New Product Line: Spartan Blades

We have exciting news! We just signed a dealership agreement with Spartan Blades of NC. Initially we will have three blades on our website and hope to increase our offering exponentially as people become aware of these excellent knives. The knives are All-American made of US materials! We will start out with a discounted price to get the word and knives out there. In the next few weeks I will do a detailed evaluation of the knives and post it here. I am very impressed with the owners, their commitment to quality and customer service. The first shipment arrived 3 days early. That’s a good way to start a relationship. Take a look and if you see something you like email me and if we don't have it we will get it in stock for you. More details to follow.
mailto:ghdave2@hotmail.comil.com

http://www.whiteshadowsecurity.com/

The Paralysis of Fear

News Flash:

A man rams his van into his estranged wife’s car, drags her through the broken windshield and threatens to kill her. Luckily quick response from untrained campus officials prevented a possible homicide. Think this happens only in the big city? This happened only miles from my rural NY home.
When this incident occured I had already been in communications with the school’s staff and had presented a plan to teach a self-defense for the general public. Considering how quickly things could have gone bad I offered to put on a free class for the staff. How do you think this was received? You guessed, they didn’t even respond to my offer. The class for the public was also scuttled because it involved the use of rubber training knives. Liability concerns you know.
A few years ago I worked at a large research facility that runs shifts 24-7. The facility is quite remote and not patrolled. Some of the women approached me about putting on a self-defense class because they were nervous walking through the large empty parking lots late at night and early in the morning. I took this idea to my supervisor and it moved slowly up the ladder. It was immediately nixed by a rather officious female executive. She was afraid too. She was afraid that "a self-defense class would send the wrong message." She said that employees might get the idea there was something to be afraid of. Somehow she overlooked the fact that her employees were already afraid.
At one time we taught free classes to the local high school girls gym classes, janitors, bus drivers, and teachers. This went over quite well but a change in principals put an end to the program. Ironically only a few months after we gave our last class an estranged husband took his wife (a bus driver) hostage at knife point. Some of the bus drivers who were present during the hostage taking said, "We wished we could remember what you said to do."
Many people live daily with fear, moving furtively from home to work to stores. Always with the smell of fear on them. They refuse to make eye contact. When greeted with a smile and a hello they shrink back, turn away, and maintain a surly silence. Young people are wary as hens with a fox around, maybe rightfully so. If they aren’t taught fear by their parents they learn it from TV where the media feeds them with tales of rape, torture, and murder. And this is the prime time shows, not the news channels. Just try to get some of these kids to train in self-defense. If they aren’t regaled with colored belts on a regular basis they quit. Martial Arts teachers are afraid to teach serious defense moves because it might be too brutal and the parents will pull their kids out of class. A student might get hurt, and the lawyers will swoop in like carrion crows.
How do we break this pervasive paralysis of fear? I do not know because every attempt I have made to teach awareness, avoidance, escape, or self-defense has been met with fear. Administrators are afraid it will look bad, police chiefs are afraid their officer might be considered too aggressive if it is found out that they are training how to use weapons. (God forbid we should provide our police with any weapons training other than the use of firearms.) People wake up, criminals use weapons. They like to hurt people and they have nothing holding them back except the fear of being hurt themselves. Thanks to our confused court system many people are afraid to defend themselves. "What if I am attacked and I accidentally hurt or kill my attacker, won’t I go to prison?" "I’d rather be killed than spend my life behind bars." These are real plaints voiced by martial artists for God’s sake. We are afraid of Muslims, Terrorists, Talibani, Jihadists, Muggers, Murders, Car Jackers, the police, the IRS, wiretaps, zealous homeland security curmudgeons, the TSA, and on the list goes. What is worse, is we are afraid to look people straight in the eye or stand up for ourselves. How long will be remain afraid, victims in waiting, ripe for the picking?
If anyone out there in this wilderness we call Western Civilization wants to learn how to use a knife in the defense of their life or the lives of their loved ones, please contact me. We’ll have some fun and learn a thing or two together.

Birds of Prey:

Birds of Prey:

Most people regard birds of prey with a sense of awe and majesty. The sight of several Bald Eagles circling above our house, gracefully wheeling their way through the sky, looking for food, affected me that way.
In September of 2008 I had the great pleasure of meeting and spending time with the legendary knife maker, Shiva Ki. After escorting me past his guard dogs he offered me a chair in his living room. The first thing to catch my eye was looking back at me. It was a small hawk sitting on a perch. I was thrilled, but the hawk seemed less pleased with my company. Shiva mollified it with a piece of raw chicken while we conversed.
Shiva and I talked about many things ranging from our time in Vietnam to race cars, his dune buggy project, and of course knifemaking. Shiva had over fifty blades laying around in one stage of completion or another. He handed me knife after knife for my inspection. Looking sideways at me he said, "You are one of the few people I have met who did not put their hands all over the blades." His knives are impressive and I will talk more about them in another blog. But let us get back to birds of prey and how they relate to knife fighting.
Shiva told me that even though birds like these are used for hunting small game they will not persevere if their prey puts up too much of a struggle. Despite their tremendously powerful claws, they are keenly aware of the fragile nature of their wings. Break too many feathers and a creature of flight suddenly becomes a pedestrian, and fair game for other predators. Therefore, if the intended victim becomes too fractious, or resists too much, the raptor will desist and move on. Now do you see the value in this thread of conversation? Can you see the immediate parallels?
We were talking about birds, but I was thinking about predators in general, and I suspect so was Shiva. How might this information affect you and your self-defense? I have another example. When we bought our first home we needed more furniture to fill out the rooms. An estate auction just down the road offered many nice pieces of antique furniture. When I arrived I could pretty easily pick out the dealers. It occurred to me the biggest difference between myself and a dealer was they needed to make a profit on everything they bought. Having done my research ahead of time I had a good idea of the prices dealers charged. All I had to do was "persevere" in my bidding to the point that they could no longer make a good profit and they would drop out. My strategy worked and I got every piece of furniture that I wanted. Can you see the parallel here too?
If you make the stakes too high, if you resist violently enough, then the cost of winning becomes too great for the hawk, the dealer, or the street predator. You must make the risk too high for him to continue. Acquiesce just a little, concede even the smallest bit of ground and you are dead meat! These signs of defeat are what the predator looks for. They are the indicators he needs to increase his attack and achieve victory. A predator cannot afford to be injured or expend too much time in the struggle. Each second that passes increases his chance of exposure or injury. Fight back! Many times police nab the criminal at the hospital when he seeks treatment for his injuries. Tell-tale marks of the struggle brand him and make him suspect to hospital staff. His injuries provide evidence against him during his arrest and subsequent trial.
I am not a lawyer and I do not offer legal counsel and although I am a priest I will not presume to offer unasked for spiritual advice. I realize the moral and legal problems associated with fighting back and the concepts of force continuum and the use of equal force. If you hold back, if you do not retaliate explosively with all of the means at your disposal, it will most likely result in your death. I could be more diplomatic about that I suppose, but I would not be doing you any favors. The hash reality is that when your life is on the line and no one is going to be there to back you up, you have to do what it takes to survive. Too many politically correct writers are saying that fighting back, which is what we are talking about, may only land you in prison. That is a sad commentary on the American justice system but it should in no way deter you from doing whatever you need to do to survive.