they try to do X just shoot them, and on and on. All these bits of pieces of advice sound great and are exceptionally easy to write or say. And at first thought they often SEEM to make a lot of sense. The problem is that they are completely useless and don’t actually mean anything because they don’t tell us how to accomplish the goal!
It is only in the self-defense training community that we expect such simplistic sentences to matter. In any other aspect or area of our lives we know we need more information and description to go along with the pithy phrase.
For example nobody ever says “ just fly a plane”,or “just fix that broken bone yourself”. Would we listen to anybody who told us to just eat healthier and then walked away? What constitutes “healthy eating”? Ask any smoker how helpful it is when someone says you should “just quit.” Sure, they can just make the decision and do it as easy as not watching that particular Netflix show. All of those little tidbits should be treated with the level of respect they deserve. In other words, they should be ignored and belittled.
We know any tasks require information, guidance, instruction, and critical thought. Anything important that requires physical action cannot just be done with the snap of the fingers. And yet in the self-defense world the most crucial ideas are espoused too often with a level of useless simplicity.
For example, let’s look at the critical advice about “don’t jerk the trigger“. If you’re teaching somebody new to shooting why in the world would they know how NOT to do something? It is all new to them, and if they don’t know how it should correctly feel, then how can they tell when they are doing it incorrectly? Telling them not to jerk the trigger does not tell them how to do it in the correct manner just as if you taught someone who had never driven before to not smash the brake pedal when slowing for a stop. A new person has never even touched a pedal sitting behind a wheel, so how are they supposed to know how it feels, good or bad? It has to be physical guidance of some kind. If they’ve not ingrained the ability to smoothly press the trigger backwards in a straight line then they have no idea of what they’re supposed to do and they’re not yet built the ability to know the difference between jerking the trigger and pressing the trigger. It is the same thing to the new person, and they need to understand what the right way looks and feels like to where they can ingrain it themselves.
My personal favorite bit of advice that really irritates me is “don’t go to the ground in a street fight”. Sounds great, and is what I would prefer! Except how do I not let that happen? What are the mechanisms that are responsible for a fight going to the ground? If you cannot explain how that occurs, then there is no way to physically achieve the desired goal. Unless you think people just fall down voluntarily under stress, or that someone regardless of all that is going on will just mindlessly drop down to the ground and “Shout get in my guard!” which is a favored straw man that the anti-grappler combatives guys love to cite, even though they cannot find where it actually and verifiably happened.
If you cannot explain the importance of Base, Posture, hip position, and the proper use of head and arms, then you have absolutely no business telling somebody don’t go to the ground. When you do so without that knowledge you have given the exact equivalent of telling somebody how to land a jet airplane by saying “just land it”. From the perspective of actually accomplishing the preferred endstate, both phrases are equally helpful.
In summary, don’t be intellectually lazy. If you wish to contribute to the dialogue, be specific and helpful with actionable guidance. Otherwise, be silent and learn.
Tulsa Seminar July 16-18, 2021 I am super pumped to announce that I will be going back to teach my coursework in Tulsa on July 16-18. This is pretty cool for me because Tulsa is where I started my traveling road show, so it (and the people there) hold a special place in my heart. I cannot wait to touch base there again. And even better, I get to use the great facilities at Clinch Martial Arts. So if you are in the area, come join the party. It will be an awesome time, and I guarantee there will be some special guests that will make the event that much more spectacular. Only $275 for 21 hours of training. Contact Aaron Davis at :
aarond1@cox.net
to sign up. We are going to cover my fundamental coursework – 3 hours on Friday night and 9 hours on Saturday on how to survive on the ground when you had no intention of being there, and 9 hours on Sunday of keeping from getting knocked out when you are taken by surprise, and how to dominate the standing clinch.
Due to overwhelming demand, I, along with Glen Stilson of Independence Training will be teaching a 3 hour workshop on carry, deployment, and use of a defensive knife. We will look at optimal carry methods, as well as either using MUC skills to ensure you have time and distance to draw the knife, or you have the grappling skill to do so in close (both of those are sadly overlooked by most knife instructors and users and are the most important part in actuality), and using the knife for the most reliable and replicable results while still following the legalities of self defense. We will have samples of different knives and carry methods for students to handle, as well as training blades to loan for class. If you have your own training knives, feel free to bring them. While only 3 hours long, we will be hitting some high efficacy skills, and we will give you tips on sustainment for your own continued education and performance. Cost is only $95.
It seems like that whenever I get a request to do an interview on a podcast, I get multiple ones in a short amount of time, and then go a month or two with zero. It is odd.
In that vein, I recently did a string of different shows and they all were fun. The hosts had good questions and we got into really good conversations. Here are links to them:
What would be exceptionally helpful to the world at large would be that before someone posted something mean, or toxic, or angry, or insulting, or self-importantly lecturing online, they would stop and realize that their micro does not always match the macro.
What I mean is that just because something situation or context fits you; it does not mean it applies to everyone.
Case in point is what occurred a few years ago on a great discussion forum, a gentleman made the statement that if you don’t carry at least a Glock 19 for your EDC, you are stupid or lazy. Now this person was a cop, who was physically on the large side of average. In his world, his statement made perfect sense. He had zero issues if he was caught carrying off-duty, even in an NPE for the most part, because his status as LE would generally cover him. Moreover, he had no problem running a Glock 19 since it “fit” him. What I gently tried to point out to him was that a) not everyone could use LE status to deal with the fallout of getting caught carrying and b) that not everyone was built like him. I told him about a specific person who could run a G19, but it was on the ragged edge of practicality due to the fact that while she was average size, she had short fingers. So doing any manipulation with the Glock was very tough, and doing it under stress put her under a high risk of failure. For her, a better answer, both for concealment and for successful shooting was a gen1 Walther PPS with the mag release mounted along the trigger guard. Her need for that did not change his ability to utilize a different gun and a different carry method, but you would have thought I said that communism was good in his reaction. He insulted this person, as well as me, and refused to consider that his situation was even slightly different.
Another example was a last year I made a post where I stated that for part of my life, ankle carry of a snub was super smart and appropriate. Again, you would have thought I said that guns should be banned based on the level of butthurt. Not once did I say my need was anything more than my personal context and I never advocated ankle carry for anyone else, but people lost their fricking mind. I had people going to the range to film video to “prove” that their method of carry was better than mine even though I never said it wasn’t! I also had people writing to me to tell me that my situation was not what I thought it was even though they knew nothing about my environment. I even had someone tell me that I shouldn’t worry about ankle carry at the office since I work from home. The problem with that statement is that I DON’T WORK FROM HOME! Never have. I work in a regular office outside my home that has visitors and vendors coming by. But someone assumed that they knew my exact life.
Currently, it is popular to either signal that you are for or against getting Covid vaccinations, with sometimes people being virulently angry in their preferred narrative. It is absolutely cool for you to believe a certain thing, but that does not meant everyone should share your thought process. Again, another case in point is that last year when my mother was fighting for her life for four months with surgery after surgery, and stays in multiple hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, I chose to pause doing jiu-jitsu. I decided to err on the side of caution and not possible introduce another disease vector in her already fragile state. If the vaccine was available last year at this time, I damn well would have gotten one, not because I am worried about me, but because I would have wanted to do everything to protect her, even against something that may not have hurt her.
Do I think that people should get vaccines now? It is irrelevant what I think. It is my personal opinion. If you want to get one, cool! If you think they are dangerous “gene therapy” and refuse, cool! But either way, your decisions/actions/belief may not fit anyone else’s. so don’t think yourself superior. Walk a mile in their moccasins, or at the very least try to understand how to walk in their moccasins before condemning anyone else.
I’m excited to announce my first webinar, March 21, covering halfguard in self-defense.
I am confident that it will accomplish a multiple number of things in one compact and easy to watch package :
1) for those who don’t know anything about grappling, it will be an easy to grasp set of techniques and concepts to give the new person a bit of a bigger picture on how taking the fight to the bad guy on the ground can look
2) for those who have some BJJ, it will be a focused look at an excellent game plan for attacking and being aggressive from guard that is less attribute dependent than some other guards
3) for those who are not familiar with using a weapon in an entangled fight, this is about as good a place to start to learn as anything out there
4) for those who have some idea of fighting in a weapon based environment, it gives a good solid look at one of the most useful set of moves that there is
All of that is a tall order for a single two hour webinar, but I know I am not promising something that I cannot deliver.
