Scholar | Fighter | Activist
On this final night of Chanukah, it should be remembered that the Festival of Lights is not simply about abstract Light, nor hypothetical Darkness. If the Hamas Pogrom of October 7th has taught us nothing else, it should be that from the Seleucids to Hamas, …
Hamas murdered 10-month-old Kfir Bibas. I knew this the second they refused to disclose any information on him. I knew this when they refused to present any video proof that he was still alive – for so long. I knew from the start, in fact, …
Recently, the “Student” organization rumored to be funded by Muslim Brotherhood front groups, organized what they claimed was a “Free Gaza” rally. Naturally, Jewish community leaders warned their congregants to steer clear of these rallies – understanding them to be hotbeds of antisemitism and violence.
Just as naturally, this was like an activism “Bat Signal” to me. Though I went with several Jewish women who recorded from afar (each of these women who would not fit the normal phenotypic expectations the “Free Gaza” outrage hounds. Ironically and humorously, each of these women, diverse in appearance, would be told to “stay away from the Jew” as they recorded my interactions with hundreds of foaming-at-the-mouth “protesters.”
But first, let’s look at who the “student” group that organized this Pro-Hamas rally actually is…
At first, it struck me as odd that this group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), was able to assemble throngs of protesters the day after the October 7th Hamas Pogrom. I was in Columbus then, as in the case of the counter-protesting described in this article, as I am most Sundays – training with one of my martial arts instructors (this one having been my instructor for the better part of two decades). After training, my wife and I went to pick up some vegan burgers and almond milk shakes at Shake Shack, on High Street. While waiting for our order, I saw this massive rally make its way down the street.
“Who organized this?” I darted out, quickly to ask.
“We are Students for Justice in Palestine!” an excited young lady exclaimed.
Interesting, I thought. I have been deeply immersed in just about every intersectional nook and cranny of activism, from the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! to organizing the armed protests against the Stanford Rapist, Brock Turner, to organizing years of protests for John Crawford III in Beavercreek, Ohio, to – like I said – just about anything you could thing of. Certainly, I have been to my fair share of Pro-Palestinian protests, in the United States and the State of Israel alike. This activity went back to the 1990s. Yet I have never known a protest of such a magnitude that could be assembled literally overnight.
This was a major red flag. Obviously, it would not be prudent for me to make a formal accusation, such as suggesting they had some foreknowledge of the Hamas Pogrom, which led to them organizing this “Free Gaza” march, before a single bomb had been dropped, or a single Israel Defense Forces boot stepped on Gazan soil.
So I’m not saying that… per se – but I am saying that the thought certainly arose as to whether there might be something there. Again, there is simply no way a protest of that size could have just been organized overnight with a turn out like that. It doesn’t happen. People need to schedule off for work, baby sitters, and sometimes people simply have other plans that cannot be changed at the last minute. Again, there had been no bomb dropped yet, and here was SJP, with this massive march down High Street, just a day after the Hamas Pogrom.
“Curious,” I thought. “Curious.”
For well over a decade, various Jewish institutions have filed complaints and published reports against the SJP, alleging Muslim Brotherhood-linked funding and connections with academics.
The SJP founder, Hatem Bazian, is a professor at University of California–Berkeley (because of course he is). While still a student himself, Bazian was reportedly a member of the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Muslim Students Association, two well-documented outgrowths of the Ikhwan al-Muslimin terror organization, known in English as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas itself, it should be remembered, emerged in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising, or intifadhah, as an outgrowth of the Ikhwan’s Palestinian branch. These connections are not simply academic footnotes. They are clear breadcrumbs that reveal the funding and coordination of terror groups with global professional “activist” leaders, orchestrating half-informed and disinformation-based social outrage against all Jews who dare to believe in our right to simply exist without being kidnapped, raped and murdered in the name of a “Free Gaza.”
According to the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, Bazian realized that openly identifying with the Ikhwan would potentially prevent large-scale recruitment and influence by his organizations.
The aims and beliefs of the SJP were essentially identical to that of the Ikhwan, but he promoted it as a progressive organization, tied to Western Leftist ideals. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ties between SJP and Hamas are far from simply ideological. For instance, SJP members have often been heard – even recorded – spouting homophobic rhetoric, which would otherwise seem out of place in a Western Leftist organization.
Bazian did not stop with the SJP. He also launched the group known as the American Muslims for Palestine, an organization which he now chairs. This group does not hide its financial backing for the SJP. Both groups, as well, share personnel and donors with numerous Hamas fronts.
Here’s how the event went…
As we approached, myself walking just ahead of my wives Shlomit, Yairah and Naharah, an apparently Caucasian leftist with a bandana around his face – no doubt fancying himself an “anarchist” of some sort, or even “Antifa” – ran up to stand in front of me as a glorious White Sentinel, with arms outstretched, like the fictional Gospel character of his family’s religious adoration and worship.
He made it clear, “you are not welcome here.”
I responded, “why not? ‘Juden Betreten Verboten‘?”
He continued his bizarre attempts to block me, which I simply ignored. I walked through him, pushing him back with my body, my hip locking into his from beneath his center of gravity, as I informed him that he had no authority to prevent me from accessing a public space.
I continued to move forward, plowing the little guy ahead me, as he stood impotent to prevent my entry. He barked various Cyber-Leftist talking points about a conflict he clearly had not even a superficial knowledge of. Finally, after he stood on his toes to lean into my face, bumping chests with me, I had grown tired of his games. He put is hands up to push me and I arched over him, bending him backwards a little with my presence. I gutturally growled “you want to bump chests little guy.”
You can see a blurry still of this in some of the embedded images from my Instagram account below.
I don’t like to resort to such seemingly “macho” talk, but I felt this was preferable to invoking the rights, which I was well within, to counter his aggressive pushing with violence. Still, I had work to do, and giving this kid a free martial arts lesson was not part of that work (unless he absolutely insisted).
Seeing me dominantly arch over this “woke” college kid, who no doubt saw himself as somehow defending freedom by cheerleading the Neo-Salafi Fascist religious cult that is Hamas, a police officer sprung from dormancy into action, yelling “hey! hey!”
I replied, “no, don’t ‘hey! hey!’ me, when you saw this kid putting his hands on me and you didn’t muster a single ‘hey!’ for him.”
The officer then turned to him and told him to back off of me, and that he was not legally permitted to bare anyone from entry to public spaces.
As it turned out, this young man actually steered me towards the direction he was trying to turn me away from. I simply drove him in reverse towards the destination he was trying to keep me away from. As it turned out, this was right on the rear and side of the stage where the angry shrill cries of the SJP organizers.
A clear enough example of Divine providence (to me, at least), this young man had led me to the exact place where I would be most visible, in his efforts to deter me from that space.
Within minutes, the organizers and their countless non-student members and supporters were enraged. Time and time again, I kept asking them what they found so offensive about the sign.
They called me a “Zionist” to which I simply asked, “what does ‘Zionism’ mean?”
Naturally, none of them had any intelligible answer to this question. Then came the death threats, fi-l-lughat al-`Arabiyyah.
It took me hearing it with my own ears, to really have it click. This was the first Palestinian protest in which I wasn’t lauded as some token Pro-Palestinian Jew that everyone wanted to introduce to their family.
My “Zionist” crime? Simply saying that Hamas did not represent Islam, nor any of the Gazans which I know, love and have worked directly with in the Jam`at al-Fitrah, for over a decade.
Now, there were literally hundreds saying targeting Jewish civilians is legitimate revolution and Islamic (obviously it is not), and that rape is a valid tool for Palestinian “revolution”.
Ironically, they shouted all of this from stolen Native American land. When I pointed this out these munafiqun cackled at the thought that it was Nifaq, or blatant hypocrisy…
“Do as we say, not as we do,” I said – noting the irony further.
“Matter of fact,” I added, “do any of you have ancestral connections to Turtle Island here, the way Jews to do Judea?”
Lots of homophobic sluts of “Ya Manyak” and such ensued. I said “why don’t you tell all these nice little white college leftists what you are saying in Arabic? Let them know how Hamas treats homosexuals!”
An angry young man said “F*ck you Jew!” to which I said, “why don’t come come try to f*ck me ya habibi?”
That’s when the death threats started.
I heard a number of them coordinating a plan to distract me, while another of them said he would sneak up from behind and stab me. They were all very disappointed to hear that I understood them.
Of course, this is when the almost passe “Khaybar! Khaybar! Ya Yahud!” cries could be heard – invoking late Caliphate-commissioned myth of genocide against the Jews of Khaybar. In the centuries-late narration, Muhammad merely feared the Jews of Khaybar would betray him, and thus, he slaughtered them.
How and why this and other Islamicate genocide narrations emerged is a tale for another day. For the seriously interested student of history and Islamic Origins, I would recommend the text Unraveling the Myth of the Banu Qurayzah: The Origins of Islamicate Genocide (2011).
Remember, all of this Islamicate drama ensued simply because I said Hamas was bad. All the while, I made certain to emphasize that I am pro-Palestinian and typically not a fan of any government, including that of Israel. Yet, simply opposing Hamas meant it was okay to stab me.
During all of this, a young Palestinian man, as large as he was angry, rushed towards me. The police came to block him, but I urged them to allow him to come chat. Even one of the SJP organizers got between us, because someone had told them they recognized me as a judge of the Muay Thai fights at the Arnold Classic (also in Columbus, annually).
While this was going on, a young Caucasian LGBTQ+ Leftist for Hamas (who, again, would kill him if he stepped foot in Gaza), nabbed my “Free Gaza From Hamas” sign and threw it in the park’s lake. He said something like “Oh, looks like you don’t have your sign any more.”
This struck me as odd. Perhaps your average person is not as stubborn as me, but there was no chance in <em>Jahannam</em> that I was letting this little college kid end my fun prematurely.
“Yeah, the thing is, you threw my sign in water, not fire. I’ll be right back,” I said. I jumped in the lake, grabbed my sign, and stood triumphantly while the jaws of the SJP Hamas “simps” hit the ground. It was, after all, fairly cold out. But, again, they really underestimated how stubborn I am.
After retrieving my sign – the whole thing taking about ten seconds – I stood triumphantly holding the sign that had so infuriated these open Hamas supporters. My jacket, Shlomit, Yairah and Naharah told me, happened to be exposing part of my H&K VP9 Match 9mm pistol and additional three 20-round magazines on my opposite hip.
Suddenly, the mob of would-be stabbers realized they had brought a knife to a proverbial gun fight.
Again, I felt a sense of Divine Providence. Perhaps these guys were going to actually try their little stabbing plan, as so many of these “child prisoners” being released from Israeli prisons have certainly tried on the streets of Israel. Perhaps this odd little misguided leftist who threw the sign ended up saving one or more SJP professional activists’ lives that day – had they decided to test fate. As the Qur’an says, wa-Allahu `Alim.
Time and time again, when a curious Palestinian tried to approach me to discuss or debate, the Ikhwan-funded organizers rushed over to prevent them, and in one case physically removed the person. Shlomit, Yairah and Naharah, for their parts, were all told not to talk to me when the SJP organizers saw them approach me to ask how much longer we were going to be there, because they wanted to head over to the mall with me when we were done.
Yet at the very end (as you will see in the Instagram photos above), an elder of the local Palestinian community actually came and talked with me and told the SJP to stop telling him not to talk with me. When they all left to go march and chant their Pro-Hamas bars (if it rhymes, it has got to be true!), he and I stayed and talked. The conversation was fairly productive. He asked that though the conversation was recorded, we not post it anywhere, as he seemed to understand the threat he faced from his own community for sitting and discussing with me, rather than shouting talking points at me.
I am often asked by Christian evangelists, two primary questions related to the deified figure at the center of their cult[ure]. The first is “why does Judaism hate Jesus?” The answer is simply that Judaism doesn’t teach anything about the Jesus figure. Why? For the simple …
All the way back in 2005, at a seminar on Tui Shou “Push Hands,” taught by Grandmaster Huang, Chien-Liang, I noticed an oft-repeated phrase of “Fang Song,” which he would emphasize and repeat over and over, when telling people to “relax.” But what is this …
If you do any perusing of YouTube or the endless threads of martial arts forums online, then you will likely have seen a video going around of a young MMA enthusiast, “Mad Dog” Xu, Xiaodong, who suggests he can, will and has taken on any challenger in traditional Kung Fu systems. One fight, in which he claims to “prove” Taijiquan (“Tai Chi”) to be ineffective, showcases him easily handling a “Tai Chi Master” who is clearly nothing of the sort.
The Internet being the Internet, the most uninformed and often untrained “dabblers” who hop from martial arts school to martial arts school, have weighed in on this silly exhibition bout. When this viral video was presented to me, recently, I could not help but ask: “why didn’t he just go to the Chen Village and ask to fight one of the top fighters there?”
The answer is simple: he knew he would get his rear-end handed to him, as this cleaned-up version of the famous Western maxim goes.
Billed as “Taijiquan v Thai Boxing!”, on September 28 in Jiaozuo, Henan, China, five instructors of Chen Village Taijiquan Xue Xiao fought five Thai Boxing champions from Thailand.
Chen Taijiquan has a proud record as one of China’s most traditional fighting arts. We all know that it is a great form of exercise beneficial for everyone regardless of age and level of fitness, but somehow the martial aspect has been downplayed in the West, and to a lesser extent in China itself, to the point that many see it as nothing more than yoga done standing up, or calisthenics – the least challenging form of exercise, only fit for geriatric people.
Yes, Taijiquan can indeed be practiced for health – so can any martial art for that matter! It can be done for personal cultivation, but it is also a powerful and dynamic martial art!
The best way to show this is for elite practitioners of the historically-secretive Chen Village, to show this martial aspect to the world. This event is being billed as a “Champions Showdown” and even a cursory look at the fighting records of the competitors shows, before the fight, made it clear that it proved to be great night’s action and a stiff test for the lads from Chen Jia Gou (Chen Family Village)
Fighting at 75Kgs, Chen, Jianqiang is the current over 80Kgs China national Push Hands champion. A hugely experienced Taiji competitor and winner of many push hands titles including – 2008, Henan province open-weight champion, 2009 Hunan province Championships 80kg champion and consecutive wins at the 2011 & 2013 Jiaozuo International Taijiquan Push Hands competition.
His opponent was runner up at the 2011 Thailand Bangkok tourney and was the 2012 Thailand WBC Muay Thai Tournament Champion. His fight record is an impressive 79 fights with 63 wins, 6 losses and 10 draws.
Wang Jin Hu from the Chenjiagou school was runner up in this years China national push hands tournament and was a gold medallist at the 2012 Chen Village international tournament in the traditional handform, long pole and push hands divisions.
His opponent is a seasoned and successful fighter boasting a professional Thai boxing record of 125 fights, with 114 wins, 8 losses and 3 draws. He was the 2010 Thailand Bangkok Prince’s Cup Tournament champion. He was also competed under MMA rules winning the 2011 Beijing 3MMA championships and competing in the 2012 Xian MMA championships.
At 60kg Wang Yan was the 2008 Henan province push hands champion; the 2009 Hunan province championships winner at 65kg; and won consecutive push hands titles at the 2011 and 2013 Jiazuo International tournament.
His opponent was runner up in the 2010 Thailand Bangkok “King’s Cup; winner of the 2011 Zhanjiang Sino-Thai tournament and the 2012 Thailand Bangkok “Prince’s Cup”. He has a professional Muay Thai record of 58 fights, with 48 wins, 7 losses and 3 draws.
Also at 60kg, Chen, Jiagou’s Zhang Yanfei was runner up at the 2007 Jiaozuo International Taijiquan Conference and winner at the same competition 4 years later in 2011. This bout is made at 65kg.
His opponent has a fight record of 57 fights, winning 40, losing 14 and drawing 3 times. His championship wins include: 2009 Thailand Chiang Mai International Thai Champ; 2010 Thailand free Style Tournament; 2011 Jiangsu Bruce Lee Jeet Kune Do World Cup Championship; and the 2012 Inner Mongolia Championship.
The final bout is made at 70kgs and features the Chenjiagou Taijiquan School’s Ren Gaochen who first place in the 65kg class in 2012 in Chenjiagou in the international push hands tournament.
His opponent is a seasoned campaigner who has had 95 fights, winning 78, losing 10 and drawing 7. His successes include: 65kg champion of the 2010 Thailand Muay Thai year-end finals; runner up at the 2011 Thailand Muay Thai King’s Cup; and champion of the 2012 Thailand Muay Thai North-South War.
So why haven’t fights to the contrary of Xu’s claims gotten any press? It’s called bias, and cognitive dissonance.
Here’s the “Bias” part: If the millions of people sharing the video of “Tai Chi Master Ma Baoguo,” who got “Knocked Out 3 Times in 30 Second[s]” had done their homework, they would have realized that “Tai Chi Master Ma Baoguo” is not really a big name in Tai Chi circles. Even while I began studying the Nei Jia systems of Taijiquan, Xingyiquan and Baguazhang in 1999, and have instructed in Yang style Taiji since 2005, and Chen style Lao Jia Taiji since 2009, I had never heard of this guy.
Something else I noticed that was omitted was Ma Baoguo’s age. The man was less than a year shy of 70 years old, when he fought the young man. Typically, a young man fighting an old man, even in a regulated bout, would be seen as an unfair match up. Still, the videos have been all over the world wide web, purporting to authoritatively “prove” that Taijiquan is “ineffective” versus combat sports fighters.
Now here’s the “Cognitive Dissonance” part: the sad reality is that when faced with evidence that contradicts their established and entrenched position, most people will simply adjust their views on just about anything else to modify, but preserve, their original position that was disproven.
Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger (1919-1989), arising out of a participant observation study of a cult that believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.
While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience,” committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).
Here, cognitive dissonance would occur in the reader who saw that viral video of Xu’s, shared it, and believed the sales pitch of the cult of personality that surrounds Xu (amongst “You Tube Fighters” who flock to his channel, which he makes a tremendous amount of money from). Such readers would watch the videos in this article, and scramble for a way to claim that this wasn’t really “Mad Dog’s” assertion being disproven by the eager youth of the Chen Village.
So, when people ask: “if Taijiquan can really do anything in combat sporting fights, then why hasn’t anyone stepped up?”
The answer is simply: They have.
Here are just some of the videos of a few young fighters from the Chen Village, handily-winning against professional Muay Thai fighters. This is not to disparage Muay Thai – far from it! It is to say that a style is not “debunked” or “disproven” when one anecdotal person is beaten in a fight. When that person is almost 70 years old, fighting a young man? That would seem to prove even less, other than the manipulativeness and duplicity of the person promoting himself in MMA circles, by using such deceptiveness and lies by omission.
What specifically has been omitted is the fact that such fights have happened numerous times, with the victors hailing from the Chen Village. Check out the fight videos below! Note that you may have to click on the links, depending on your browser, and if you have an account on YouKu.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjE1MTM5ODAw.html
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjE1MTYzNzgw.html
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjE1MTQ2NTY0.html
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjE1MTIyODg0.html
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjE1MTE2NDUy.html
As you can see, the Chen Village WON the challenge, defeating their challengers in three out of five bouts. Strangely, “Mad Dog” doesn’t seem to want to face off with any of these young men. Instead, he has focused his attention on calling out 77-year-old Chen, Xiaowang, who he was proven to have slandered, with blatant lies against his martial arts background and capabilities.[1]
So what is behind all of this? What is certain is that “Mad Dog” Xu Xiaodong is a master of marketing himself and his assertions. He is very good at promoting anecdotes that back up his assertions, while simultaneously trying to hide proof that counters his claims, as we have seen above.
But more recently, Xu was associated with a number of anti-Chinese government protests. Now say what you will about the People’s Republic of China, there is little question that there are well-financed political interests who see to delegitimize anything Chinese. We see this in the myriad videos of Xu, which claim he “Exposed China”! Not just a fake martial arts “master,” as he claims, but entire systems, lineages, and yes even China itself. If this doesn’t reek of propaganda to you, then, as the grandmas in the South tend to say, “bless your heart!”
Do you practice Taijiquan? Let’s see if we can get the word out to those who are falling for this “Mad Dog” marketing gimmick.
Footnotes:
[1] “China orders Xu Xiaodong to publicly apologise and pay damages for insulting tai chi ‘grandmaster’ Chen Xiaowang“. South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 26 August 2019. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
[2] Tim Bissell, “Xu Xiaodong questioned by authorities after showing support for Hong Kong protests“. South China Morning Post
The Torah supports redistribution of wealth (and food). Though I do support ideas of personal liberty insofar as such does not interfere with the rights and liberties of the perceived other (other ego-identities which we illusorily see as “individuals”), I do not believe in absolute …
Few people realize it but Bruce Lee’s First Kung Fu Style Was Tai Chi! That’s right, the legendary martial artist and actor’s first system of martial study was Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan). I have read numerous accounts that misrepresent his view of Taiji as being …
Efficient and effective self-defense techniques must always employ natural body movements and be easy to learn and remember. They must also be effective under stress and exhaustion. That means advanced techniques for disarming, while useful training tools for our muscle memory, are not what we will have a chance to employ in most armed self defense scenarios. Most “bad guys” do not aim weapons at you (or use them on you) like they do in the movies.
How do I know?
For starters, I have been in several armed confrontations – sometimes where the aggressor was armed, and sometimes where we both were. I have had guns drawn on me, and I have had them fired at me. I have had them misfire at me, and I have, in more than one instance, taken loaded firearms away from the person wielding them.
To illustrate the real-world knowledge base I am speaking from, there are a few of those examples, and then we’ll get into the heart of the discussion: Krav Maga Gun Disarms vs. Gun Trapping.
I have worked as one of the heads of security for the largest consumer goods corporation in the world. I have also worked executive protection details. There are many experiences through both of these jobs which brought me face-to-face with violence. Neither of these professions, however, lead to as much direct self-defense as what I have experienced in day-to-day life…
In the early 90s, those of us who fought back against the plague of Neo-Nazi gangs in the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati, found ourselves in constant violent conflicts, which we never initiated, yet could not retreat from. If you were around back then you no doubt saw plenty of these types on daytime talk shows like Geraldo, Oprah, Sally Jesse and Phil Donahue. But their violence was far from just sensationalism for ratings.
In one case where my circle of friends were forced to engage these bullies, the police literally stood by, at the end of the Vine street, outside of the Bogart’s venue, doing nothing to intervene. They were all the way up the block by Krogers, looking on as literally dozens of people fought it out – some armed, some unarmed. We were on our own. No one was coming to help us or save us. We had to fight back against angry, notoriously-violent attackers, who were often armed (usually with brass knuckles and knives, but sometimes firearms as well).
A good friend of mine’s older brother was among us on many of these occasions where we were forced to defend ourselves. He ended up being killed in a drive-by shooting by these violent gang members, right outside of that same venue. This was no joke. These weren’t like people today claiming to be “trolling” online “for the lulz.” These were people in the real world, coming to concerts to start trouble, and sometimes to initiate their own members through violence.
Back at home, in the Forest Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, I had guns pulled on me multiple times, and even fired. In one case, I was in a verbal confrontation with a man who drew a gun, aimed it at my head and I froze up. I was 17 at the time. He pulled the trigger and thankfully, it misfired. He was astonished that his “magic wand” had failed him. He kept trying to pull the trigger, apparently hoping that the dud round was going to ignite if the firing pin hit it again. It didn’t. He ran. I ran after him.
We do a lot of things wrong when we aren’t trained, and me freezing up, as well as running after this guy are great examples of what not to do.
In another case, much more recently, a woman ran towards me in the Five Oaks neighborhood of Dayton. She was fleeing an attacker who was swinging a baseball bat. In this incident, I disarmed the bat, but then saw the attacker reach into the pocket of their hoodie for what turned out to be a Glock 36 handgun, chambered in .45 caliber.
I employed the techniques I am discussing in this article, to redirect, then “jam them up.” Only after that, did I force their hand out of their pocket and disarm them.
Other times, just having the confidence to know I can handle someone who is armed has neutralized armed conflict – using words alone.
For example, on the anniversary of a good friend’s son being killed in Beavercreek, I had just left a memorial service and arrived at one of my properties in West Dayton. There was a violent altercation between a man and a pregnant woman. As my mood was somber from the service, the last thing on my mind was getting in a fight, or trying to be a tough guy. Still, I knew that if I didn’t drive down the street to engage them, someone might end up seriously hurt, or worse.
The police do not patrol West Dayton. That is a fact anyone who lives there can attest to. This was evidenced by the fact that this “stand off” encounter went on for a long time – neighbors say upwards of 15 minutes – without police arriving.
With no police in sight, I engaged the man who was chasing his five-month-pregnant girlfriend. He ended up being armed with a small pistol. In the end, after a stand off with guns drawn by both of us, I was able to calm him down and get everyone to safety. I even gave the guy a hug before driving him home (he had been drinking). We exchanged numbers and from time to time I check on him and his new family to see how they are doing.
After the successful, peaceful resolution of this conflict, I spent the night talking with him about the loss of his grandmother, about why he was so angry, about mutual domestic violence in his relationship, and so on. I talked with his girlfriend’s mother, as we stopped there to give him a place to “sleep it off,” while I told his girlfriend to head back to their apartment solo (she had not been drinking).
The solution to the conflict was not found in a Krav disarm, it was found in what Sifu Li, Jun-Fan (“Bruce Lee”) called “the Art of Fighting Without Fighting.” In order to have that peace and calmness that afforded me the ability to “fight without fighting,” however, I first had to be confident in my ability to fight, and to neutralize an armed attacker. Without that peace, I would have had no recourse but to react with more violence than was actually needed.
One more story… In another recent encounter, a man armed with an AR-15 rifle was making violent threats to a young lady as I passed by on the streets of Columbus. It was clear that the man believed his weapon was being carried lawfully. He wasn’t aiming it at anyone, but when coupled with his “Street Harassment” of this woman, it was clear the weapon was being brandished to intimidate rather than simply to carry for self-defense. I approached him, got very close to him and asked calmly, “how does it feel to know that I could take that weapon away from you before you even knew what happened?”
His eyes betrayed his confident words. He was scared. “I’d… I’d… Like to see you try.”
“No you wouldn’t,” I said, “I promise you. Leave her alone.”
I did not have the legal authority to disarm this man unless and until he crossed a line which he was tight-rope walking at the time. I did not want to see him cross that line, and have someone potentially get hurt. He seemed dangerously close to crossing that line and raising the weapon towards the young lady he had been arguing with. Putting him in check verbally neutralized the confrontation without needing to disarm him physically – he had been disarmed psychologically.
My oldest son took a photograph of this confrontation for posterity, but I rarely mention incidences like these because they are not “bragging-rights.” I speak of them only now to illustrate a number of points about self-defense encounters with firearms. First, that I have seen my fair share of real-world armed self-defense scenarios. Second, that even if you never have to use these techniques in the real world, knowing that you could successfully execute them gives you the confidence to neutralize potentially-lethal confrontations with “the Art of Fighting Without Fighting.”
The problem that I have found with many who train in self-defense is that that when we just memorize disarms, we are training for the ideal scenario that I have never actually seen play out in real-world conflicts. Sometimes someone might lunge at you with a knife, overcommitting to the stab, but if the person is a skilled knife-fighter – even with no formal training – he will not likely make such mistakes. Expect repeated, quick stabs and withdraws, whether ice pick grip or the “sewing machine” prison-shank approach. As well, very few people hold guns on people in the real world from the stances or distances we see in movies or in many gun disarm seminars.
It is true that we must known how to execute any number of disarms. It is important to train them, and wire it into our muscle memory – whether pistol, rifle/shotgun or edged weapon disarms. But at the same time, we may never get to the stage in a fight where the weapon can be formally “disarmed” through the means we trained.
So what do we do? We have to be read to isolate that weapon and the arm holding it, and incapacitate the attacker. Once we do that, the “disarm” may simply be their hand releasing its grip as they lose consciousness. This should be our foundation upon which we build disarms.
Typically, in Krav Maga schools, when we teach handgun disarms, we teach one defense and then practice the different scenarios that the defense works for. Learning one defense for many problems cuts practice time to develop proficiency and it gives us less techniques for our muscle memory to have to learn. Thus, the self-defense technique is able to more readily come out of us under stress, without us having to think about it. Hick’s Law states that the more options are available to a person, the longer it will take for them to make a decision about which option is best. In a violent encounter, we should not be thinking about which techniques we should employ, we should simply be able to execute them on the fly.
Krav Maga includes some of the most practical and effective techniques in existence for self-defense. The techniques Krav Maga teaches for gun defense allow you to create responses that work in a wide variety of circumstances. That reduces the number of techniques you must learn and remember, which results in faster application under stress. For instance, Krav Maga uses the same technique when a gun is placed anywhere in front of you, whether it is touching you or not. The same technique, with very minor adjustments in body defense, works when the gun is pointed at your forehead, under your chin or at the side of your head.
The specifics of these techniques are beyond the scope of this article. One of the take-aways I hope any reader has, is that you cannot and should not attempt to defend yourself with online tutorials. Get in a legitimate martial arts school and start training! With that said, this article is for those of us already doing that (or those for whom this is a wake-up call).
With that said, all Krav Maga gun techniques employ four basic principles, which we should think of as the Order of Operations for all disarms:
Pay close attention to that Order of Operations. The “Disarm” comes last, not first, and not in the middle.
The main handgun defense that I have seen taught in Krav schools is called the “Cupping Technique.” Again, the specifics of this are not practical to attempt to teach in an online article. But suffice it to say that there are many reasons why this technique has advantages.
Krav utilizes the natural reaction to reach for the handgun that is pointed at us to get it off line. We redirect and “clap” at essentially the same time. We end up with both hands on the handgun with one ideally wrapping the hammer (or area where it would be), so we have the leverage to keep it redirected no matter how big and strong the assailant is. In any case, however, if it is a semi-automatic pistol, we can usually force a jam, preventing subsequent shots from being fired.
The first of the four Disarm Order of Operations is “Redirect.” What this means is that we use an open hand, aiming the webbing of our thumb to the trigger guard. As soon as we touch the weapon, we redirect it off our body and wrap our hand around the barrel to control it. As we are redirecting, we keep the handgun on the same plane to ensure we are taking the weapon off our body in a straight line and with the shortest route possible. In other words, if the handgun is at neck level when aimed at us, it is still at neck level after it has been redirected. We are doing a slight body turn simultaneously, with the deflection. In doing this we maximize distance without even moving – the hand deflects, the turn minimizes our surface area and takes us out of the original line of fire. We don’t stay squared up but let our right shoulder turn toward the attacker. This makes the torso a smaller target and getting the weapon off of us much faster than otherwise. It is said that “seconds count” but in gun defense, milliseconds literally count. The difference between being shot or not being shot lies in milliseconds.
There are a lot of what ifs that are often not accounted for. The problem is not with the technique of cupping, but with the assumptions a person makes once they learn it.
Many people speak of these techniques as if they are “magic bullets” so to speak. But that is far from the case. Why do we assume the firearm is a semi-automatic, slide-operated weapon? There are plenty of revolvers out there. Still, cupping has – in every case I have attempted it with a live weapon – successfully jammed the firearm and prevented subsequent rounds from being fired.
More importantly, however, what if you are in a crowded area, and there are innocent people all around you? What if you only have one “safe” direction for the weapon to be pointed, and there is no real way to disarm it from that angle? In such a case, you must control and utterly obliterate the aggressor, before taking the weapon away from them.
For many instructors and students weapon disarming is seen as the pinnacle of self-defense training. It is often practiced without any real understanding of the various factors at play in a violent situation where a weapon is involved.
The first of the aforementioned four-steps in the Disarm Order of Operations is almost always focused on, in any martial arts school or system interested in disarms: Redirect.
Okay, we got that. But “control the weapon” – the second key step in this process – is often glossed over or nearly-ignored. “Control” is often underemphasized and underdeveloped, in terms of how we practice. Cupping is Krav’s solution to that, but it isn’t the only solution, as alluded to above. So you cup. Now what? Cupping isn’t disarming. You must control. Cupping can be part of that, but so can trapping.
Again, Krav is not a martial arts style, it is a set of martial principles. Controlling means just what it says: having control over where the firearm is pointed.
Krav Maga techniques assume that once you’ve made an initial redirection, the assailant will pull back on the weapon to put you in front of the muzzle again. As such, the “control the weapon” stage is key.
Disarming will almost always only occur after successful control or trapping of the weapon or weapon-bearing arm, followed by a devastating counter attack on vulnerable bodily targets, while you retain control over that trapped weapon or arm.
Maybe you cup but can’t disarm without the barrel crossing an innocent person who could be shot in the process of disarming the aggressor. In such a case, you cup, or trap, jam, and deliver knee after knee, elbow after elbow, headbutt after headbutt – or any combination thereof. Sometimes doing a flashy disarm is not the answer, even if you can do it. There is no magical formula that will solve every armed confrontation. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you have to understand these principles and react and adapt on the fly.
Krav, like East Asian Martial Arts of Kali and Silat, as well as Chinese arts like Wing Chun, Xingyiquan and Taijiquan (as well as many others), like to be in close, jamming up an attacker, so they cannot achieve a good external arc of momentum with empty-hand attacks, as well as with sticks or edged weapons. But this idea of closing the gap and trapping is even more important when it comes to firearms self-defense. From a distance, you are a literal target. Up close, you really only have to worry about the “business end” of the weapon.
Once you get the weapon “down and inward,” or “jammed up” so to speak, the attacker’s control will be limited. That is only half the battle… actually, not even half. You must then be prepared to move your feet to keep putting weight on the weapon even if he struggles or even collapses from your punch. This is where sensitivity training comes in to play, whether it is hubad drills in East Asian systems like Kali, or Wing Chun Chi Sao “Sticky Hands,” or Baguazhang and T’aijiquan Tui Shou “Push Hands,” or even simply the sensitivity born of a good grappler or wrestler, you have to be able to move with the aggressor once you engage. They will not just stand there and allow you to disarm them – again, like in the movies, or even in online “tutorials” for disarms.
You want this to work right?
There are no simple formulas for success. You have to follow principles and adapt on the fly or I promise you, they will regain control of their weapon and kill you.
So let’s say that we have cupped, trapped, jammed-up or whatever the attacker, and subsequently disarmed them. Great, but now what?
In self-defense circles, we often operate from the erroneous and wishful belief that once we have disarmed an assailant of their primary weapon, they cease to be an aggressor anymore.
Where firearm disarms are concerned, we seem to naturally assume that the person we have just disarmed, will become subservient and comply with our demands after the disarm. This is often coupled with a mistaken belief that just because we are in possession of a firearm we are naturally in the superior, dominant position. Dominance only exists where another accepts it, and not everyone will accept that because you hold a firearm you are in a dominant position.
That is, we imagine that – like in the movies – the aggressor suddenly respects our position of being the weapon holder and thus submit to being the potential target or victim. As they expected our compliance, we now imagine they will comply with us. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is a major misjudgment to believe that an assailant won’t try and retrieve their weapon. Remember that a gunman will not be passive whatsoever. This is not the movies. It isn’t a comic book.
The moment you defend yourself, the aggressor will fight to put the line of fire back on you. To imagine that you can go from simply controlling the weapon to disarming assumes a lot. You know the old saying about what happens when you assume don’t you?
Instead of this wishful thinking of compliance, we must control the weapon so the line of fire can never be redirected at us again, nor at any other potential innocent victims in our vicinity.
We cannot rely on the weapon or the individual’s fear at us having the weapon. Our brains have simply not evolved to properly appreciate and provoke an appropriate “Fear” response – in the sense of Gavin DeBecker’s Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. I have seen people talk tough with a gun in their face. I have never seen someone talk tough with a knife to their throat or face.
Why is that?
Put simply, our brains have evolved to naturally recognize and “fear” sharp, pointed blades. We recognize this as an even more deadly form of what we see in Nature with horns, fangs, and claws. But a gun is potentially even more deadly, but its shape belies that reality. As such, you should expect that a certain percentage of “bag guys” are not going to respect you drawing a firearm on them, or even aiming their own at them, after a disarm.
Even if you shoot someone center of mass, they may still keep aggressing. This is not as uncommon as you may think, especially if highly motivated, aggressive and adrenalized. For example, Ibragim Todashev, one of the terrorists involved in the 2014 Boston Marathon Bombing, quickly recovered from being shot several times by an FBI agent to launch a second attack. If such a person is armed with a knife, they may still be able to stab and kill you before they succumb to their own injuries.
One instructor who I trained with in firearms tactics, back in the 1990s, had unloaded three high capacity magazines from his sidearm, as well as the entire tube magazine of his shotgun on a man high on PCP, just years before we met. He ended up beating the man to death, because he was completely out of ammunition.
For most of the situations we are likely to find ourselves in time and distance will be restricted, and our environment may not afford us the luxury of an easy disengagement where we can either get to our own weapon or use our assailant’s firearm.
When you do disarm someone of a firearm, you equip yourself with a heavy solid striking object which is capable of delivering extreme concussive force, whether it is loaded and functioning or jammed. Repeatedly hitting someone with this object will put them out of commission – this is the first thing you should do when disarming them of such a weapon. That is, you use it to finish them off, if you haven’t already. You don’t use it in any capacity where it could turn out to fail or let you down if it happens to have been unloaded or became jammed in the “cupping” process, for instance. Just because you are proficient at using a firearm, don’t presume somebody else’s weapon is operational. I have seen more than a few schools where it is common to clear the jam and aim the attacker’s weapon at them. That’s fine, if you were previously unarmed. If you do carry your own weapon, however, once they are completely incapacitated, disable the assailant’s weapon, discard it, and then draw your own.
As for the very common practice of lawful concealed carry in the United States today, it is not enough to carry a firearm and assume you are in a good position to defend yourself against an armed attacker. Unless you have trained in the sort of “Close Quarters Combat” (literally “Krav Maga” in Hebrew), then the chances of you ever getting to your gun are slim to none.
Once someone is disarmed, after they have drawn a weapon on you, you should make absolutely certain that they are completely incapacitated before going for your cell phone to call for help. To get to that point, you have to understand the Disarm Order of Operations. In 9 times out of 10, you will never get to an advanced disarm technique. That is okay. That doesn’t make those advanced disarm techniques bad, or “unrealistic.” It just means that we must first and foremost focus on “Keeping It Simple Stupid,” as the design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960 said. Control the weapon and beat the attacker until they are unconscious and you still go home safe and sound at the end of the day.
Understanding this simple fact and not trying to necessarily manipulate the weapon out of an attacker’s hands, just might save your life, or someone else’s.
This article also appeared on the websites for Kali America
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