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Why Swordsmen and Marksmen Should Learn to Fight!

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You’ve heard the old axiom, “Never bring a knife to a gun fight?” or the “21 foot rule,” well consider this for a minutes, what happens if you have a concealed carry weapon permit (CCW) but you are surprised by an attacker before you can pull out your gun or knife? Likely you have lost any advantage your weapons training afforded you and you will have to default to your fighting skills.

 

I’ll give a couple of examples of knife vs gun and knife vs sword for your perusal. The case I am trying to make is you should learn how to fight with your hands and feet (kenpo, karate, kung fu, muay thai, tae kwon do…) or even wrestling, jiu-jitsu (Japanese or Brazilian, or even a sport like mma, kick boxing, or boxing) for close in fighting. But first are the two examples.

 

 

 

 

I love these videos because they both show how distance can affect a planned defense with arguably a superior weapon. In the first video many with CCW permits probably believe that they could defend themselves in more situations than is reasonably practical. I would not argue once they had the weapon out and aimed at a distance – it would not work – but rather I would argue unless you have a personal force field (turned on), you are not really safer with the gun or knife.

 

In the two videos above it seems to reinforce my logic that having a weapon is not all the training you need to defend yourself. In Kenpo that I practice we have a lot of defenses against weapons because that is a real concern. We use improvised weapons and unarmed defenses against knives, swords, and guns. Mostly kenpo against weapons works if the attacker is close and does not think you can fight. This is because if your attacker thought you could fight, he/she would shoot, cut, or stab at a safe distance and not get close to you.

 

But from your perspective, as hopefully a self-defense practitioner you would keep your advantages close to your chest, meaning pretend to be scared, discombobulated if you will, to pounce when you have an unrealized advantage! Let him get close before you slip his attack and punch, ridge hand, or chop his throat!

 

Another part of adding self defense of some kind to your weapons sword or gun training is to cover a glaring gap in any training for any close in scenarios that does not include hand to hand combat! Say you are an expert marksman with a small revolver (your CCW carry weapon), and while walking to the ATM at night, you hear someone come up behind you and say, “you money or your life!” As an initial self-defense move, this will require stealth as you turn and start to hand over money (noticing women with purses nearby). You decide to take this guy out rather than to risk your and the women’s lives. As you hand over the money – acting scard, you drop it – as you notice the attackers (right in front of you) eye’s look at the cash – you use initial movement to deflect the barrel of the gun away from you and the women, eye poke, take control of the gun, trip the attacker and hold him at gun point (attackers gun) until the cops get there.

 

Pardon my long winded explanation of how fighting is an advantage and what I believe the bottom building block of martial training (that includes hand to hand, sword, knife, gun, and rifle training). If you can shoot – you have the advantage at long range, if you can fight with any historical edged weapon, you have the advantage and medium distances, and if you can fight (hand to hand) you have the advantage at close range.

 

For those of you with what if questions, understand I cannot possibly cover all scenarios in a blog post and I’m only speaking generally. I hope you have enjoyed my point of view. Feel free to opine.


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