Monday Book Day – This biography of Mitsuyo Maeda is a terrific addition to us BJJ nerds who want to understand where the art we love comes from. For a long time, we knew little about Maeda outside of he was a great Judo practitioner who settled in Brazil and taught there in the early 1920’s. That was about it. But this book gives a complete story about this amazing martial artist, as well as some rare photos. Cecil says it is a must have if you love BJJ.
This video is amazing. It shows clearly and for anyone to see how easy and how quickly a dedicated aggressor can close on someone to engage in violence.
There is a big misunderstanding in the Defensive Gun community that Bad Guys will remain motionless at a set distance to commit their violence. The need to ensure safety on live fire ranges puts severe limitations on how we can train for the real world, and it is easy to believe that there is a direct 1:1 correlation on shooting on the range and how the people act when they are free to do what they want in life. This does not mean that every bad guy will aggressively encroach into grappling range, but it does mean it does happen often, and standard range practice does not prepare us for that contingency.
Furthermore, all too regularly, online gun commentators fail to take into account how the bad guy is armed. What he has to inflict his will on you will absolutely dictate his actions to include whether he gets close or not. Next week I will have an article going into more depth on this matter, and I will cite empirical data to back this up.
But for the moment, this video serves its purpose well.
I know someone will say “but this is not a private citizen. It is a security guard!” Yes, a security guard without the force of law behind him, who is interacting with someone who doesn’t want to be told what to do. Thiscould just as easily be a road rage type incident. What do you think would happen if you as a private citizen came across this guy and he was blocking your car in a parking space and you asked him to move? Do you really think he would act any different?
The key thing to remember is the bad guy goes from opening the car door, and crossing roughly 5-6 yards in 2 ½ seconds. How many people will recognize what is happening and can get their gun out and on target before the bad guy is close enough to foul your gun? Note in the video, he closed that distance all the way and went hands on to the good guy’s body. He does not have to get that far if all he needs to do is grab the gun you produce, which means there is even less time to react. Even with a sub second draw, the chance that the gun can get it’s work done before the bad guy is on you is slim to none.
Not all incidents will have a bad guy close on you. But it does happen frequently, and it happens faster than you think. And if you have no answer other than getting a gun out, you may find your choice is extremely sub-optimal.
From the recent “No Kings” match in Salt Lake City, we have this incident.
One protester, with an AR (which is very interesting don’t you think for a “peaceful” protest?), apparently brings the gun out and starts to aim it from the shoulder, and then two “security” people used by the protest organizers open fire on him and shoot another protestor to death. . The pertinent point is that then another protester, unarmed, stops the AR guy and disarms him of his AR.
How do you disarm someone? From 5 yards away? Nope. You must make an attachment at contact distance to do so. In other words, an entangled fight with a private citizen and a weapon involved.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/16/us/salt-lake-city-no-kings-protest-shooting
Book Monday 6/23/25
It has been my experience that the majority of people training today under a Self-Preservation modality tend to have come into it sometime in the last 15 years or less. As such, they don’t really know what it was like to do this in the 70’s – to early 00’s. Today, we are blessed that there is so much information that can easily be accessed in seconds with the amazing piece of machinery most of us have in our pocket. Back in the day however, those of us who have been at this for many decades were not so fortunate.
Prior to 2010-ish, we had to work hard to get information to help our journey. One way that was hugely helpful were books. There were not many of them, and many of those were complete crap, but there were good ones.
For me and my BJJ-centric journey, Saulo Ribeiro’s Jiu-Jitsu University was probably the biggest help in those days of low information. Saulo really organized his writing and made the chaos and ambiguity of jiu-jitsu more manageable. To this day I still use some terms and specific lessons from the book. I strongly encourage anyone doing jiu-jitsu or just thinking about it to try to check the book out.
This video is of a recent robbery in NYC involving private citizens, firearms, and grappling.
I won’t go into extreme detail because I have made the overarching point over and over again, so I will focus on a few specific details for this incident.
The Ace Factor
Book Monday
This is a really fascinating look into why some people become top fighter pilots and why others don’t. While the focus is entirely on being a fighter pilot, the lessons in here are directly applicable to everyday Earth people being able to deal with stressful and even violent situations in their lives.
Sometimes, in fields of human endeavor, there are people ahead of the curve. Rather than follow the pack, and just repeat mindless tropes, they seek to add more than copying.
In the Defensive Gun Training world, Louis Awerbuck was such a person. Not only an experience Been There, Done That man, he was an excellent instructor. He was the lead Rangemaster when I went to Gunsite in 1987 and took 250. Col Cooper did all the classroom lectures and was often on the range, but the bulk of the day to day work was conducted by Awerbuck (ably assisted by another terrific instructor, Jerry McCown).
Awerbuck was also a deep thinker and came up with many innovations. Literally, decades ahead of everyone today who do the same thing, he was using 3D targets, and unpredictable moving targets to get as close to reality in training as possible.
He also understood what fighting looked like. He was an early advocate of students understanding that the entangled fight with weapons happened, and it happened with private citizens, and that it happened enough to mena you needed to train for it, Check out the following form one of his books, written in 2003.
Book Monday – Ralph Mroz’ Defensive Shooting For Real Life Encounters is a sadly overlooked book today in the Defensive Gun community. First published in 2000, he addressed many things that were not being covered elsewhere. What I most love about his writing was that there is a genuine tone that comes through not of “this is how it is” but rather “ can we do better?” Even today, that is missing from the majority of the Gun training world. And it is an indictment of many current “experts” that few of them know anything about this book, or Mr Mroz, let alone what is in the book.
