Violence of Action
If you can create three things, you can win any physical altercation no matter what weapons are involved. Your mind is the weapon, a gun and knife are just tools. Here are the elements you need to win the fight; Speed, Shock Force, Violence of Action. Two days ago we talked about Speed, yesterday was Shock Force, and today we’ll look at the final element, Violence of Action.
This one is the hardest. Once you start, you can’t stop. In the movies, the good guy just hits someone and the fight is over. It’s never that way. Once you act against a criminal in self defense, you have to use extreme violence and not stop until that person is out of commission or gives up. If I use my flashlight to shine in someone’s face during an attack, I’m going to follow up with hitting that person multiple times with the flashlight.
If you are going to counter attack someone (yes, once you are going to act in self defense you should be thinking attack), it has to be with all the ferocity that you can muster. You need to let go of any thought that you might just want to hit the person to get them to stop. That is your goal, but you need to hit him with all the strength you can muster. If I’m going to counter attack with my hands, I’m going to hit the attacker again and again, until he falls down or gives up. I’ll even go from punching to elbows and knees to win. If I’m using my flashlight, I’ll continue to hit him with it until he falls or runs away. If your attacker even talks about killing you or has something that can kill you (i.e. knife, club, gun, screw driver, pick…) you are in a fight for your life and should show no mercy, because he won’t. If you pull a knife to defend yourself, you need to stab and slash until he gives up, runs away or falls down. You can’t slash at the bad guy once and wait to see what happens. You need to act so violently that it keeps the other guy from doing anything but running away.
The same thing goes for shooting. If you have to pull your gun, it shouldn’t be to scare someone. I hope if I have to pull my gun on someone they will just give up, but they only have from the time they see my gun coming out of the holster until I get it into a firing position to make that choice. I only pull my gun to stop a threat from killing someone. If you fire, fire a lot. Make lots of hits on your target. Keep shooting until the threat goes down, runs away, or you run out of ammo. Even if you are carrying a Glock with a 15 round magazine, keep shooting. It may take that much violence to stop someone evil from committing an act of evil upon you or your loved ones.
The hard part is that we are all good people and don’t want to hurt anyone. All I want is for that person to leave my family and me alone. But when it’s time to act, we have to act with more violence than that person does. The person that is acting against you already knows that he is going to get into a fight and already decided that he doesn’t mind killing someone today. You have to be more violent then he is at that moment.
Putting it Together
As a Marine in an urban environment, it looks simple. I’ll use suppressing fire on the building to get to the door. Once a couple of us get to the door, one will open the door while another tosses in a grenade. Once the grenade goes off, we all run in and kill everyone in the room. You can see where all this would be shocking and the violence at the end doesn’t get any worse.
How this might work for you in the real world:
Someone comes up to you in a dark parking lot. You pull out your flashlight (you are carrying one, right?) and flash it in his eyes. The guy keeps coming at you blindly holding his hands to his eyes yelling something like “I’m going to F** you up and take your car!” You turn the light off, step to the side and start hitting him in the side, neck, and head with your light until he falls down. Then you run away and call 911 and tell them you’ve been attacked and need help.
Nothing is perfect, but in my experience, it’s hard to lose if you effectively use shock force, speed, and violence of action. A lot of this comes from prior preparation (you have a light, right?), practice (playing the “what if” game), and working out with your weapons you carry until they become second nature and you don’t have to think about it.
Stay Safe,
Ben