Check Around For “Weapons”

© COPYRIGHT 2010 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sword and Pen – February 2010 Issue

[Reprinted With Permission]

American Combato
Seattle Combatives

WHEREVER you work, live, play, visit, shop, or stroll, it is almost certain that you will be able to discover many available objects and implements that, in a crisis, can serve as deadly weapons to assist you in defending yourself. You should always use something to assist you in defending your life and well being, rather than your bare hands and feet, except in situations where the only things available to you are your bare hands and feet.

Never fight fair.

Never think that it would be wrong to use a stick, a rock, a bottle, or anything as a weapon to help you defend yourself — even if your attacker is seemingly unarmed when he attacks you. It is a certainty that a violent offender possesses weapons, even when he does not bring them into play at his initial approach. Besides, no one who initiates violence or provokes trouble deserves the benefit of ethical consideration or sporting conduct from his intended victim.

No student of close combat and self-defense is properly preparing for the "real thing" unless he is aware of the plethora of improvised weapons that are ever-present in almost any and every normal environment, and unless he is ready, willing, and able to make ferocious, immediate, and effective use of those "weapons".

As his thesis for Black Belt, 1st degree in American Combato Greg Anderson wrote so excellent a work that we encouraged him to publish it as a book. He did. WEAPONS AT HAND is available directly from him. A copy costs $25. plus $3. postage and handling.

Order from:
Team Intensity, NW
P.O. Box 77636
Seattle, WA. 98177

You can use your credit card to purchase. Just telephone (206)-364-9944 to place your order.

Always remember that all personal weapons — manufactured or improvised — should be thought of and trained with as extensions of your body and will. The idea that a weapon is, by itself, going to offer you protection is a very wrong and potentially dangerous concept.

Check around wherever you are and wherever you go. There are plenty of objects and items that, in an emergency, you can seize immediately and use to attack a dangerous adversary.

You can get a bit elaborate (for instance, dropping a salt and pepper shaker into the center of a cloth dinner napkin and folding the ends over to make a formidable blackjack, or folding and breaking a credit card in half to produce two lethally sharp edged weapons, etc. However you'll need time and a bit of secrecy to do this. Grabbing a can off a store shelf and bashing an attacker in the face with it, can be done instantly, when you‘re assaulted in a grocery store.

Got an umbrella? Use Fairbairn‘s stick technique with it (see Get Tough!) or simply grab it securely with both hands — each one about four inches from each end — and drive the end into your attacker as if you were using a bayonet. Go for the throat or face.

We've trained individuals in the past, when working on "hostage survival" and "escape" techniques which they might have needed, to remember that broken glass makes a great knife. Go into any lavatory and break the mirror. Take a nice shard of glass and rp a piece of clothing off your shirt. Wrap the cloth around one end of the glass shard and use that as a grip. Use the pointed end of the shard to rip open the hostage-taker‘s throat, or to sever his carotid artery, stab him in the eye, etc. A toothbrush can be sharpened on any concrete or stone ledge, window sill, or step available. Hold the brush end and sharpen the plastic. You now have a pike or dagger.

Towel racks offer possible club weapons. So do chair legs. So do heavy branches.

Do what a merchant mariner acquaintance of ours once told us he did, so as to be "armed" when in port: Take a hefty lead fishing sinker and wrap it in a handkerchief. Use a rubber band to secure the handkerchief around the sinker. You now have a great blackjack, or — by holding the item firmly and letting the end of the covered sinker protrude from the clenched hand — a terrific "yawara stick" jabbing implement.

In order to defend yourself you need to not merely "get tough", you need to think tough; to think about "what if", and to plan for every eventuality. Take advantage of every edge you can give yourself in any dangerous emergency.

We have taught our students how to use even the "harmless" plastic type "knives" that the airlines now provide, as deadly weapons, in an emergency.

Your primary weapon is, as General George Patton so aptly pointed out, your MIND. However, your secondary weapons are not merely your hands and feet and any manufactured weapons that you may be fortunate enough to have when trouble strikes — they are anything and everything that you can seize at the moment, IF you‘ll start to realize that fact.