GUEST COLUMNIST: Evan Perperis, a U.S. Army Special Forces Combat Vet, Shares His Thoughts on a Common Excuse We Hear
I’ve heard it more times than I can count, and I’ve seen people imply it even more than that.
“I don’t need to train, I’ll just shoot them”.
“I don’t need to train, I’ll just stab them.”
“I don’t need to train, I’ll just use this” [while holding up the latest self-defense gimmick].
They buy a gun along with getting a concealed carry permit, and they think the problem is solved. Perhaps it’s a can of pepper spray instead. Or a spiked self-defense keychain hangs from their keys.
In a country that tends to value physical solutions over mental ones, this is not surprising — but the logic is flawed.
Here are some key reasons why the logic of “I don’t need training, I have this” fails.
1) Most attacks start in ambush range: Dr. Conrad Bui and Patrick Vuong have analyzed hundreds of real-life attacks available via security camera and cellphone footage. One of the constants is that most attacks start very close. This means if you don’t have your hand on your self-defense tool when the attack starts you are going to have to fight your way to a position that allows you to employ your tool.
2) People don’t practice with their tool: Most of the people I know who own self-defense keychains never practice with them. Ever. They’ve never activated their pepper spray, which means they may not be familiar with the basics including things like removing the safety. It also means they probably don’t understand that it is an area weapon. Yes, you’ll get the bad guy, but also be prepared for some of that spray to blow back in your face.
If it is a striking tool, they don’t practice hitting with it, which means things like range, angle, level, and timing — all necessary to properly employ a hit with a striking weapon — are probably underdeveloped. Additionally, if you’ve never hit something hard with your self-defense tool, are you sure it isn’t going to hurt your own hand when you employ it under stress?
3) The ability to deploy a tool requires basic fundamentals learned via martial arts: Piggybacking off the end of the last paragraph about fundamentals like range, angle, level and timing, if you don’t train any sort of striking art on a regular basis, you probably can’t do any of those things well.
This is why although Tiga Tactics is my primary base for how I approach self-defense even though I continue to train in other styles, including striking and grappling arts.
4) Many people are never pressure tested in any form: Finally, many of these people never pressure test anything. If the most pressure you’ve felt in the last year is speaking in a public setting at work or an angry email from a boss, you probably don’t have the mental adaptability to deal with an attacker when they are already attacking you.
There isn’t one solution to pressure testing, but doing things under mental and physical duress with an elevated heart rate that is stressful and requires thinking is the goal. In the military they do this frequently, if you train martial arts and your school does tests for rank or sparring, you will get this as well.
In the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community, we have a list of five SOF truths, one of which is “humans are more important than hardware.” There are multiple meanings to this phrase but part of it is you need to invest in yourself and the software (mindset/skillset) that allow you to do difficult things.
The tool on your keychain is simply that, a tool. If you lack the rest of the pyramid of personal protection to effectively employ it, you might as well leave the tool at home. In the military we preach don’t take something into combat that you haven’t tested and trained with. I think the same is true for civilians training for self-defense. Start by taking some courses like Sharper Knife, Sharper Mind, Fighting Chance Combatives and EDC Knife. You’ll find the skills you learn in those are good not only for employing a knife but for any self-defense item.
