Acting Stupidly?

I am going to get away from the politics for awhile but I want you to consider one thing. Obama is not a stupid man, I do not believe he acted stupidly when he ignited this mosque firestorm. Nor did he do it without a good reason or by accident. Remember my blog on Sheng tung? "Sheng Tung, Chi Hsi:" Uproar in the East, Strike in the West. Keep your eyes to the west.
Sun Tzu Now on to something about knives.......


Recently a young man said he wanted to do some more knife training with me. The last time we worked out he held his own pretty good. He was in the Army Rangers but I do not know how much actual knife skills they teach. His techniques were simple and powerful; rush your opponent and smother them with stabs. In a prison shanking against an unarmed opponent this is the preferred method. This technique will always work in the dojo or training hall too. How many times have you heard me say that? Would it work in actual combat? Maybe. In the dojo there are two things at work: One, you are not really going to get stabbed by the defender, unless you count the jabs of a rubber or wooden knife, to physically stop your assault. Two, there is no instinctive fear of being stabbed to mentally prevent you from driving right in. Combined, these two create an unhealthy sense of invincibility.

Talk about acting stupidly, life is not so simple with live steel. I did not tell you about stabbing myself with my iaito (Japanese training sword) did I. A bit of a cock-up as the Brits would say. I was teaching my sword student a new draw, and as I pushed my katana to the rear for an overhead cut, the tip caught in the opening of my left sleeve. This drove the tip downward into the top of my forearm, where it dug in and then bounced off the bone, and skipped across my arm lightly grazing me. When my young, impressionable student saw blood trickling down my forearm he got ashen faced. So with mild disgust at my own ineptitude I stopped and stuck a bandaid over it. Had I been working that night with a live blade I would have needed a dozen or more stitches. As I have said many times before blades show no discretion they will cut friend and foe alike. But how quickly will a blade stop a person who is under attack and adrenaline ridden?

By many accounts it has been proven that a person shot or stabbed in the heart can continue to function for as much as ten seconds. (If you are the attacker do you know how many times you can be stabbed by your victim in ten seconds? Try it.) Even with no blood flowing, it takes roughly that long for the brain to run out of oxygen, unconsciousness to take over, and the body to collapse. Now in our practice session while this young Ranger was busy stabbing me, I can assure you that I was doing likewise. After all, every good deed deserves another! Therefore in the real world probably both of us would have succumbed to our multiple wounds. I don’t consider this a good policy. So, two points to learn from this: One, in a knife fight ‘tis better to give than to receive. Two, working with blunts or training weapons (while necessary) is a far cry from the reality of bladed combat. When people tell you techniques are not important because you have a knife, don’t you listen to them. When they say they can teach you a killer one-move “stopping-technique”, don’t you listen to them. Do your homework and learn everything that you possibly can, and as always, be discriminating about what techniques you save and what you throw away.

The next blog will be a review of the excellent training knives from TAK knives check them out at http://www.takknife.com/

Who is Fanning the Flames?

RE: the Mosque: It appears that once again the president has interjected his personal opinion as empirical fiat, which is also once again counter to the majority of the will of the American people. For a man who believes in social justice and the democratic will of the people, who campaigned on reaching across the aisle His divisiveness as a president is unprecedented. Now to fan the flames Nancy Pelosi says that those opposing the mosque (all 64% of Americans?) should be investigated. If you oppose placing this mosque at ground zero you are the problem not the radical Imam, or the founder of Hammas who insists there is no other location in all of NYC to build this $100 million dollar insult.

Pray for Peace

I want to thank all of my readers but in particular one who said I interject some sanity into his life. I am a simple man, sometimes exceedingly simple. But there are some things that seem desperately obvious even to a simple man like me. I am not an intolerant man, nor generally a racist. But we are all being driven by forces in the media and in the creeping globalization of governments to start taking stands, making choices that are aimed at dividing us into religious, racial, and ethnic categories. We are purposely being set one against another. For what purpose?

This morning I awoke early unable to sleep. Things rumbling through my head. Maybe it’s the book I am reading (War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning) and the unsettling tales of the author’s experiences as a war correspondent. Maybe it was the In-My-Face headlines on the internet that Obama supports the Mosque at ground Zero. Why doesn’t he champion an inter-faith house of worship, or better yet why doesn’t he keep his damned nose out of it. This is a very personal nightmare that New Yorkers still deal with. Why is it that the Liberal hue and cry of separation of church and state does not apply to the separation of mosque and state? If the Imam is a man of God and desires to make Americans see how compassionate Islam is, then why doesn’t he work to help fund an inter-faith house of worship? What could be more compelling than Muslims and Jews, Baptists, Catholics, Buddhists, and Mormons all worshipping side by side for peace? What could be a bigger insult to New Yorkers than a mosque at Ground Zero? Where is obama’s support for the tower to replace those destroyed by muslim radicals? The State dept has set aside money to send the Imam on a worldwide publicity tour, for what purpose? But there is no money to rebuild on the site of the destruction wrought by them? I struggle to focus on who are the good guys and the bad guys and to find purpose behind all of this.

Apples and Snakes

Joy of joys I actually had two students for knife class last night! I have a policy of not teaching anyone who just comes in off the street so sometimes I go for months with out any students. It is one thing to teach how to punch and kick, it is another thing altogether to teach someone how to use a knife. Sure I can call it knife defense to make it seem less objectionable but knife-fighting is what it is ultimately all about. If you want to learn empty-hand knife defense I’ll teach you all I can but let’s not fool ourselves, the odds are badly stacked in your attacker’s favor.

Empty-handed you are a victim, given a knife you suddenly have a chance of surviving. But surviving and winning are not necessarily the same thing in this age of litigation. One of the first things I always give new students is a copy of the NYS laws on the use of force. The other thing is an excellent article on potentially lethal target. My reasoning in providing this information is not to make the student more lethal, but to educate them on areas it is best to avoid when you do not want to kill someone. Carrying a knife for self defense carries a huge responsibility that should never be taken lightly.

Even a cursory look at the cardio-vascular system of a human being reveals a target rich environment for the knife user. This is both good and bad but my options with a pistol are even worse. I am licensed to legally carry a concealed handgun in several states but I wish it were a concealed “weapons” permit. A knife gives the user many more options than does a hand-gun. A knife can cut lightly or deeply. A 45ACP or a 357 magnum cannot be shot lightly. The idea of grazing or wounding an attacker is silly when all training focuses on shots to the center of mass or to the head. What, are we going to try to inflict “only a slight head wound” with 450 ft-lbs of muzzle energy? But a skilled knifer can perform a light cut across the forehead of an attacker to discourage further aggression. Hands reaching out to injure us can be easily cut to disarm our attacker without terminal consequences. Try either of those moves with your revolver. Despite the perfectly good reasoning behind carrying a knife versus a handgun for defense the laws are what they are. Foolishness prevails and even books on the subject of knife fighting are often prefaced with “For Academic Purposes Only,” while books and classes on tactical hand-gunning are perfectly acceptable. I think that knives, like apples and snakes in the garden, have gotten a bad rap. Stop by the dojo some night and we can academically study the art of edged weapons.