Don Gwinn

Hi, my name is Don, and I am obese. Hi, Don! I am 6'1" tall and well over 300 pounds. Well, well, well over. Now that that's out of the way, here's why I'm obese and what I'm doing about it. 1. Inactivity. I was a football player in high school and college and worked out insanely hard. I also ate enough for a clydesdale. I was between 230 and 260 during this time, and 230 was very lean for me. I ran a 5.9 40-yard dash at that weight, which I thought was decent. When I quit football, I tried to keep working out for awhile, but tapered off. When I graduated and became a teacher, my whole day was sitting or standing in a class, and I was exhausted when I got home and had no interest in working out. 2. Eating. I stopped working out when I stopped football, but I did NOT slow down the calorie parade. I ate mostly healthy food, but in obscene amounts. Once I graduated I ate unhealthy food in large amounts. My lunch hour (25 minutes) was just barely enough to get home, let the dog out, put her back in, and get back to school, so it wasn't long before my daily lunch was from the vending machine--20 oz Mountain Dew, a candy bar, and a bag of chips. What am I doing about it? Well, I joined a dojang. I also do Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning exercises, with the exception of Hindu pushups which I am too obese to do properly. Rather than do two sets of very heavy squats per week, I try to get 50 Hindu squats every morning. Next week I plan to begin running in the early morning as well. I attend the TKD classes four nights per week and work my ass off. I also practice on my own time, performing my poomse every morning as soon as I get up. The diet has been a harder battle. I'm a food addict with a sweet tooth. I love Oreos, chocolate chip cookies, and milk. One of the things I've tried to do is to find better ways to cook good meals, and one way is to learn to use Thai and other Oriental spices and sauces. Many of these, like Tandoori, add very few calories to dishes like baked chicken but make all the difference in the world as far as flavor. Beyond this, I just try to force hunger on myself before I eat. I eat by habit a lot of the time, so it's a matter of stopping myself, having a glass of water and thinking about whether I'm actually hungry. I've basically given up soda (which was not easy, as I used to live on Mountain Dew) but have not broken myself of sugar in my iced tea yet. I'm working on it. I'm taking a picture every Thursday evening to document my progress. We shall see. One of my problems was that when I was a little bit overweight I looked OK to myself. I only looked at my front in the mirror, and I have very (in fact, quite abnormally) large bones and wide shoulders. Even at way over 300 pounds, I have a fairly tapered shape from the front. Then one day you see yourself in a photo or a mirror and think "My God! What happened!" I don't blame McDonald's or any idiot thing like that. They sell the stuff, I didn't have to buy it or eat it. It's not their job to tell me what I can and can't do, and if I choose to be obese, that's my right. Now that I choose not to, that is my right as well. I will never be the "ideal weight" off a chart. But at 220-230 I would be very lean as well as large and strong, and that would be fine with me.

Back to the original topic, men are much stronger on average. Men are also much faster on average. Women can catch up in areas like quickness, flexibility, technique, mental quickness, and maybe stamina. If you disagree with this, women of the world, then I invite you to join with me and throw off the chains of segregation. That's right--start competing on a level playing field with men. Full speed, no special rules. There are some women who could do this and be competitive in most sports. In fact, some of them are itching to do this very thing. However, the quickest way to shut up the average girl who is mouthing off about how women's basketball is "just as good" as men's is to offer to trade places with her for one season. That may not be PC, but I've never heard a really good explanation of why women who are "equal to men" and "can do anything some boy can do" have to be set apart in female-only leagues.

Ah, but the great thing about being a human being is that you don't HAVE to be as big or strong as your attacker. Use technique and technology to your advantage. A .45 is not slower when fired by a woman. Kickchick, honestly, I don't know what you expected from a thread entitled "Which sex is stronger?" How you can reconcile that with saying "this thread is not about whether women or men are the stronger" is beyond me. Good luck with the thread, though.

Well, apparently we're supposed to introduce ourselves. My name is Don, I'm a hayseed, a redneck, and a hick, and I'm posting from nearly-beautiful downtown Virden. I'm pretty good with a gun and getting better with a knife, but I'm out of shape and never used my hands and feet much, so I recently began studying Tae Kwon Do with Master Bill Auvenshine in Auburn Illinois. Mr. Auvenshine is something of a wonder around here, as he lost the use of his legs not long after opening his own school but continues to teach. I don't have any pictures right now, but I'm a big fat bald guy with a red beard. You can't miss me. I'd like to invite anyone who's interested in shooting or in discussing martial arts with shooters to visit http://www.thefiringline.com . With over 15,000 members we consider ourselves the premiere firearms site on the net. Martial arts are discussed in the Alternative Force/CQC forum. I moderate the Legal and Political forum, so stop in there and say hi if you do visit.

That would seem like a pretty practical attitude to me. What alternative would you suggest--that we send our military into every conflict around the world? Why? Do you travel around England like Caine in Kung Fu, fighting other people's battles for them and righting wrongs? If not, why do you expect us to do so? Besides, Zin-Ju says the U.S. has, and I quote, "a **** army" compared to the British, so if anyone is going to go around making peace for everyone else, I nominate you blokes. We Americans will sit back and study the technique. Bitseach, you don't seem to know what a redneck is. "Redneck" is a pejorative used to describe people of midwestern or southern extraction (known to non-rednecks as "flyover country.") It comes from the practice of earning your living by working very hard in the hot sun, thus developing a red neck. I am a redneck by birth and by choice and you have nothing to fear from me. If you're ever traveling through central Illinois, find Virden, IL and give me a call. I'll buy you a beer and we'll work through your fear of my kind. EVERYONE from EVERY class and stratus of society has been known to kill just about anybody. In the U.S., Brits are known for killing people who follow other soccer teams. However, reasonable people don't take such generalizations as truth without evidence. The majority of soccer fans are probably decent people, right? And what is this stuff about no one being able to win a war? I have to call Shenanigans on that one. People who have won wars: 1. American colonies vs. Britain 2. USA vs. Mexico 3. USA vs. CSA 4. Allies vs. Germany, Austria-Hungary, etc. 5. Allies vs. Axis 6. Vietnamese vs. French 7. Vietnamese vs. USA 8. Japan vs. Russia (1905) 9. Spanish Nationalists vs. Spanish Communists 10. Rome vs. Carthage 11. Rome vs. Gaul 12. Rome vs. Britannic tribes 13. Greece vs. Persia (such an incredible upset that some historians still wonder how it happened.) 14. Greece vs. pretty much anybody else you can name 15. USA vs Taliban is looking pretty convincing at this point despite some cringe-worthy blunders. 16. USA vs Iraq. The war was won convincingly. However, an overabundance of concern for "the coalition" prevented exploitation of the victory to end the Hussein regime (I'm aware that many of you may believe that was a good thing, and that's fine. I'm just pointing out that it occurred.) A couple of predictions: 1. If Israel ever actually makes war on the Palestinians, they will win. Overwhelmingly. You may not like this outcome, but it won't help to deny that it could happen. 2. If the USA goes into Iraq again (and we will sooner rather than later) we will win the war. It will not be as painless as last time, which in turn was not as painless as most people think it was. Geez, this reminds me of the scene from Starship Troopers where the idiot teenage girl tells the instructor "My mother says violence never solves anything."

With all due respect: Can you name ONE thing Clinton did that made the economy flourish? Can you name ONE thing Bush did that hurt the economy? Do you understand how very little control a President really has over the economy either way? When it comes to the nation's economy, the President is a figurehead. He's basically the quarterback. If things go well during his term, he'll get the credit. If things go badly during his term, he'll get the blame. However, he will probably not have had much to do with either. If a President DID do anything that could have a real effect, that effect would take months or years to show up. The economy was tanking, for instance, when Bush took office. The EFFECTS showed up after he was in and Clinton out, that's all. RE: Rednecks: I am a redneck. I'm proud of it. We are a hardy, practical people. There are murdering scum in every region, class, region, or whatever. I love my pickup truck, my dogs, my old house, my garden, and my guns. You can have these things when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

Oh, lord, the Florida thing rears its ugly head once more. Look, it is simply not true that "Gore was winning, then all of a sudden he wasn't." The point was that Gore was NOT winning. The media analysts were projecting him as the winner, which is not nearly the same thing. When they were proven wrong and the talking heads put out retractions, there was a lot of confusion. Much of it was deliberate as network anchors didn't work very hard at making people understand that it had been their networks, and not the electoral officials, who had been declaring Gore the winner. There was a lot of fraudulent activity in that election, but none has been found in Florida unless you count Gore's chad-counting schemes. * St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis, like Chicago, is a lone but very large liberal enclave in a conservative state. Democrats in St. Louis got a liberal Democrat judge to declare that too many people were waiting in line at the polls and order that they be kept open past the 7:00 deadline. He did not set a deadline; he simply said that they would stay open until he was satisfied that everyone had had their fair chance to vote. Of course, this applied ONLY in St. Louis, which meant that while lots of conservative voters were turned away throughout the state after 7:00, the Democrats were still collecting votes in their most solid district until almost 9:00, when the Republicans finally found an appellate judge willing to put a stay on the order.

Actually, we consider ourselves above the horizon--meaning that we are the biggest target in the world. There are too many people worldwide who would love to fling our soldiers into prisons for nothing more than being Americans. What people forget is that the U.S. stated long ago that we would sign onto a court that included the same protections for our citizens as they would have under our Constitution. The easy thing would have been to incorporate those protections for everyone, but no one was willing to do that. We are aware of what most members of the U.N. would like to do with the U.S. if ever they got the chance.

Actually, we consider ourselves above the horizon--meaning that we are the biggest target in the world. There are too many people worldwide who would love to fling our soldiers into prisons for nothing more than being Americans. What people forget is that the U.S. stated long ago that we would sign onto a court that included the same protections for our citizens as they would have under our Constitution. The easy thing would have been to incorporate those protections for everyone, but no one was willing to do that. We are aware of what most members of the U.N. would like to do with the U.S. if ever they got the chance.

IA, this is not exactly fair--you haven't answered my question yet, and I asked first. But I'll play along. Your second question is easier. Criminals choose guns because guns are the best weapons they can find for their purposes. Guns are especially well-suited to armed robbery because they allow you to cover someone from outside fist range and control their actions. This is also, by the way, the reason I choose guns. Why do you suppose armed robbers choose to get away in cars and not on horseback? Shall we ban cars? Your first question is a bit more complicated, because I can't tell you now what I would do a year from now without knowing the situation. However, as a general rule: A gun is not a defense at all. It is one weapon, and in many circumstances it is the best one available. Clearly it can't solve all your problems, nor is it a magic talisman that will automatically make you safe. My first choice would be to defuse and, if that's not possible, escape. This includes the use of OC or other weapons that are used to "incapacitate" without harm. Second choice would be to fight using a firearm. A very, very distant third would be to fight without a firearm. You make a very common assumption, which is that if I want to carry a gun I must want to use it very badly or consider it the solution to my problems. I hear this a lot. It's not about wanting to use the gun one someone, it's about having the option should that become necessary. I can do anything with a gun on my belt that I could do without it (with the possible exception of boarding an airplane, although it's starting to look like you could do that too.) But without the gun, I no longer have the same options. There may never come a day when you need a firearm. However, like insurance, fire extinguishers and seat belts, I put up with it because if I ever DO need it, I'm going to need it VERY BADLY and my life may depend on it. By the way, according to the FBI's unified crime report, fighting back with a gun is statistically the safest thing you can do when assaulted or confronted by a criminal. Several times safer than fighting back with any other weapon, going along with the attacker and giving him what he wants, or fleeing. In short, I would "pull out my gun and shoot him" if I could not escape and if there was an opening. I see nothing wrong with this. He has threatened my life and I have every right to walk away and go home. If he won't let me, and is willing to threaten my life to keep me there, then I have the right to remove him as an obstacle and as a threat. If I can do this by talking him down, great. If I can get away from him, fine. If I can't, I will HAVE NO CHOICE but to fight. The only choice left will be how to fight. I choose to fight with the most effective weapon I can get my hands on. Now, Iron Arahat, will you answer my questions? Knowing you, I think you will. It's too bad you'll probably be the only one. _________________ ____________________________________ * Ignorant Taekwondo beginner. http://www.thefiringline.com [ This Message was edited by: Don Gwinn on 2002-07-08 08:13 ]

It's a he (well, I think . . . .) and I don't think so, considering he disarmed and snapped the necks of four soldiers armed with rifles at the end. But at least he doesn't squat down, gather his ki and make lightning crackle around him. THAT would be difficult to learn.

Lightsaber, definitely. Phasers would be nice, too. "You want my wallet? Ha! Phaser to stun! Zzzapp! Over here, officer!" "You want what? No, I'm very happy with my long-distance. . . no, really . . . no, I . . . aw, screw it. Phaser to kill!" Reasons you might need more than ten rounds for self defense: You might be attacked by more than one person. You might miss. Correction, you will PROBABLY miss. Your first rounds might hit with no effect. A friend of mine recently posted to thefiringline.com about something that happened to him last week. He normally carries a 9mm with 11 rounds, but on that day left it behind (it bothers his wife.) He and she piled 5 kids into their SUV and headed for dinner. In a nice neighborhood, they somehow managed to insult or disrespect 5 or 6 members of a gang in low Monte Carlo. The rambunctious lads pulled through two lawns to get around and in front of them, blocking their route, and then jumped out of the car. Numerous vile and threatening things were shouted at our hero, who was sitting in a blocked SUV with his wife and children and facing five pissed-off gangstas. This is not good. He did what he could to grovel and assure them that he had nothing but respect for thug life while frantically trying to get his wife to back out. She was frozen. One of the gangstas reached into the MC's backseat, which resolved my friend to put the truck in reverse himself and scream at his wife to hit the gas. After a few more moments of shock, she did and they got out. They were not pursued. Had those gangstas opened fire, he'd have been screwed. He'd have been only slightly less screwed with his normal carry pistol; ten rounds is two apiece with only one miss, and odds are that's not nearly enough. Even with more rounds he'd have been in deep Kim Chee. You do NOT want to be in a firefight against superior numbers with your wife and child in the car! But it would have been a fighting chance, had the groveling and escape route not worked out for him. Luckily, they did. He now carries all the time w/ 2 hicaps for a total of 31 rounds.

It is always easier to ban the possession of an object and proclaim that you have "done something" than to deal with a problem.

If it's against the rules, it's against the rules, but I'll never understand how kicking someone in the balls can be cheap in a sport where you can break their ribs and puncture their lungs as long as you're good enough to do it. Here we are discussing what it takes and whether it works to kick someone in the face but it's somehow "dirty" to throw the same kick to the groin. Obviously, agreeing to rules and then breaking them while your opponent follows them is cheap. But the kick itself?

I almost forgot to ask--what is Bigrokido?

Good lord. Weights are too high tech? Lifting heavy chunks of metal? Is it OK if I lift rocks (I'm not just being sarcastic, I really do lift rocks and I like it.) There are attributes you can develop better by doing very high numbers of bodyweight exercises than with lower reps at higher weights. However, to do those exercises because weights are too high tech or not spiritual enough is ridiculous. High numbers of bodyweight exercises can be good for endurance, balance, focus, etc. "Dinosaur training" with irregular objects like stones, barrels, logs and chains can be wonderful for developing functional strength, support muscle, and for grip strength. Those are valid reasons to use them. Being a Luddite is not.

No, no. The presentation of any fact or opinion you want to present is fine and, indeed, I want to hear it. However, I was under the impression that you were advocating laws that would limit my right freely to purchase, sell, own, carry and use guns even more than what I face today. If you have not been arguing for gun control, I apologize. If you have been arguing for gun control, you advocate using the power of government to force me to conform to your opinions of how the world ought to work. That's all I meant. I want you to speak your mind, but let's not kid ourselves about what you're saying. You're free to say it, but doing it is another matter entirely. I'm curious. What would all of you who "fear" or don't like guns do if attacked? Guns may be harder to get in Canada or Britain, but we all know it's a long way from impossible. As I said, I could manufacture a working firearm in half an hour in my garage; give me a few days and I can turn out a fully automatic submachine gun (they're actually simpler to make than semi-autos.) But I digress. Again, if you don't believe in guns, what would be your method of defense against, say, a mugger with a knife? Would you run? Would you fight him unarmed and hope you could beat a knife? Would you bring out your own knife, a baton, OC spray? Call 911 (police emergency number?)

Yep, I'd say all those are contributing factors. As I've said all along, if you feel better being unarmed vs unarmed, knife, pipe or whatever than you do armed with a firearm vs. unarmed, knife, pipe or gun, that's your business. You are certainly welcome to your opinion. The point where we disagree is when you try to force your opinion on me.

It's interesting. I prefer something simple over flash as well, which is why I enjoy watching Seagal move if not his acting. But that's exactly why I like Lee. Maybe I was raised with wirework and don't remember what it was like "pre-flash," but I think of Lee as a man who did all his own moves even if some of them were not realistic solutions to the fight at hand. I liked Crouching Tiger for a lot of reasons, but I hated watching the characters fly. I couldn't understand why that would be necessary to the story.

Please tell us what scene was shared with Chinese Connection! I have The Chinese Connection here on DVD, but not KOD. I'm getting close to renting it again just because this is bugging me.

Van Damme helped Chuck Norris do what in karate? Wasn't Van Damme probably in jr. high or younger back when Chuck Norris was winning national karate championships and co-starring with Bruce Lee? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, if this is common knowledge, I'm genuinely curious.

Working my way through Western Civilization, Vol. 1: Through 1715 by Jackson Spielvogel. I'm weak on the years of transition between the Roman empire and the Dark Ages and then between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment, so I'm enjoying this. "If you don't understand weapons, you don't understand fighting. If you don't understand fighting, you don't understand war. If you don't understand war, you don't understand history. If you don't understand history, you are lost." --Colonel Jeff Cooper, Ret.

How could he have been one of the greatest heroes ever? He's a worthless rapist. Sure, he was great at fighting, but that's pretty fleeting stuff. Had he stayed away after he came out of jail, he'd still be seen as a worthless rapist. Not many hero points in that, or have we really fallen that far?

Ahhhh. . . Johnny is still the king!

Now we're getting somewhere. Thank you, Iron Arahat, for addressing my points in an intelligent manner. I could lose an argument of this sort and still learn something. Your points: The answer is "not much." See Britain, where you can buy a Beretta submachine gun in London no questions asked for less than $300 American. Criminals only want guns in order to use them to commit much worse offenses than the illegal possession of a firearm, so they don't care much about deterrents to firearm ownership. Only people who consider themselves law-abiding citizens have a real reason to follow that sort of law. So the real question becomes how you stop those bad people from hurting others. The most immediate short-term solution is to encourage citizens to defend themselves as much as possible. Currently, we do the opposite. For more long-term results, raise employment, raise prosperity, lessen racial tension, and deal with drugs in a sane way. This would not include unthinkingly banning everything you don't like. Prohibition DOES NOT WORK. We have tried to prohibit alcohol, narcotics, and firearms. It has never worked, and the only way to bring it close to working is to create a police state. Absolutely. Without question. There are at least 75-90 million lawful gun owners in the U.S. and fewer than 1% of those will ever use a gun to commit a crime. Much fewer than 1% of firearms will ever be used in a crime, and that conclusion was reached with the assumption of each gun being used only once (it comes from the FBI Unified Crime Report from 1994.) It's actually a lot less than that, something on the order of .001%, but I can't find the exact numbers to do the math right now. The VAST majority of Americans are good and decent people who will never hurt anyone in their lives. I have a hard time believing those urban centers compare to places like New York, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, etc in size or density of population. Chicago: 7,750,000 New York: Close to 20,000,000 in 1996! Los Angelese: About 4,000,000 in the city itself, not counting suburbs. I did not mean that there is no diversity in Canada, only that it looks that way in comparison to the U.S. We have very deep and serious racial problems that go to the very center of who we are. We have entire communities based on nothing but race, and the gaps between white and black and white and hispanic are so wide as to cause huge turmoil. I myself live in a small town in central Illinois where there are NO black families. This is NOT because there are no black families in the area, but because black people are so badly treated in this town that none would ever choose to live here. In fact, I've never seen a black person get out of his car in this town. The last time it happened, three black teenagers pulled into one of our restaurants. Some schoolmates of mine began taunting them, things escalated from there, and there was a large fight. Several of my schoolmates got a much-deserved beating out of that one, but of course those guys will never come back here. Why should they? On the flipside, my TKD instructor grew up as a white kid in East St. Louis, which was how he learned to brawl long before TKD. If you're white in those areas, there's no other choice. I'm sure there a lot of places in Canada where this happens, but in the U.S., it's everywhere. You can't get away from it. You are left with no choice but to deal with it. We find that the cities with the worst gun control tend to be the worst hellholes when it comes to crime as well. Chicago and Washington, D.C, for instance, totally prohibit firearms and ammunition for all intents and purposes and they vie each year for murder capital of the U.S. (Chicago won last year with 666, a record *EDIT: they're on pace to break that number this year; before, I mistakenly said they had already surpassed it.) In these cities, gun crimes have not stopped, but self-defense with guns basically has. I also notice that Illinois, with much stricter gun controls on both ownership and bearing of arms than its neighbors Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky, Indiana, and Wisconsin, has violent crime, murder, rape and robbery rates much higher than any of these. I do not suggest that gun control has caused these high crime rates. I simply point out that it has done nothing to alleviate them, and yet all I hear are calls for more. Indiana, in particular, is much more peaceful and safe than Illinois. It allows ownership of pretty much anything (including machine guns or those short-barrelled shotguns we were discussing earlier) and allows "shall-issue" concealed carry. This means that anyone who meets the state-set guidelines cannot be denied a permit. Basically, anyone over 21 with no history of crime or mental illness. If guns cause crime, why does the place with more guns in more places have less crime? [ This Message was edited by: Don Gwinn on 2002-07-07 17:10 ]