Morality and Weapons

[Guest]

So the guy you know, was in a bar where he felt the need to carry a blade, and sure enough he was attacked by two people.........can you see where I'm going with this?

Look to bring this all back to Little Apple's question. If you are a woman who is minding her own business and really happens to be that unlucky to face 5 big guys then yes of course, grab the meanest fcking weapon you can find and do whatever it takes to come out alive. My point was twofold:

- If you are smart and lead a normal life it is incredibly unlikely you will ever face that scenario
- If you do for whatever reason, then weapon or no weapon I think it is equally unlikely you will prevail

You can call that cynical, from experience I believe its just reality.

[Odd-toed]

I think that if you carry a weapon you are pretty much opening yourself up to your opponents and giving them the opportunity to use it against you! Unless you are seriously sh*t hot at using a weapon then you have immediately introduced a lethal object into a situation which the opponents facing you may not have even thought of, and you just handed it to them on the plate. In this situation your heart will be going nuts, you will be dealing with all kinds of emotions and feelings and if you seriously believe you can pull this off then I want to train with you!

As a woman I carry a metal kubitan and I do have more lethal weapons in my car (!?! – there is a logic there I promise), I have spent a long time learning how to use my kubitan because although I known this can be used against me, but here’s another woman’s logic, I view the kubitan as less lethal than a knife, all I want to be able to do is hurt the opponents enough to leg it, not kill them and a knife immediately puts that situation on the table. My view is you carry a knife you have the intension of using it and knife fights can go very very wrong, very very quickly! and you could end up killing someone instead of just hurting them.

Introduce any weapon into an already emotionally charged situation you will always run the risk of it being used against you.

[Garland]

Most situations can be avoided through common sense...others can be avoided through the use of good communication skills (knowing how to be assertive, yet assuage another party...or be able to present yourself with an air of strength to dissuade would be assailants.)

Still...if you are unlucky, unfortunate, or living the type of lifestyle that raises the odds...you need to smarten up, and -to quote Chopper Read- "harden the **** up".

I certainly think that somebody who knows how to use a weapon can easily get out of a situation with multiple, larger attackers...

Cut and run. If you know the slightest bit about weapon retention, and you are aggressive enough to actually use the weapon instead of holding it out to be taken, then...yeah...you should be able to escape from that type of a situation.

If you jump up the level of force on a group of assailants who didn't think they'd have to deal with one of their friends bleeding out, you've essentially turned the tables on them psychologically. There goes their espirite de corps, their morale. Make them worry about getting their buddies to the hospital.

The whole thing is- YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO GO THERE. Don't carry a knife if you won't use it...because they might be willing to use it on you, and they will likely overpower you and take strip it from you.

[Little Apple]

Good responses! To clarify my example: When I told guys to picture fighting multiple opponents who were all at least 2 weight classes above them, I was trying to drive home the reality of the size ratio that a woman would face. You guys are bigger than us.

I very much agree with you all that the first step to staying safe is to not put yourself in dangerous situations.

I also personally think that if you are trained in a weapon, and willing to use it, you are better off having it if you are out numbered. Like I said: one of the big reasons I don't carry a knife is that I don't think my skill (or lack thereof) warrants it.

So what are your opinions on Mace? The spray of course, not the spiky club. I personally don't see any moral reasons not to use it. But I'm not sure it has much fear power, and I feel like people would be more willing to try overpowering a woman with Mace than a woman with with a knife or something.

[Garland]

My opinion on mace and other chemical sprays like OC are that they just aren't enough by themselves to stop anyone who seriously wants to harm you.

Amen. In fact...let's see some demonstrations of this point...

[YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=iUOaUoUrnNE[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=kbNa3aCA2T0[/YOUTUBE]
funny dialogue...

[DickHardman]

i always carry a knife on me, if not two. just in case, i mean you never know right?

a friend of mine asked me why i carry a knife, i told him for self defense. i the asked him why he didnt carry one. and he told me that he gets emotional and stupid during confrontations, and that he knew that if he were to carry one there would be a chance of him using it on someone over something stupid, so he he refrained from carrying any kind of weapon. this guy doesnt train.

i asked another friend of mine why he doesnt carry anythig for self defense. he told me that he had had a gun a pulled on him 3 times in his youth, each time it was someone taking his money. he told me that each time, he made it home safe because he did not fight back and complied with the robber, and that he feels carrying a weapon or trying to use one may just end up getting him killed instead. he has no training but has been in a number of serious fights and bad situations.

[DickHardman]

i just ordered one of these...


[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFDyeOnh6SI[/YOUTUBE]

[Little Apple]

And there we have the word on pepper spray ladies and gentlemen. Good info guys, thank you!

Where did the women go on this forum? I've heard lots of comments on weapons from the other women in the past.

But back to the morality question. I know this is one that may never be resolved, but: Is it morally right to carry a lethal weapon? Leave aside for now whether or not the person is going to be damaged emotionally forever. When there are so many bare handed systems one could learn that would keep you safe, should we be out there using firearms or blades?

[DickHardman]

And there we have the word on pepper spray ladies and gentlemen. Good info guys, thank you!

Where did the women go on this forum? I've heard lots of comments on weapons from the other women in the past.

But back to the morality question. I know this is one that may never be resolved, but: Is it morally right to carry a lethal weapon? Leave aside for now whether or not the person is going to be damaged emotionally forever. When there are so many bare handed systems one could learn that would keep you safe, should we be out there using firearms or blades?

let me remind what kind of people lurk out there....


[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuhP2Y18CkI[/YOUTUBE]

[DickHardman]

[DickHardman]

[DickHardman]

The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in the Mid-Atlantic United States. As ten people were killed and three others critically injured in and around Washington, D.C., in various locations throughout the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia, it was widely speculated that a single sniper was using the Capital Beltway for travel, possibly in a white van or truck. It was later learned that the rampage was perpetrated by two men, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, driving a blue Chevrolet Caprice sedan, and had apparently begun the month before with murders and robbery in Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia which had resulted in three deaths. An earlier spree for which the pair was responsible had killed victims in California, Arizona, and Texas, for a total of 16 deaths identified as of March 2007.

[Garland]

The only moral or ethical question left after that is, "Is the right to self-preservation unethical?" and I don't think it's unethical at all.

I've heard interesting philisophical debates on these types of ethical questions...using nothing but objective and analytical "logic" by itself would bring you to some surprising conclusions... (by logic I'm referring to utilitarian ethics...as it seems to embody the end goal of the best possible scenario for the most people, I however enjoy more...romantic notions of free agency, passion, and libertine antimorality to some extent...hopefully these thought games will show you why I feel that ethics are grossely unnatural.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plank_of_Carneades

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_survival_lottery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_High_and_Letting_Die

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violinist_%28thought_experiment%29

have fun.

[Garland]

Who's your money on in the end?

The person who gets to the other one first, irregardless of whatever training or if one of them has a weapon. Whoever is the "sharpest" in terms of foresight, quickest to act, with the worst intent. Whoever stops the action before it begins.

... [YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=O6bjZSSJdJc[/YOUTUBE]

[Garland]

In my opinion, that's the real danger of tying to analyze human beings (highly emotional and irrational beings) using systems of logic and reason as a basis of study. People and any analysis of them that's to be trusted must include allowances for seeming paradoxes. in other words, you have to accept that perhaps the "natural human instinct" is to irrationally put the group ahead of the self in some cases. You also have to allow for the notion that sometimes we just don't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Which, by the way, is why people need good answers based in morals and ethics the instant they decide that morals and ethics are important to them.

I like to use gun laws as an example. Consider:

1. The Fifth Amendment makes it illegal to require someone to provide testimony against himself - the right to remain silent and refuse self-incrimination is guaranteed.
2. The purchase of guns requires the filling out of a form that asks the purchaser if he is a felon.
3. It is a felony to lie on a federal form of this type.

That means:

The crook is allowed to lie on the form, because to admit he is a felon is to incriminate himself in both the crime of buying the firearm and the crime of falsifying the document. Another way, he's allowed to own an illegal gun, because owning one legally would require two instances of self-incrimination.

Obviously, that's a crap argument and the guy is going to jail for having the gun in the first place, regardless of how he came to own it. However, it shows how the legal mechanisms are in direct opposition to one another.

Another common logical failure is what's called the liar's paradox. It's the one that says:

"This sentence is false"

Or, if you prefer to avoid self-reference (you formal logic bastard, you)

"The following sentence is false."
"The preceding sentence is true."

Can't work. You have to allow for those intangibles like the limitations of language (which is why logic spun right the hell out of the realm of argumentation - it's Aristotle-based root) and into "symbol logic" which frankly has almost no bearing on how people interact or perceive anything.

In terms of morals, they are self-fulfilling necessities. As soon as someone decides that they require a moral structure, they do. You can't reason them out of it. Much like God, it is a faith that they've chosen and accepted, often at the deepest level possible. Worse still, it's even more subjective than religion. Religions at least have common dogmas. Moral codes are almost entirely individual. All you can do in cases of moral dilemmas is to offer options and trust that the person asking will take or leave whatever they see fit.

Ding ding ding...right on the money, as usual.

Oddly enough...I've been reading a book that kind of touches on linguistic determinism (how language creates the lenses we use, and the way in which we percieve the world) and how the word falls short of all physical truths. Of course, the book is a wee-bit on the Japanese side, and hence grasps onto all the "physical life is beautiful because of it's transcient nature" shit...but it's worth reading.