I recently got this link sent to me. It covers ten self-defense tips to handle a situation where burglars target your house. Some of the information (like having a cell phone on you) is pretty good. Other things, I disagree with. My biggest issue is with tip #9: never carry a weapon. Here’s why:

I understand the reasoning: don’t carry a weapon because the criminal can use it against you. It’s a fair statement. If I recall correctly, the statistics say that in a large number of self-defense situation, people have their weapon taken away and then used against them. So a logical conclusion seems to be: don’t carry a weapon.

It may be logical but that still doesn’t make it right.

My guess is, and it is just a guess, that a truckload of those people became a victim of their own weapon because they lacked the training and/or commitment to use it. I’ve met a lot of people who have a weapon in the house. “For self-protection” they claim. But when I ask them how often they train with it, I usually get a blank stare. And then they don’t understand why a criminal takes their precious weapon away from them…

Tip #7, “Cooperate” also irks me a bit. This may be because where I live, there has been an immense increase in home invasions and tiger kidnapping. You can obviously never predict which way these things go, but depending on the goodwill of a criminal to keep you alive doesn’t seem all that smart to me. Simply because you have no way of knowing what his intentions are when you come across him.

Picture this: [Read more…]

Here’s a question for you: What was your first real fight like?

There are some qualifiers though, to make sure we’re talking about the same thing:

• I’m not talking about a schoolyard scuffle because some kid stepped on your toes and the teacher breaks it up after he pulls your hair. Or when your sister broke one of your toys and you ran at her, screaming “I hate you!!!” Let’s leave this stuff out.
• There was a clear and present danger. Meaning, not fighting was either not an option or the beating you’d take refusing to fight would mean a trip to the hospital or the morgue.
• You were scared. Either before, during or after. But for the first time, you were scared big time because you knew the stakes were higher than ever before.
• You actually fought. You punched, kicked, pulled or pushed the other guy. It didn’t stay at the verbal stage.

Here’s mine:

I must have been 9 or 10 years old, I’m not sure anymore because it all happened so long ago.  There was this kid living in my street and we didn’t get along. He was obnoxious, loud, dirty and in hindsight, missing a few nuts and bolts in his brain.  In short, he was the kid your parents didn’t want you to play with.

Anyway, for some reason, we didn’t get along.  I also must have done something to piss him off at one time (honestly can’t remember) because one day as I came home, walking down the street, he suddenly stepped in front of me   I obviously hadn’t seen him hiding out (hello awareness!) so he was right there in my face, cursing and threatening me. In and of itself, that wasn’t a big deal. Though he was older than me, I was bigger and stronger. The problem was that he had figured that out too and had geared up for the occasion. He was: [Read more…]

Here’s something you don’t see every day…

A Chinese man living in Yuxi, Yunnan province, had a knife removed from his head after it had been lodged there for four years…

He suffered from headaches, had difficulty swallowing and so on. He self-medicated for years to live with the pain but eventually, he went to see the doctors. Imagine their surprise when they took an x-ray and saw a knife lodged in his skull…

Turns out the man fought a robber four years ago and remembered being struck in the jaw during the fight. I guess you could say he was pretty lucky to survive it…  But that’s not what I wanted to point out, this is: [Read more…]