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Garland Hummel Self Defense
I was slightly taken aback when I was told that the paper for this class consisted of writing a review of a martial arts movie and how an aspect of it applied to self defense. It wasn’t that I would have had a hard time finding an example to wax metaphorical over how this or that technique out of a Sonny Chiba, Bruce Lee, or Tony Jaa flick may or may not have worked in terms of a practical fight, or how a particular scenario seemed typical of actual street violence per such and such statistical information or research on pre-conflict cues (the behaviors criminals or even drunks may exhibit before an assault), or even the gruesome and terrifying (but very improbable) horror and do-or-die mentality that encompasses a nightmare scenario like that in David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises,” wherein a Russian mafioso is cornered naked in a bath house by two carpet knife wielding assailants intent on taking his life.
Instead of taking the seemingly obvious routes, I am choosing to write on the hard lessons about physical violence I found in a very unlikely place, a Disney/Pixar movie. In the opening half hour of the movie Up, the viewer is brought up to speed in a series of expositional scenes that show the key points of the man’s life; he sees an old movie newsreel that shapes his personal fable and life dream of being an explorer, he meets a young lady with similar interests and falls in love, they marry and make their childhood playhouse into their home, (a once dilapidated building they spruce up that becomes key to the plot later in the story as the man anthropomorphizes it and identifies it as being the same as his dead wife and at the same time their shared dream as a way to cope with his grief) his wife is barren and unable to have children after a miscarraige (yes, this is a Disney movie) after which he tries to console her by setting up a small fund to save up for their shared childhood dream of traveling and exploration, they end up dipping into the savings over the course of their life together as they grow old, the wife succumbs to illness and old age just as the old man is able to buy a pair of tickets to fulfill their lifelong dream, leaving the man alone and alienated in the world with only his memories of his wife, the house they built together, and their unfulfilled goals.
The trouble starts as a group of developers try and buy out the old man’s house and he refuses to sell. Apparently unphased by this, and realizing that it won’t be long until the man dies from his ever advancing age, they begin construction around his house. Despite some minor verbal hostilities between the curmudgeon and some tactless construction workers, the man carries out his life peaceably in solitude until one day when a reckless backhoe operator crashes into a particularily sentimental mailbox. The old man confronts the hapless and clumsy laborer who is fumbling wretchedly with the mailbox trying to put it back. The old man attempts to wrench the mailbox from the worker and a small tug-of-war ensues, ending with the old man, out of desperation and a quick flare of the temper, striking the man lightly with his cane and causing him to be cut.
Needless to say, this results in the old man being taken off by the police in handcuffs and a brief courtroom scene where he is deemed “senile and dangerous to the community” and essentially sentenced to live out the rest of his years in an assisted living home. The story progresses with him finding a clever Pixar way to abscond the scene and find his Disney ending, but in many ways left me in that courthouse scene along with that colorful cartoon character with a kindred pain in my heart and a knot in my stomach.
Often times in the martial arts and self-defense (even the modern catch phrase-esque RSBD, or reality based self defense) camps you hear quotes and maxims thrown around with bravado and machismo that seem to make light of the legal ramifications of using force to defend yourself in an encounter. Some of the more common ones I have heard are “Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six,” and the more colorful ones such as “No one has ever gotten out of a grave on parole or had a shortened death for good behavior.” and “You made the choice and I have to live with it. (on the back of a t-shirt put out by a so-called RBSD camp teaching how to use a knife in “self defense”, the front shows a characature of a person holding a knife dripping with blood over a prostrate assailant.) These phrases are catchy and they skirt the point that there are dire legal consqeuences of learning and applying self defense techniques, but they are jingoistic and almost mocking to those who have ended up in legal trouble in defending themselves.
The news is full of accounts like those of a recent Johns Hopkins Chemistry major killing a burglar in his home with a sword after the man lunged at him when he went to investigate a crashing sound being detained by police, luckily in this case the criminal‘s rap sheet helped secure the student‘s freedom. It has become increasingly common and endemic in our society that an individual can be charged with murder or assault if they successfully choose to defend themselves against an invader to their home, a would-be-rapist, or even somebody attempting to mug them. Our society is litigious and as is expertly put by a friend, “run by cowards with pencils” :
I find that too many martial artists are so afraid of the legal issues that they are afraid to do anything. Certainly there is good reason to be concerned because the possibility exists that you may face legal, civil, or social persecutions for having won. Unfortunately, the world is run by cowards who can never do what you did and the very fact that people like you exist make them nervous.
But this fear of legal persecuting can cause you to hesitate and hesitation is a killer. You need to understand the rules of engagement and how to handle the after action scrutiny—how to handle the police and the interview, have a lawyer on retainer if you can afford one or at least know who you will call (someone you have already researched and is experienced at handling criminal defense cases), have a plan to protect your assists in the event that cowards with pencils come looking for you. (D.N.)
Unfortunately sometimes the martial arts, especially those geared for combative are also “sold” with a theology of paranoia that becomes pervasive within the person’s worldview and allows for them to jump the cognitive hoops necessary to murder somebody in what should have been a self defense situation. This is almost always out of fear instead of malice, and usually involves either those who dabble slightly in the art and fancy themselves as some sort of ninja badass commando (see the Dale Gribbel character in King of the Hill) and become hung up on all things “tactical” (my Marine buddy has a very un-P.C. term for this archetype of individual, astutely calling them “gear queers”…and also un-P.C. calls them “pussies with guns in their hands.”) or those who are NOT delusional and probably for all intents and purposes are well meaning and well adjusted human beings simply (mis)assess a poor situation in the heat of the moment.
I don’t know which one of these personality types I fashioned on the spot makes up the personage of Isiah Umali, a pracitioner of Atienza Kali (similar to Sayoc Kali, which is marketed, unfortunately, as a killing and combative art…which it very much is, simply bringing to the table the moral and ethical questions surrounding teaching people how to kill…[it is true anyone can kill anyone with a knife with no training, but teaching somebody how to do it systematically and efficiently is ethically questionable and with little utility to the common person.}) who killed a bouncer who was choking out his friend in a third party defense situation by slicing his femoral artery with his EDC (every day carry, refers to a weapon or even a multitude of weapons you carry on your person every day, “just in-case”). After the incident, Umali fled the scene, and later attempted to slash his wrists out of grief and the psychological shock of having taken a life as well as having ruined his own. Bungling the job (apparently the radial and ulnar arteries were harder to hit than the deep femoral) Mr. Umali is now sitting in prison for murder and suffers from horrible Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The whole problem lies in defining “self defense” in legal terms, which is much more complicated than a simple yet ubiquitous definition in a law book, and instead lies somewhat between the story the police officers on the scene manage to concoct out of whatever statement you shouldn’t give them and the stories of other witnesses (talking only to your lawyer is the best bet that nothing you say will be twisted or taken out of context and used against you), the character assassination carried out against you by the prosecution (aided perhaps by any martial arts training you have, any weapons you have in your home or on your body at the time of the arrest, books and movies that depict martial arts or anything they can frame as violent, and my prayers go out to you if you have a prior record), and whatever your lawyer or (again, my heart goes out to you in our pay-to-play legal system) your public defender can do on your behalf.
Knowing that justice is blind allows one to be forewarned, and therefore fore-armed. Knowing what constitutes assault in your state, as well as battery, what types of weapons you can carry legally, how you can carry your weapons legally and with what permits, knowing in a general sense the circumstances in which deploying a weapon CAN be (not that it will be) considered lawful, and researching a good lawyer to defend you if and when the worst happens could very well save your life and your future as much as any amount of training in any system of martial arts.
To close, I would like to encourage anyone who is reading this to replace those old maxims with a new one, one that somebody who’s opinion I have come to respect over the years told me, “Courage is the ability to do the right thing instead of the easy thing.” A vital and essential aspect of the martial arts is self-discipline and humility, a message apparently lost to a unfortunately vocal minority of mixed martial artists and their fans. Courage is not having the hubris to puff out your chest instead of verbally diffuse a situation, or get shot trying to catch up with somebody who bumped your car (see Alex Gong). Courage is wanting to provide for your family and be there for them, preserving yourself to that end more likely at the cost of your ego over the cost of your freedom. Courage is not falling prey to the “by-stander effect” and falls on a spectrum that spans from acting to help others if it is helping a disabled individual cross the street to knowingly risking your life and freedom preventing a rape or a murder if you can. Courage is letting things slide that hurt the pride, but forcing ones’ self to act through fear when it’s really needed.
Garland Hummel Self Defense
I was slightly taken aback when I was told that the paper for this class consisted of writing a review of a martial arts movie and how an aspect of it applied to self defense. It wasn’t that I would have had a hard time finding an example to wax metaphorical over how this or that technique out of a Sonny Chiba, Bruce Lee, or Tony Jaa flick may or may not have worked in terms of a practical fight, or how a particular scenario seemed typical of actual street violence per such and such statistical information or research on pre-conflict cues (the behaviors criminals or even drunks may exhibit before an assault), or even the gruesome and terrifying (but very improbable) horror and do-or-die mentality that encompasses a nightmare scenario like that in David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises,” wherein a Russian mafioso is cornered naked in a bath house by two carpet knife wielding assailants intent on taking his life.
Instead of taking the seemingly obvious routes, I am choosing to write on the hard lessons about physical violence I found in a very unlikely place, a Disney/Pixar movie. In the opening half hour of the movie Up, the viewer is brought up to speed in a series of expositional scenes that show the key points of the man’s life; he sees an old movie newsreel that shapes his personal fable and life dream of being an explorer, he meets a young lady with similar interests and falls in love, they marry and make their childhood playhouse into their home, (a once dilapidated building they spruce up that becomes key to the plot later in the story as the man anthropomorphizes it and identifies it as being the same as his dead wife and at the same time their shared dream as a way to cope with his grief) his wife is barren and unable to have children after a miscarraige (yes, this is a Disney movie) after which he tries to console her by setting up a small fund to save up for their shared childhood dream of traveling and exploration, they end up dipping into the savings over the course of their life together as they grow old, the wife succumbs to illness and old age just as the old man is able to buy a pair of tickets to fulfill their lifelong dream, leaving the man alone and alienated in the world with only his memories of his wife, the house they built together, and their unfulfilled goals.
The trouble starts as a group of developers try and buy out the old man’s house and he refuses to sell. Apparently unphased by this, and realizing that it won’t be long until the man dies from his ever advancing age, they begin construction around his house. Despite some minor verbal hostilities between the curmudgeon and some tactless construction workers, the man carries out his life peaceably in solitude until one day when a reckless backhoe operator crashes into a particularily sentimental mailbox. The old man confronts the hapless and clumsy laborer who is fumbling wretchedly with the mailbox trying to put it back. The old man attempts to wrench the mailbox from the worker and a small tug-of-war ensues, ending with the old man, out of desperation and a quick flare of the temper, striking the man lightly with his cane and causing him to be cut.
Needless to say, this results in the old man being taken off by the police in handcuffs and a brief courtroom scene where he is deemed “senile and dangerous to the community” and essentially sentenced to live out the rest of his years in an assisted living home. The story progresses with him finding a clever Pixar way to abscond the scene and find his Disney ending, but in many ways left me in that courthouse scene along with that colorful cartoon character with a kindred pain in my heart and a knot in my stomach.
Often times in the martial arts and self-defense (even the modern catch phrase-esque RSBD, or reality based self defense) camps you hear quotes and maxims thrown around with bravado and machismo that seem to make light of the legal ramifications of using force to defend yourself in an encounter. Some of the more common ones I have heard are “Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six,” and the more colorful ones such as “No one has ever gotten out of a grave on parole or had a shortened death for good behavior.” and “You made the choice and I have to live with it. (on the back of a t-shirt put out by a so-called RBSD camp teaching how to use a knife in “self defense”, the front shows a characature of a person holding a knife dripping with blood over a prostrate assailant.) These phrases are catchy and they skirt the point that there are dire legal consqeuences of learning and applying self defense techniques, but they are jingoistic and almost mocking to those who have ended up in legal trouble in defending themselves.
The news is full of accounts like those of a recent Johns Hopkins Chemistry major killing a burglar in his home with a sword after the man lunged at him when he went to investigate a crashing sound being detained by police, luckily in this case the criminal‘s rap sheet helped secure the student‘s freedom. It has become increasingly common and endemic in our society that an individual can be charged with murder or assault if they successfully choose to defend themselves against an invader to their home, a would-be-rapist, or even somebody attempting to mug them. Our society is litigious and as is expertly put by a friend, “run by cowards with pencils” :
I find that too many martial artists are so afraid of the legal issues that they are afraid to do anything. Certainly there is good reason to be concerned because the possibility exists that you may face legal, civil, or social persecutions for having won. Unfortunately, the world is run by cowards who can never do what you did and the very fact that people like you exist make them nervous.
But this fear of legal persecuting can cause you to hesitate and hesitation is a killer. You need to understand the rules of engagement and how to handle the after action scrutiny—how to handle the police and the interview, have a lawyer on retainer if you can afford one or at least know who you will call (someone you have already researched and is experienced at handling criminal defense cases), have a plan to protect your assists in the event that cowards with pencils come looking for you. (D.N.)
Unfortunately sometimes the martial arts, especially those geared for combative are also “sold” with a theology of paranoia that becomes pervasive within the person’s worldview and allows for them to jump the cognitive hoops necessary to murder somebody in what should have been a self defense situation. This is almost always out of fear instead of malice, and usually involves either those who dabble slightly in the art and fancy themselves as some sort of ninja badass commando (see the Dale Gribbel character in King of the Hill) and become hung up on all things “tactical” (my Marine buddy has a very un-P.C. term for this archetype of individual, astutely calling them “gear queers”…and also un-P.C. calls them “pussies with guns in their hands.”) or those who are NOT delusional and probably for all intents and purposes are well meaning and well adjusted human beings simply (mis)assess a poor situation in the heat of the moment.
I don’t know which one of these personality types I fashioned on the spot makes up the personage of Isiah Umali, a pracitioner of Atienza Kali (similar to Sayoc Kali, which is marketed, unfortunately, as a killing and combative art…which it very much is, simply bringing to the table the moral and ethical questions surrounding teaching people how to kill…[it is true anyone can kill anyone with a knife with no training, but teaching somebody how to do it systematically and efficiently is ethically questionable and with little utility to the common person.}) who killed a bouncer who was choking out his friend in a third party defense situation by slicing his femoral artery with his EDC (every day carry, refers to a weapon or even a multitude of weapons you carry on your person every day, “just in-case”). After the incident, Umali fled the scene, and later attempted to slash his wrists out of grief and the psychological shock of having taken a life as well as having ruined his own. Bungling the job (apparently the radial and ulnar arteries were harder to hit than the deep femoral) Mr. Umali is now sitting in prison for murder and suffers from horrible Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The whole problem lies in defining “self defense” in legal terms, which is much more complicated than a simple yet ubiquitous definition in a law book, and instead lies somewhat between the story the police officers on the scene manage to concoct out of whatever statement you shouldn’t give them and the stories of other witnesses (talking only to your lawyer is the best bet that nothing you say will be twisted or taken out of context and used against you), the character assassination carried out against you by the prosecution (aided perhaps by any martial arts training you have, any weapons you have in your home or on your body at the time of the arrest, books and movies that depict martial arts or anything they can frame as violent, and my prayers go out to you if you have a prior record), and whatever your lawyer or (again, my heart goes out to you in our pay-to-play legal system) your public defender can do on your behalf.
Knowing that justice is blind allows one to be forewarned, and therefore fore-armed. Knowing what constitutes assault in your state, as well as battery, what types of weapons you can carry legally, how you can carry your weapons legally and with what permits, knowing in a general sense the circumstances in which deploying a weapon CAN be (not that it will be) considered lawful, and researching a good lawyer to defend you if and when the worst happens could very well save your life and your future as much as any amount of training in any system of martial arts.
To close, I would like to encourage anyone who is reading this to replace those old maxims with a new one, one that somebody who’s opinion I have come to respect over the years told me, “Courage is the ability to do the right thing instead of the easy thing.” A vital and essential aspect of the martial arts is self-discipline and humility, a message apparently lost to a unfortunately vocal minority of mixed martial artists and their fans. Courage is not having the hubris to puff out your chest instead of verbally diffuse a situation, or get shot trying to catch up with somebody who bumped your car (see Alex Gong). Courage is wanting to provide for your family and be there for them, preserving yourself to that end more likely at the cost of your ego over the cost of your freedom. Courage is not falling prey to the “by-stander effect” and falls on a spectrum that spans from acting to help others if it is helping a disabled individual cross the street to knowingly risking your life and freedom preventing a rape or a murder if you can. Courage is letting things slide that hurt the pride, but forcing ones’ self to act through fear when it’s really needed.
that had the students slash the hands of the guy holding a knife (defang the snake) and then stab the chest of the now unarmed person.
. If you carry any weapons: baton, knife, gun. And you just get into a altercation (not even a fight most of the people don't consider it a fight unless it could be life threatening) you could be completely in the right and if the cops show up and find a weapon on you. Bang you are not the focus of their attention. This might not land you in trouble but it could cause you some aggravation. What if you have a record. What if its illegal. The lesson was if you carry you have to really pussy up on all minor stuff to avoid the hassle.
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