Don Gwinn

Yeah, I think it was Zito. He was president of a bike gang--Hell's Angels? Of course, he was also a very good boxer and kickboxer in his own right. There's also the story of Gene Lebell chocking him out (or was that Seagal? I can't keep them all straight.) That never quite made sense to me either--how many martial artists at any level could have kept Gene Lebell from sneaking up and applying a choke from behind?

EOT, I'm not sure what you mean. What technology do we have surrounding us that you don't have in England? I was under the impression that we were about on a par technologically. In any event, CCTV would be illegal here. We do have some traffic-light cameras, which tick me off no end as they are simply revenue machines and represent a perfect starting point for abusive surveillance. These have been found legal because they observe only the roadway, which is state-owned.

I'm not sure I'd say England is a police state, but it's edging pretty close. This has absolutely nothing to do with what weapons the police carry. Orwell's police in 1984 carried only truncheons. However, I note that those police who "don't carry guns" are backed up by weapons squads with carbines and subguns. 1. Gun laws/knife laws/self-defense laws Self defense appears to be a no-no, a traditional hallmark of police states. Weapons in the hands of citizens are a no-no, another telltale sign. 2. CCTV Television cameras recording your every move in public. . . I hate to keep harping on 1984, but the analogy is pretty close. From over here, one gets the impression that if the British public can be convinced that CCTV in their homes would reduce crime by at least 5%, they'll go for it sooner or later. Perhaps that's inaccurate. 3. Elimination of jury trials. We've been reading with great interest over here about certain criminal courts in England giving up jury trials to save time. . . . ostensibly. Again, these are not meant to mean that I hold some grudge against the English people. But, you asked. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not all that impressed with my own government either.

Our accent sucks? Which one? What do I find weird? Let's see. . . . Warm beer. Do you really do this? Hot tea, no iced tea. Hot tea in winter I understand. No iced tea on a hot summer day? Sacrilege! Soccer/Football. 'Nuff said. Rugby more than makes up for it, though. That techo-rave stuff they call "music" over there. Where's the fiddle? Making self-defense illegal is just creepy. Dinner. . . . boiled everything. Cricket. I'd laugh right in your English faces if I didn't come from the country that invented baseball. CCTV cameras recording you in public. That whole royalty deal. . . . what's up with that? The most useless people in your society are the most celebrated and billions in gifts are lavished upon them. . . . wait, I get it. It's kind of like our talk show hosts. Never mind that one. Of course, all the above points should be taken only as jokes, 'cause that's all they are. I have nothing against the English.

Sigh. I'd be interested in knowing how many of those assault incidents were committed by people who held CCWs (or people who could possibly have gotten one.) I say again, if you care to check the actual statistics showing what has actually happened in the U.S. in the last 15 years or so, you'll see that CCW holders are the most peaceful, law-abiding people anywhere. Your McDonald's example, for instance, was mentally ill. He couldn't have owned any firearm legally. Of course, California's response was to ban the type of firearm he used, as if that would matter. An airliner is not a "delicate machine." Just about anything that could possibly be damaged or destroyed by a bullet has at least two redundant backups. The only things that could be harmed are the electronics or possibly hydraulics that have to be routed past the cabin, and even those are pretty far from the cabin. They'd be relatively well-protected. I almost asked what it means to "hoop stuff," but I'm thinking I don't want to know. ZR440, good on ya. Stay safe and keep your family safe as well. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you somehow don't have the right to stay alive. You know better.

That timeline is ridiculous. How fast, exactly, was America going when it ran over your dog? Look, I don't like the fact that we fought in Vietnam either. However, I know the difference between being on the scene and sitting in a comfy chair with hindsight. In hindsight, it's clear that Ho Chi Minh was probably just a Vietnamese patriot who was willing to embrace any political system he thought would help him improve Vietnam, and would not have allowed himself to become a Soviet or Chicom puppet. However, when the war started, we didn't know that. We didn't even know about the split between the Soviets and the Chicoms I reference above. Our best minds believed in the "Domino theory" under which it was essential that small republics not be allowed to fall under Communist domination even if we had to support bad regimes. Better 50 individual bad regimes than a gigantic united Soviet Asia with its eye on Europe and then the U.S. Americans did what they thought had to be done. It was a mistake, but it was not haring after glory. Yes, there were profiteers who made millions off that war. To say that the rest of us fought it just to give them that chance, though, is slander. Afghanistan was the same thing. If you think the U.S. was the only western nation that didn't want the Soviets to be one weak border away from the ability to roll up Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and others in one offensive, you're kidding yourself. Allowing the Soviets to have that nation was unacceptable, and you're damn right we gave aid to Mujahideen. What would you suggest? Just let the Soviets control three-quarters of the world's oil? Let them hold every European route to Asia? No thanks. What did we do, exactly, to double-cross Usama Bin Laden? What did we do to "make those countries mad?" (I assume that refers to Afghanistan?) What means have we used in this war that were unjustifiable (other than some of the ridiculous things American citizens have been put through?)

I don't see how it's any of my business. The main point of two parents is to have two points of view on things and to have a partner who can carry the load when you can't. Two men or two women vs. a man and a woman is not that big a difference. You might prefer the kid to be with a man and a woman, but you wouldn't prefer two loving parents over an orphanage or a different foster home every year? I would. The bullies at school truly are the ones with the problem, and that IS significant. It means that the bullies at school are going to bully the kid for SOMETHING. If it's not his gay parents, it'll be the fact that he's an orphan. Or fat. Or skinny. Or wears glasses. Or likes to read. Or doesn't read well enough. You get the picture. As for homosexuality not being natural, we know it happens in nature (otherwise there would not BE gay people to debate about) so that sounds a little farfetched to me. I don't think a lot of the things Southern Baptists do are moral, either, but that doesn't give me the right to tell them they can't raise children. However, Rosie O'Donnell is an idiot and a hypocrite for reasons having nothing to do with homosexuality. And I don't mind her adopting children, but what burns me up is that she can apparently walk into a child-care office and have her adoption done in a few days. Also, I carry a grudge from that time she said she wanted me thrown in prison and the time she ordered my wife to steal my property while I was at work. Meanwhile, my mother's friends, both stable, nice people with secure white-collar jobs, who had been married happily for ten years, could not adopt in the U.S. They tried for a couple of years, then gave up. It was so bad here that they took vacation time and moved to Peru for six weeks during a revolution to adopt their son. Two years later they went to Korea to get their daughter. This time they didn't bother to try to adopt an American child. They were never given any reason for why they were denied, just constant assurances that it would "all be sorted out soon." For three years!

I am a rank beginner, but I don't mind learning the forms in order to advance. I find it's a good way to work on the stances and blocks by myself. I realize I will not use these movements exactly as they are performed in the form (in my case, clumsily) but I believe in doing the movement ideally in practice in order to be able to do it under less ideal circumstances in practice. All physical activities are like this. In a football game, you're not likely to be able to sink your butt with your knees bent far enough to put your shoulders below your opponent's waste, hands inside, elbows high, head perfectly straight up, and chop your feet at high speed to push him out of the way. However, if you don't practice it that way against air then a large, unshaven man in cheap shorts and a polo shirt will break his foot off in your a**. That's because he wants you to practice it that way so that you can get as close as possible in the game, even though he knows you won't do it the ideal way.

True. Van Damme could do with getting his butt kicked a little less. Most of his characters would be victorious but dain bramaged in real life. I hope I didn't come off as insulting above. I didn't mean I think people on this board are being unreasonable to ask the question. I've just heard too many gunshop commandos in my time. Too many people figure that if a famous actor who claims to be a black belt gets beaten up (like when a biker lit Van Damme up in a bar that time) then the art is worthless and fake. Well, DUH. It's an actor. He might not know anything about the art he claims to be a master in.

Sakimaru, I just noticed no one answered you. Bud K Worldwide is the DEVIL! Run AWAY! Does that help? Seriously, it's crap wrapped in tripe. Bad steel, bad grinds, bad plastic crappy grips. . . . bad.

Waaait a minute--just saw page two. Bitseach, you were mad because someone used "personal insults?" You didn't like it that someone insulted your country? What exactly were you doing when you said that people who were "into" knives were ******ed hillbilly rapists? Spare me your righteous indignation about personal insults.

Bugei swords use Hanwei (Paul Chen) blades in all models as far as I know. They are good blades. No, you should not get a rattle in a good sword. It's that kind of looseness that allows parts to break. I haven't handled a sword from Century, but they look just like the United Cutlery models and I suspect that's what they are. If so, they're absolute junk. I've never seen a quality product come from United Cutlery. Their swords are what they call "420 stainless" or "Surgical Stainless." Now, 420C or 420HC are good stainless steels that can be made to work very well, though not much good for a sword blade. But the steel United uses is actuall 420J, which has so much chromium in it that it's very shiny but almost impossible to heat treat correctly. It becomes so brittle with any heat treat that it seems they do nothing to it but a mild temper. Of course, that leaves it abominally soft. If you want a low-cost alternative, try http://www.kriscutlery.com They're a Filipino company that only started making katana blades a year or two ago, and they won't be as polished as the display pieces from UC, but the fit and finish is actually superior and the blade is honest-to-God 5160 carbon steel with an actual heat-treatment applied. I don't think Kris Cutlery does a differential heat treat, so there's no hamon, but that's not really necessary with modern spring steel anyway as long as the treatment is properly done. Ancient Japanese had to do it because their steel is crap. Modern smiths do it for that extra advantage, but it's a costly service on a blade so large. Bitseach: I await submission of your plan for banning and confiscating all swords, axes, and kitchen knives. Are you SURE you want to try that? (EDIT) All right, I just went back and read the first page. Bitseach, what is it with you and your insistence on insulting and hating everyone who isn't afraid of a weapon? Deliverance jokes? If you're going to insult me, can't you do better than that? For your information, I've collected knives since I was a child. I now forge my own in a charcoal-fired neo-tribal forge I built myself. I am about as peaceful a person as you'll ever meet. Most of my knives are not designed as weapons; however, I'm not a hoplophobe and I'll make a weapon if I choose. You have nothing to fear from me. I'm sure that doesn't reassure you, but then hoplophobia is an ugly and pervasive illness. Currently I'm working on two trapper-style stag-gripped hunting knives for an old friend and a small wharncliff-style cutter for another. The first guy is going bear hunting with a flintlock he built himself (including boring and rifling his own barrel) and the second guy is an old high-school buddy who now works as a botanist with a project in Florida to save endangered orchid species. He wants something simple and light to make clean, easy cuts on stems. _________________ ____________________________________ * Ignorant Taekwondo beginner. http://www.thefiringline.com [ This Message was edited by: Don Gwinn on 2002-07-10 09:04 ]

There's no safe shootout anywhere; there's nothing about being at 20,000 feet that makes it any more dangerous. No one is suggesting otherwise. Again, I will not respond to straw men (even straw men with the "sarcasm" inserted after.) IF they manage to get a hostage before being ventilated, maybe so. I suppose it WOULD be better to let them have the plane and just hope they don't intend to kill a few hundred more people. After all, we all know that when someone commits a crime, they REALLY don't want to hurt anyone because that might be an additional charge, right? Exactly what people said about "road rage" when CCW laws came in. It never happened. "Air rage" is generally a guy who got a little tipsy and gets loud. If it went beyond that on a plane full of armed people. . . . well, you can imagine, and that's why it won't. An armed society is a polite society. You are also still overlooking the proven public safety record of CCW holders. They commit almost no violent crime and their rates of all crimes are fractions of the general public's. This is only common sense, since they represent a group of people who have been screened and checked, as well as people who have already shown that given a choice between breaking a law and following it they will put themselves to no end of trouble, expense and risk to follow the law, even when it would be simple to break it and they would almost certainly never be caught. These are not people who go around shooting people. That is not my opinion; I can state that fact with confidence because it has been carefully studied statistically and the statistics show it. Since I took your quote out of context (you're right, I suppose I did) how about if you name one way the new controls make a repeat of Sept. 11th harder? I note that the only incident since, the Richard Reeves "shoe bomb" was not stopped by any of the new security measures. It was stopped when a stewardess noticed Reeves in the act. I'm sure all the people who got strip-searched by Ronnie the Drooling Guy Who Couldn't Cut It At Burger King felt a lot better knowing that their ordeal was such an integral part of stopping terrorism.

We just want this court to be bound to be fair to defendants. These would not be special privileges for Americans, but protections for the soldiers of any nation. An international court run by a corrupt and biased organization has no standing. The bottom line is that the U.N. is hopelessly mired in the agenda of a few nations. Syria is on the Security Council, for Pete's sake, and you want us to trust a court created by the same org? Forget it. As for the Geneva Convention, I'd like to see where in the Geneva Convention it requires that the international court be set up the same as the proposed ICC. I don't believe that for a second. Let me check on that, come to think of it; the U.S. may not even be a signatory to the Geneva Convention. I know there was one we didn't sign, and it was either the GC or the Hague Accords. The more I think about it, the less it matters, because I think it was the Hague Accords that we didn't sign.

When there are more people trying to get out of American than into it, I'll agree that it's a lousy place. Without meaning to start a peeing contest (but it looks like that won't be a problem, since it's ongoing) what nation would you nominate as the "best country?" America is exactly what we make of it, unlike anywhere else on Earth. It is the most free place on Earth. Now, the downside of this is that many will make of it the worst rather than the best. I don't like that either. But the potential is always be there, and that's our big difference. We pursue isolationism because we are isolated. Our massive bombing of Japan was indeed terrible to behold, but you do a disservice by calling it "vengeance." Japan wanted to rule the Pacific and Asia, and in order to do so they had to knock us off. "Vengeance" implies that their attack was over and done and we came back to get revenge. Bull. We defended ourselves against an aggressor. Not all our wars have been this "clean." But that one certainly was. What did we rebuild? Japan and Germany. Duh. Had it not been for us people would have starved for a long time in postwar Germany and Japan. I might remind you at this point that it was the English, French and Italians who rejected Wilson's 14 Points plan after WWI. Wilson's plan would have denied Hitler his mode of acquiring power and thus averted WWII (many historians say that in the next hundred years the two will be seen as the same war with a pause between two halves.) This is not to say that Americans as a rule wanted peace more than English and Italians. The point is to illustrate the absurdity of such generalizations. Bashing America is fun, huh? Enjoy it with my blessing. I live here, so I've got plenty to be happy about and no reason to be bitter.

Tessone--guns are NOT more often used offensively than defensively. The best reputable estimate is 2.5 million defensive uses per year in the US. Most conservative is about 500,000. Compare that to the number of attacks and crimes, and you'll see that defensive uses dominate by a long shot. Re: Registering as a lethal weapon. Everyone has heard this nonsense, but I've never met anyone who actually lived in a place where it was required. It's always "my cousin knows this guy who. . . ." Now I've "met" one (Kung Fu Grunger) but I note that he lives in the UK where the best way to figure out if something is fun or useful is make sure it's been banned or regulated. I have still never been able to corroborate the existence of these laws anywhere in the U.S. Grunger, what can I say? I'm sorry you live in the insane system you do. Good luck, man. In the U.S., laws on level of force generally have only two levels. Deadly force and everything else. If you are attacked by anyone, you may use reasonable levels of non-lethal force to defend yourself. Lethal force (which does NOT mean killing someone but using any force that is likely to result in death--gun, knife, baseball bat, etc.) is reserved for situations where the jury is convinced that "a reasonable person" in your shoes would have been in fear for his life. If you are attacked in superior numbers, by an opponent of much greater size, you're elderly and he's 20, or with a deadly weapon, then lethal force is automatically justified. However, there are places that require you to retreat as far as possible before defending yourself. Even if you are resolved to retreat first, you need to know what the law considers "as far as possible." Gun owners are commonly cautioned to accept the fact that if they are required to use their firearm in self-defense in a perfectly "clean" and justifiable shooting, it will cost $10,000 and they'll spend time in jail. "Beating the hell out of someone" seems to me to be similar. Depending on where you live, it's likely charges will be pressed. Maybe not in Texas or parts of Arizona, for instance, but in most of Illinois or California, definitely. If you avoid or beat criminal charges, either your "victim" or his family (if he is deceased) will sue you for everything you own. He will be portrayed as a misguided youth who was getting his life together when the Sinister Killer Vigilante came along. The fact that you practice with a gun, reload ammunition, or study a martial art (especially some of you psychos who study more than one art) will be evidence that you are, in fact, The Killer Vigilante. Be ready for this stuff. I'm not telling you not to defend yourself, I'm telling you that the aftermath of a successful self-defense can break the strongest fighter or the craftiest gunner. Know a good attorney who you KNOW is pro-self-defense and will be willing to take your case. Having him on retainer is better, but some of us are poor. If you're prepared for all this, you can weather it. If not, you may succeed in saving your life only to have it ruined.

No Retreat, No Surrender! Awesome. One of the best of the bad movies. Van Damme's best moment is when the kid is about to kick his ass and proclaims "Let's see how you do in a real fight. . . . Russian! Van Damme does a double take, he's so insulted, before attacking in a blind fury. The lesson we can learn from this, kids? Apparently, Russians are so ashamed of being Russians that even to mention their national origin sends them into a blind fury! Aw, who cares? He's fun to watch. I don't worry about it much beyond that. I find it interesting that no one cares that everybody who ever touched a gun in a film, with the exception of "Way of the Gun," did it stupidly and generally in ways that would cause them to shoot their own noses off. We don't care that they have either little or no training in how to use a gun or how to fight with or against a gun. But let someone who is not actually a black belt play one in the movies, and the internet erupts. Ya'll think Tom Cruise can fly an F14? Same principle.

TKD is definitely slimming stuff. I can't see a difference yet, of course, but I can feel it when we run. The breathing control is unlike anything I've used before; if I'd known about it when I played football I'd have been a lot better at it. I'm taking a picture every Thursday night to see if I can see a difference eventually. I don't really trust weight. I was way above my "ideal weight" when in the best shape of my life, and I was in pretty good shape then. Hand techniques are easy, as he's pretty good at those. Kicking and footwork are more complicated. He's very good at giving clear verbal instruction, and has helped me with my footwork and pivots quite a bit. I don't know how; he says he thinks he's gotten better at teaching these things since he found himself unable to do them, maybe because he doesn't have the crutch of simply doing the technique correctly and saying "just do that." He demonstrates the way a kick should travel or strike by using his hands, but of course, that won't work for footwork. His wife, Pat, is also a Fourth Dan and she teaches as well, so if someone has to demonstrate a kick or a step, she or one of their black belts will do it. But she doesn't teach for him; generally one will take green belts and below to one end and the other will work with the Green First and above at the other end. Mrs. Auvenshine is a P.E. teacher during the school year, and she's a very good instructor in her own right. I'm an English and History teacher, so I know a little about teaching. They impressed me as very good teachers and motivators the first night I visited the school, which was one reason I felt good about plunking down my hard-earned money. An added advantage is that Mr. Auvenshine often gets students in wheelchairs who wouldn't want to train in other places. We currently have one student in a wheelchair (quite a story in his own right; he was paralyzed in a train accident after his high school prom when he was a handsome, 6'4" teenage athlete. Now he goes to schools as a drunken-driving speaker almost full-time and trains in Tae Kwon Do.) They also have one extra chair with no hand rails so that the black belts can jump in and spar Mr. Auvenshine if he thinks they're getting too ****y. They're used to foot tag, and sparring with only hands is a different experience, I think. Also, it's hard to complain about your tired, aching legs when he's sitting there in his wheelchair barking at you to work harder.

Don't forget the hair! Since I started TKD, I play Hwoarang a lot more. He's not really that challenging a character because you can just mash buttons alternately and throw endless combos. I once played the game all the way through on "Easy" byhitting the right kick button as fast as I could. No other attacks. I think of it as inspiration and visualization.

I think you should post that video as its own thread. It might be of much broader interest than just the topics in this thread. This is basically a political thread, but a lot of artists should probably see that type of film.

Ah, thank you for clarifying that. However, what you suggest is possible, not inevitable. They may make a mistake. They may miss. You may detect their intentions (that's where that awareness thing you brought up comes in.) If we assume that it's inevitable, and that they will inevitably manage to kill you, that is still not an argument against having the gun. If you are surprised and killed before you know you're under attack, a gun will not help, but not having the gun wouldn't have helped either! You'll still be just as dead. With the gun, you have that option for other situations. I'm glad one of us is sure why criminals do what they do. Are you a criminal, or a psychic? Personally I find it odd that you assume that even though these people are thugs, robbers, murderers and rapists, they only kill in self-defense. I assume that a violent criminal is ready to kill at any time until proven otherwise. I assume this because they are, in fact, violent criminals. Were I fighting with you, I might assume that you don't want to kill me, because you have given me reason to believe that you are a decent and good person. But if someone has a knife on me and is demanding my money that would be a stupid assumption. That would be exactly what I suggest doing. The problem at the current time is that not enough people carry even in CCW states to make it likely enough that there would be a large number in a small sample like an aircraft. What exactly is the argument against allowing a person with a CCW who carries legally almost everywhere she goes continue to carry on an airplane? With enough numbers, how on Earth could it make it "easier" to hijack an airplane? On September 11th it took a few men per plane armed with nothing more formidable than box-cutters. Why? Because they were armed and determined, and the passengers were unarmed and disorganized. On the plane where the passengers got organized they managed a draw (not really desirable in this case, since a draw meant death for all.) Let's say your worst nightmare comes true. A terrorist is able to get a CCW and thus boards a plane with his firearm. What will he do with it? He doesn't know if there are five more CCW carriers on that plane or 100. How will he defeat, for instance, 20 armed passengers? There would only be two ways terrorists could hijack the plane under those circumstances: 1. They get lucky and there happen to be no, or extremely few armed passengers, or 2. They somehow manage to sneak overwhelming numbers of terrorists on to the plane, say around 20-50 on a single plane. How likely are those two scenarios? I thought you were arguing FOR controls. I agree with your assessment, but I wonder why, having made it, you still advocate this process which is invasive, demeaning, expensive and (according to you) largely pointless. By the way, I have never made the argument that "guns make public places safer." Guns don't make anything anything. They are not magic talismans which protect you. However, one good person with one good gun can make a place safer than he could without the gun. The more good people have guns, the safer the place. This is why no one ever robs gun shows even though there are millions of dollars worth of valuable stuff displayed at even the small ones. Too many good guys with guns. Shooting up a school, on the other hand, or an airplane, is no big deal. These are victim disarmament zones where a criminal can be reasonably sure no one will be able to fight back. The mistake that idiot at LAX made was pulling his killing spree at an El Al terminal. Probably this had more to do with hating Jews than any practical consideration, but had he targeted people less resolute than the Israelis, like at an American counter, he'd have had plenty of time to rampage while the National Guardsmen tried to find ammunition.

ZR440, what's it like up in Michigan nowadays? Lots of gun duels in the streets over parking spaces and fender benders? Does the blood running in the streets back up the sewers? Arahat, I trust you at least as much as I trust anyone on the internet, but what things are you trained for? Dealing with muggers? Dynamic entries and counterterrorism? Mugging people?

Of course Tueller's work is valid. It just doesn't say or imply what you keep saying it does. Ask anyone who read the report. Tueller did not conclude nor would he agree with a conclusion that you must keep a 22 foot distance to be effective against a knife. Never. Not once. He said that if you are within 21 feet of the threat, and are armed but are standing casually with the gun in holster, and if you wait for the threat to move before you begin the draw, THEN he will PROBABLY get the first shot in. That's all. Anything else is your bias and your assumptions, not Tueller's work. It doesn't make a bit of difference what it was designed for. If you are ever attacked with a car or a kitchen knife, I hope you have a better defense than the hope that since it wasn't designed to be a weapon it won't kill you. You didn't ask me what it was "primarily designed to be." You asked what it IS. A car IS an "offensive weapon" if it is USED as an offensive weapon. Simple as that. If you don't believe me, I invite you to stand in front of your wife's car and tell her you want a divorce so that you and your mistress can sell the house and go to Cancun. I can see it now. "Go ahead, punk, see if you can run me over with that pansy-ass truck! It wasn't designed primarily as an offensive weapon, you idiot! Joke's on you!" Just don't do it while I'm standing next to you. With all due respect, you used the terms to mean something they DON'T mean in the FBI report. THAT is misleading. There is no other word for it. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming it was an innocent error. A criminal in many cases will feel justified shooting you (or stabbing you, or booting you to death, or running you over, or. . . .) no matter what you do. This is because HE'S A CRIMINAL. If he were a decent person, he wouldn't have a gun or a knife in your face in the first place. You are assuming you can trust such a person not to escalate the situation if you don't. Why would you make that assumption? He has already walked up to you, brought out a weapon and demanded money. You were just walking along minding your own business, so there's no way you provoked him or escalated the situation, and he still felt free to escalate. And ten seconds after that happened, you want to trust him not to escalate again? You're afraid of provoking him? It's a little too late for that, mate! Uh. . . they DO. They also take people's money and then kill them. Often they take their money while promising not to kill them, and then kill them. Before anyone asks, yes, kidnappers and rapists do the same thing, only they often try to convince the victim to go willingly to another location. If you go to that other location, you have very long odds of survival in any shape at all. Sure, you could. Most of the time that's a good solution. Sometimes it isn't. Personally, I'm fat. I'm tall and large, but I'm over 300 lbs. I have lost 20 lbs in the last few weeks, but I can't run away from most people and expect to get away. However, let's assume you can. In fact, let's assume you run a 4-minute mile. Fair enough? Can you outrun that knifer while carrying your child? Can your child outrun him? Can your grandparents outrun him? Can your wife outrun him? (or husband) How about my good friend Chris Morley, who has been mugged four times and stopped every one by displaying his handgun? Chris has MS and cannot walk without the aid of a cane, nor can he fight hand to hand and hope to win. How about my TKD instructor, who is a 4th Dan black belt and veteran of many fights from his younger days, but also a paraplegic? You lost me on that second curve. What is the significance of name tags?

You lost me on some of that, so you may have to repeat some. 1. You didn't answer my question. Robbers use cars. Should we ban cars because robbers use them, or recognize that the rest of us have use for them too and concentrate on putting robbers in prison? 2. Cars most certainly are offensive weapons if they're used as offensive weapons. This is one of the biggest threats police face today. Pick out any large sample of articles on police shootings, and I'll be dollars to donuts that several will be cases where an officer was forced to shoot an "unarmed" driver who was trying to run him down. Last year a nut drove a Cadillac into a day care and killed four people (twice as many as the nut at LAX killed with a gun.) 3. Well, yes, that would clearly be best. However, this is a martial arts board. I thought everyone here would understand that sometimes crime finds you. Avoiding dark alleys is foolproof and, again, is part of the attitude that gets people hurt. When my sister was almost abducted, she was attacked a few minutes after noon in the parking lot of a gas station on a busy street in a nice neighborhood in Springfield, IL. 4. I agree that he can have your wallet, but he is threatening you with a knife. Think about it. We are no longer talking in terms of your wallet at that point. Once you give it to him, how does that guarantee he won't stick you for fun, or to get rid of his witness, or because there's not enough money in your wallet (happened in Springfield last year. Guy said it was disrespectful.) 5. "The chance of fatal violence" and "escalation" are misleading terms. The chance of fatal violence is indeed 100% if I shoot the slug who is threatening to kill me. However, that is not a bad thing. The chance of fatal violence inflicted upon the innocent party is actually much less if you resist with a firearm than it is for any other form of resistance OR for cooperation. 6. I don't understand what you mean by a gun "requiring" 22 feet. Mine works properly an inch from the target; I've checked. Are you referring to the Tueller Experiments? If so, you should understand that Tueller NEVER showed or concluded that a man with a gun had to get 21 feet away from his attacker or lose. What he showed was that a knife-wielding attacker, if his weapon is in his hand and ready, can generally close a distance of 21 feet and strike a gunman before the gunslinger can draw and fire. This assumes that the gunman's weapon is holstered, that his hands are at his side, and that the knifer is not distracted and makes the first move. Action beats reaction, of course. A. Unlike Dennis Tueller's subjects, you can distract, startle or frighten your attacker. You can scream, throw your wallet in his face, spit on him, or whatever you have to do. I believe this is called atemi in Aikido. Any of these things will distract most people and gain them time. B. You can lull your attacker into overconfidence by seeming to go along or cower. The knifers in Tueller's experiment were intent and focused on attacking first. Your thug may not be and you can help him along by appearing not to present a threat. C. You can attack first. Action beats reaction almost every time. This was the main conclusion drawn by Tueller. That's why he did NOT advise police officers to throw their guns in the river or to start carrying knives instead, but to draw and be ready at the first sign of threat so that they would not be in this kind of standoff. If they find themselves in one anyway, he advocates drawing and pulling back as soon as possible; with any luck, this will mean you draw first. D. Even if none of that works, it doesn't mean you've lost. The "Tueller Distance" refers to how close the knifer must be to get in the first attack. Getting the first attack does NOT mean he wins and you lose. You can keep fighting, and a gun is your best method. Why do you suppose counter-terrorism teams use pistols instead of knives for CQB and entries? They spend most of their time inside Tueller's distance, so if a gun requires more than that to be the most effective weapon in the fight, why wouldn't these professionals switch?

We like you and all. We just think you're a little . . . . weird. But we mean that in the nicest way possible. Yes, I find your government far too "police state" for my tastes, but hey, I don't live there. No skin off my nose. Voltaire said: "The English are like their beer. Foam at the top, dregs at the bottom. Excellent in the middle."