Student knocking out a bully?

[Ueshirokarate]

It is pretty simple and straight forward to me. Bullying is offensive and aggressive behavior. From the sounds of it, this has been going on for some time and the kid just had enough. I would want to find out exactly what happened. From a martial arts perspective, avoidance of conflict is optimal. However, we are talking about young kids and pretty much the law of the jungle when adults aren't around. I remember these years all too well.

If the child waited until a physical action by the bully and then responded, well then it is all on the bully. I see no fault on the part of the student at all. If the student took physical action first, then that is another matter. That said, in Matsubayashi (and I am sure in a lot of other styles), we learn to block things and the blocks are painful to the attacker. They should be sufficient to deter most from further action and I would focus my young students upon such defensive tactics. As someone mentioned earlier, knocking out someone can be very dangerous and we want our students to understand that as martial artists we have many tools at our disposal and we need to reserve ourselves as much as possible.

[shadowspawn]

In our school, if all they did was knock them out, they probably weren't using their karate. We put an emphasis on striking vitals and other vulnerable areas that would kill/cripple/maim the other person for life. It's kind of like giving them a gun. If all they did was knock them out with the gun, it could have been magnitudes worse if they used it the way they were taught to.

[MasterPain]

In our school, if all they did was knock them out, they probably weren't using their karate. We put an emphasis on striking vitals and other vulnerable areas that would kill/cripple/maim the other person for life. It's kind of like giving them a gun. If all they did was knock them out with the gun, it could have been magnitudes worse if they used it the way they were taught to.

You don't teach varying levels of force depending on the situation? Someone tries to take your lunch money, so you crush his treachea?!

I'm all for having a lethal or maiming option for the rare occasion when it would be needed, but to have no other response pattern is irresponsible.

[Ueshirokarate]

In our school, if all they did was knock them out, they probably weren't using their karate. We put an emphasis on striking vitals and other vulnerable areas that would kill/cripple/maim the other person for life. It's kind of like giving them a gun. If all they did was knock them out with the gun, it could have been magnitudes worse if they used it the way they were taught to.

You don't teach varying levels of force depending on the situation? Someone tries to take your lunch money, so you crush his treachea?!

I'm all for having a lethal or maiming option for the rare occasion when it would be needed, but to have no other response pattern is irresponsible.

What's wrong with snapping a guys neck for taking your chewing gum?

[shadowspawn]

In our school, if all they did was knock them out, they probably weren't using their karate. We put an emphasis on striking vitals and other vulnerable areas that would kill/cripple/maim the other person for life. It's kind of like giving them a gun. If all they did was knock them out with the gun, it could have been magnitudes worse if they used it the way they were taught to.

You don't teach varying levels of force depending on the situation? Someone tries to take your lunch money, so you crush his treachea?!

I'm all for having a lethal or maiming option for the rare occasion when it would be needed, but to have no other response pattern is irresponsible.

The closest thing are forms of restraint that we borrowed from aikido. That requires an initial attack to execute though and is not really suited for self-defense as it is a pretty basic idea. It's more suited for restraining someone you do not want to hurt but is presenting somewhat of a threat to yourself or others. A good example is a member of your family coming home drunk and acting erratic/violent and you want to restrain them until they come to their senses. Regarding the bully scenario, we try to avoid teaching anyone under the age of 16 because of that idea. It's similar to putting a gun in a kid's hand. You can give the kid all the gun safety training in the world (teaching them how to avoid confrontations altogether, etc.) but it would still be pretty ridiculous to give a 7 year old a gun (unless you're like some kind of terrorist rebel who trains kids to fight governments). We also do have some methods of disabling them (due to one of our students being a cop) such as striking pressure points that send muscles into spasms or knocking them out with a hook or something, but it is far from our primary concern. Our philosophy could be considered something like "If you want to fight, go to the gym and learn to box" since the whole idea of us teaching karate is for them not to use it. Kind of like when people go to the shooting range to fire a 9mm. Sure you teach them how to aim and shoot in a life/death situation but you don't give them rubber bullets and start telling them to shoot anyone who wants to fight you. While I do agree that crushing their throat isn't the solution to everything, I do not believe that people should be fighting at all if they have a choice. But there will always be those people who do choose to fight. To those people, I can only be glad they didn't kill the person. But I'm not gonna teach someone to fight someone without killing them to encourage that kind of behavior. To me it seems like you're giving them the green light to fight someone whenever they're provoked since they have non-lethal ways of "subduing" an opponent. I suppose we do have one "non-lethal" way of dealing with bullies though (not that many of our students would have to put up with them due to the age restriction). Kick 'em in the nads and run like hell. Mainly taught to women due to the increased risk of sexual predators these days.

[MasterPain]

I think you are seriously overestimating the stopping power of bare hands.

Apart from that, why should Aiki be defense only? Like the warrior lady on Conan the Destroyer said "Grab him, and take him." I'm sure she would mean that in a combative sense as well.

[Ueshirokarate]

I think you are seriously overestimating the stopping power of bare hands.

Apart from that, why should Aiki be defense only? Like the warrior lady on Conan the Destroyer said "Grab him, and take him." I'm sure she would mean that in a combative sense as well.

Just throw a chi ball at the guy. Who needs bare hands?

Nt srs.