How many of you carry weapons?

[darrianation]

As Bruce Lee said, "A man with a weapon is at disadvantage, since he is not thinking about his hands, his feet, or other parts of his body, but only focusing on the weapon."

Of course, that somewhat only applies to brawlers and street fighters, not martial artists. If I had a knife I'd be kicking and punching and everything.

...and yeah, we learn to put them in a wrist lock for knife defenses in Ju-jitsu. I'd say it's one of the more effective knife defenses.

Emm… I have never heard of an unarmed army marching into battle with nothing but their fists and feet. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this country we keep giving our soldiers guns and knives.

Come to think about even in way back history the Chinese armies, the Japanese armies, and etc, used weapons in battle. Maybe weapons are superior to empty hands after all.

[AlexJitsu]

In a sense weapons lower your IQ. Think about it, some stupid caveman used a rock as a weapon. However, some Chinese guy invented a whole system of unarmed fighting. Who is better?

[shadowkiller]

... Alex think about what you are saying here. A caveman used a rock as a weapon yes, but that long ago we werent as evolved as we are now or as civilized. We lived in the wilderness and were often the hunted instead of the hunter. So if a huge tiger comes at you and there is a knife sitting beside you, or better yet a sword you are gonna fight the thing bare handed?

Again a weapon is a tool, they are used to make the job easier. A better question then the one you asked would be,

Who is smarter a guy that makes his job harder or the guy who uses a tool to make his life easier....

Fight all the unarmed fights you want against people with weapons and see how far it gets you... I forsee the hospital, or even the morgue.

[darrianation]

In a sense weapons lower your IQ. Think about it, some stupid caveman used a rock as a weapon. However, some Chinese guy invented a whole system of unarmed fighting. Who is better?

H2H and SK are very right!

Let me leave you with the words of a true soldier W.E. Fairbairn

“Unarmed combat is what we enter into when we have been foolish enough not to have a weapon; careless enough to have lost our weapon; or unlucky enough to have broken our weapon. But in any case our first choice will be to use our weapons to finish our opponent. Lacking those weapons; then our hands and feet will have to do”.

[darrianation]

BTW: You remind me of sherwinc.

OOOOOOHHHH..... Thats a bit below the belt isn't? I can't think of a worse thing you can call someone!

[AlexJitsu]

No, and quit making assumptions of people online, such as "You have no experience".

I won't even bother to say anything since you'll just say something else.

[shadowkiller]

No, and quit making assumptions of people online, such as "You have no experience".

I won't even bother to say anything since you'll just say something else.

Well yeah he probably would say something else. Just typing "hi" is something else isnt it?

[johnzag]

Guys down here in Aus it is illegal to carry any type of weapon! One of the reasons that I was attracted to Arnis. People can't stop you from carrying a stick can they. However I do really think that atleast here in AU its not necessary to carry a weapon I am greatful that our society allows us to walk around without feeling the need to be brandishing an illegal object for self defense purposes.
I also feel extremely confident that the mano-mano component of our style of Arnis has equiped me with enough ability to escape atleast 80% of the sceanrios that I may be confronted with.
What about the other 20% you may ask... well I don't think any amount of training is going to help with that.
I am willing to conceed that places like America have a much larger criminal element so i will stop short of saying that I don't believe in carrying a weapon. It may be that in other countries it is somewhat more necessary then here in Australia.

[AlexJitsu]

So what you're saying now, is that if you had a knife, you wouldn't be kicking, or anything else besides concentrating on the weapon. Sounds like something a novice brawler would do.

If you slashed at me and missed, and you're only concentrating on the weapon, I would parry it towards the direction you swung while you were falling through, and then put you in a standing kata-gatame choke while using my other arm to put your hand in a wrist lock for you to drop the knife, and take you down in o soto gari, and continue to choke you in kata-gatame until you suffocated.


...and that's not a predetermined thing I learned, it's years of techniques I combined myself that in my opinion would be very effective against someone who has no clue how to use a weapon.

[johnzag]

Handtohand you actually make an extremely valid point in saying that we should use any objects in our environment when confronting a knife fighter. You obviously know what you are on about. However whilst I am new to this forum I would suggest that sarcasm and insulting remarks can be done without. None of us here are better then anyone else we just have different experiences and points of view.

[AlexJitsu]

Again, you make unwise assumptions. I know more than one "knife defense", and I've been living in the real world for quite some time now.

It's funny how you ended your "reassuring statement" inappropriately and superior.

But now that you've made yourself slightly less ambiguous by saying you WOULD kick, I'm glad that we can finally agree on something.

You act like I said I wouldn't use the knife though, which is untrue. I have two hands, two feet, a head, two forearms, two elbows, two shins, two knees, and a knife. I would use them all to the best of my ability.

...and if you were sober enough to read, you would have noticed that I didn't mention ANYTHING about a spinning hook kick.

[darrianation]

guns and violence

Guys down here in Aus it is illegal to carry any type of weapon! One of the reasons that I was attracted to Arnis. People can't stop you from carrying a stick can they. However I do really think that atleast here in AU its not necessary to carry a weapon I am greatful that our society allows us to walk around without feeling the need to be brandishing an illegal object for self defense purposes.
I also feel extremely confident that the mano-mano component of our style of Arnis has equiped me with enough ability to escape atleast 80% of the sceanrios that I may be confronted with.
What about the other 20% you may ask... well I don't think any amount of training is going to help with that.
I am willing to conceed that places like America have a much larger criminal element so i will stop short of saying that I don't believe in carrying a weapon. It may be that in other countries it is somewhat more necessary then here in Australia.

Just a bit on guns and violence.

In the United States we do live in a violent culture, however our media really hypes it up and our national fear factor meter sky rockets. The worst thing is we have come to live in a culture of fear. Our perceived fear of violence is actually higher than it really is.

Studies have been done with other nations where it is legal to own firearms and they do not have the same problems as we do with gun violence. For example our neighbors to the north Canada according to The National Firearms Association's figures are: 7,000,000 Canadian owners with 21,000,000 firearms yet many people even in large metropolitan areas go to bed at night with their doors unlocked. Most do not fear violence at least not like we do in the U.S.

Canada reported that there were a total of 149 homicides reported in 2002 were committed with firearms. This total represented a rate of 0.47 for every 100,000 people.

In Australia it used to legal to own firearms. Now was gun violence that bad it warranted making them illegal? In the 1980’s there were 3.5 million registered guns in Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows us that, over the fifteen years between 1980 and 1995 gun deaths have dropped by 46% while, over the same period, gun ownership has soared. Only 1.3% of firearm deaths in Australia are from "assault rifles". (I hate the term assault rifle, you can be assaulted by just about anything) the nationwide analysis found that gun- related deaths actually decreased from 4.8 deaths per 100,000 in 1980-2 to 2.6 deaths in 1995."

Here in the untied states Reuters News Service reported on April 16, 1998, that the United States had the highest rate of deaths from firearms of 36 other countries around the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the firearm death rate in the United States was 14.24 per 100,000, a figure that includes accidents, suicides and homicides, the highest of any of the countries in the study. Japan had the lowest rate, with 0.05 deaths per 100,000 populations.

A research report by the Department of Justice's National Criminal Justice Research Services was done in 1994 and contains a wealth of interesting data about who owns guns, where they got them and what they use them for.

Estimates of Number of Guns in the millions:
Handguns
Revolvers 31
Semiautomatics 26
Other 8
Total 65

Rifles
Semiautomatics 28
Other 42
Total 70

Shotguns 49
Other Long Guns 8

Total All Guns 192 million

Wow doesn’t that stager the mind? I doubt the accuracy of this but the real number of guns is probably close.
Interesting facts: Does the United States have such a high murder rate because Americans own so many guns? There is no international evidence backing this up. The Swiss, New Zealanders and Finns all own guns as frequently as Americans, yet in 1995 Switzerland had a murder rate 40 percent lower than Germany's, and New Zealand had one lower than Australia's. Finland and Sweden have very different gun ownership rates, but very similar murder rates. Israel, with a higher gun ownership rate than the U.S., has a murder rate 40 percent below Canada's.

Homicide rates with firearms are actually lower in states with fewer gun laws. In states with loose gun control (North Dakota 1.1, Maine 1.2, South Dakota 1.7, Idaho 1.8, Iowa 2.0, Montana 2.6) and highest in states and the district with draconian gun controls and bans (District of Columbia 80.6, New York 14.2, California 12.7, Illinois 11.3, Maryland 11.7). Of course these states with higher gun crimes have higher populations as well as more and larger metro areas.

More guns in the hands of private citizens do not directly equate to higher homicide and gun accident rates. In the 20 year period of 1967 to 1986 the number of handguns increased 173% (27.8 million to 63.9 million) but the rate of fatal gun accidents decreased almost by two-thirds and has stayed at that low level in succeeding years despite a continued large increase in gun ownership.

Another statistic that I find interesting is defensive gun use in the United States. In one university of Florida study showed that there were between 850,000-1.5 million incidences of firearms used in self-defense each year. The vast majority of these defenses do not evolve actually firing the gun.

* Remember when looking at statistics they are easily skewed. These were taken from official government sources, or independent University studies. Depending on what source you are looking at the numbers (statistics) can be different. Also these are statistics for all gun deaths not just homicide.

The question is why do we have such violence here in the U.S.? I do not think there is a clear answer to this. Many have asked this question but none have come up with a clear cut answer. In my opinion it is our culture of fear combined with socioeconomics, but who really knows.

The fact still remains that America is still a violent place. Self-defense is still a right (although a right that is slowly being widdled away) and we need to be pro-active in our own self-defense as well as our families and loved ones.

[AlexJitsu]

Wow, what are you, like 12? That's pretty much the stupidest and most inappropriate analogy I've ever heard. I'm sure it was dumbed down enough for you, though.

You twerp! Oh wait, I'm not you. Again, making silly assumptions.

You seem to ramble on and on about how experienced you are. So far your argument is "I'm a terrible excuse for a fighter, and I don't know what to do when a knife comes out!".

Well, why don't you all tell us about yourself, Mr. HandtoHand that is so obsessed with knives.

[FormerSensei]

I do not study any Filipino arts (not that I have a bias against them, I'm not familiar with any of them yet), but I carry a weapon because it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

[shadowkiller]

Wow, what are you, like 12? That's pretty much the stupidest and most inappropriate analogy I've ever heard. I'm sure it was dumbed down enough for you, though.

You twerp! Oh wait, I'm not you. Again, making silly assumptions.

You seem to ramble on and on about how experienced you are. So far your argument is "I'm a terrible excuse for a fighter, and I don't know what to do when a knife comes out!".

Well, why don't you all tell us about yourself, Mr. HandtoHand that is so obsessed with knives.

Dude you are the one that started with a stupid comment like
"In a sense weapons lower your IQ. Think about it, some stupid caveman used a rock as a weapon. However, some Chinese guy invented a whole system of unarmed fighting. Who is better?"

This pretty much gave us a hint as to your IQ.