There's No 'Easy Way' When It Comes To Self-Defense

Unfortunately, the less lethal your means, the less effectively it stops the attack.

Pepper spray is easy to obtain, easy to carry, easy to use. That’s why it’s not all that effective.

A while back, I read a tweet by someone criticizing the idea of the AR-15 rifle as useful for home defense. This person effectively called people who owned AR-15s for home defense wimps, while boasting his own bravery and preparedness by claiming he was willing to use bear spray against a home invader.

I’m not going to get into the matter of whether the AR-15 is a good choice for home defense. However, it’s obvious the person who made the remark is under-educated when it comes to self-protection in general. For one, anyone with half a brain knows that spraying can be hazardous to the person doing the spraying, especially in confined quarters such as inside one’s residence. If you utilize something as powerful as bear spray inside your house, unless you happen to be wearing a gas mask at the time, you’re going to catch a whiff of it too. Then what? Even if you manage to blind your attacker, there’s the matter of getting them out of your residence. How are they going to manage that if they can’t see?

When it comes to self-protection, many of us search for less-lethal options to manage both our legal and moral liability when employing violence. Unfortunately, the less lethal your means, the less effectively it stops the attack. It’s tough for some to admit, but death really is the most effective method of stopping an assailant. Someone who is no longer alive or at least incapacitated no longer poses a threat to you. Even to incapacitate someone, you need to inflict a level of hurt which could result in their death.

This doesn’t mean less lethal methods like pepper spray aren’t useful. They can be, under specific circumstances. It’s just that they’re hardly a sure thing. Not everyone is capable, physically nor mentally, of inflicting lethal harm, even on their attacker. Hence, it’s not a bad idea to possess less lethal means of protection alongside lethal means, but in doing so, it’s important to understand what less lethal measures actually allow you to do and how to employ them effectively.

Let’s discuss those considerations.

There’s No Such Thing As “Non-Lethal”

Aside from tickling someone, any use of force in a self-defense encounter ought to be understood to hold the potential for death or serious bodily harm. There’s a reason why the term “non-lethal” has been gradually displaced by “less-lethal”; stopping an attack requires a meaningful amount of violence; a meaningful amount of violence has to be able to cause enough damage to force the attacker to cease efforts; the damage required to force the attacker to disengage can easily cross the line into “lethal” territory. That line isn’t all that clear to begin with.

For example, punches and kicks are generally considered non-lethal. But we’ve all seen stories of people who were either killed or suffered from long-term damage due to punches to the head. Most of these situations involved a criminal or social predator assaulting innocent people, but if you ever have to defend yourself and your fists are all you have, you may need to render a vicious knock-out blow which could cause brain damage to your assailant. Maybe they deserve it, but there are always consequences for causing death or harm to any other human being.

Even pepper spray can cause death, depending on whether someone has a medical condition, like asthma, that can be triggered upon inhaling the substance. Obviously, it’s not your responsibility to worry about the medical history of your assailant, but the lesson here is to remember: the fact you’re less likely to kill someone with pepper spray or any other less-lethal remedy doesn’t absolve you of the necessity of using force reasonably. Violence should never be utilized flippantly nor recklessly; it should be utilized only out of sheer necessity.

Breaking Contact

The distinction between lethal and non-lethal force can be broken down like this: the former is used to halt an attack right then and there, the latter used to break contact and provide an avenue for your escape. Whatever you use, you should be of the mind of getting the hell out of whatever situation you find yourself in, but only deadly force can stop the attacker outright. Less-lethal force can, for the most part, only temporarily stop an attacker. It should never be viewed as a substitute for deadly force.

Understanding when it’s preferable to break contact is an important consideration in determining what level of force to use and when. As in the scenario described at the outset, your residence isn’t only a bad place to deploy pepper spray, less-lethal force in general might be inappropriate for the situation. Since your home is a last line of defense and there are risks involved in leaving the residence (the invader is blocking your exit), your only real protection may involve deadly force. You need to come to terms with this now, before you find yourself hiding in a closet with no means of defending yourself and your loved ones, or trying to jump out of the second story of your house.

Out on the streets, however, breaking contact should be your top priority. You have no legal obligation to subdue an attacker, not to mention it’s dangerous to do so. Your safety is your top priority, not maintaining social order. If you choose to subdue someone, don’t expect anyone to help you. You don’t have to like it, but reality doesn’t conform to your sense of right and wrong. I started my blog so we can talk about what’s wrong with the world, but once we leave this safe place I’ve created, we live in accordance with reality, 100 percent of the time. Understand?

Martial Arts

I could do a whole series on martial arts. Their applicability for self-defense isn’t as obvious as it seems and there exists considerable debate as to what form of martial art is most appropriate for self-defense, or if martial arts are even useful outside the dojo setting. It’s a fascinating debate, one which can be entertaining but can also get highly spirited. Like guns, martial arts indulges egos, unfortunately. Some practitioners incorporate it into their personal identity, so even a valid critique against a particular discipline can end up becoming taken very personally.

Longtime readers know that while I’m broadly pro-gun ownership, I also believe most people are better off not owning them. Conversely, not only am I pro-martial arts, I also believe most people are better off having some martial arts training than none at all. At the end of the day, our hands and feet are our last measure of protection, so we need to know how to use them effectively for that purpose.

However, you also need to understand what sorts of techniques are going to be most appropriate for the types of scenarios you’re going to run into. Jackie Chan sure makes it seem like knowing all sorts of fancy moves will allow you to overcome any challenge out on the street. But those are choreographed fights you’re watching onscreen. There’s no choreography in the real world and actual fights tend to be messy. Just watch videos of actual violence: how often do you see it unfolding the way it does in the movies?

Generally, when it comes to unarmed martial arts (since we’re talking about less-lethal here), disciplines fall into two categories of technique: striking or grappling. As the objective is to break contact, common sense dictates striking is generally more useful than grappling. Striking forces an opponent away, grappling requires you to temporarily draw an opponent towards you. As with all things preparedness, the simpler, the better. All martial arts requires consistent training over the years to truly master. However, if all you want is to be able to break contact, knowing how to properly deliver a punch, kick, or elbow is better than nothing at all. Most of us aren’t going to become martial artists, anyway.

Is grappling completely useless for self-defense? Absolutely not. If you end up in a scenario where you cannot escape an attacker’s grasp, you have no choice but to go along for the ride. Throwing and tripping are ways of temporarily neutralizing an attacker so you can break contact, while you may also need to resort to submission moves just to get the attacker to cease their assault. The same rule applies: you are trying to create a window for escape. Once the attacker ceases assault, that’s it - get on your feet, get the hell out of there. If you throw or trip someone, don’t square up and wait for them to get on their feet. Start moving!

My preferred martial arts discipline is Muay Thai, due to its incorporation of all forms of striking: punching, kicking, elbowing, and kneeing. It also incorporates grappling, make Muay Thai an all-encompassing martial art like few others. I don’t recommend a discipline which doesn’t place a heavy emphasis on striking, since this is ultimately what’s going to create the space which allows you to break contact. In other words, Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Greco-Roman wrestling are probably less ideal for self-defense, since these involve drawing your adversary close. There are definitely situations where grappling is useful, as I explained above, but again, when it comes to personal safety, don’t get caught up in the “what-ifs?”. If you need to grapple or ground-fight your attacker, you’re in some serious trouble. Best to spend your mental energy thinking of ways to avoid the situation altogether.

My top recommendation is to seek out a discipline tailored towards real-world applicability, rather than enrolling in a program that teaches martial arts as a sport. In other words, find a specialized self-defense program, instead of learning something that just seems cool and happens to have some self-defense relevance. There’s a difference. A lot of those cool moves are actually not all that useful in an actual self-defense scenario and what’s useful depends on the context of the scenario. You need to find a program that focuses entirely on what happens out in the real world, one that emphasizes counter-attacking and escaping over fighting.

These programs can be difficult to find and are often more expensive than conventional martial arts programs. All disciplines claim to teach self-defense, but most of them only scratch the surface and are really teaching fighting instead of surviving. Even Krav Maga, which I’ve trained in, emphasizes fighting over defending or, more importantly, avoiding the altercation altogether. I suppose if people avoided fighting, then there would exist a smaller market for martial arts training, but I digress.

An example of a self-defense-focused program is the SPEAR System. Developed by Tony Blauer in the 1980s, the program includes the Be Your Own Bodyguard course, which teaches how to be situationally aware (which most people fail at), recognizing danger, managing fear, along with fundamental self-defense techniques. Notice the large emphasis on the non-martial aspects of personal safety; this is what you need to look for in a program. A discipline that doesn’t teach you how to avoid a dangerous encounter is setting you up for failure.

Here’s a short video from 2009 showing an example of what Blauer teaches in his courses:

Here’s another short, more recent video showing Blauer’s practical instruction. Again, notice the emphasis isn’t on fighting:

Be Your Own Bodyguard is only a day long, so it won’t make you a master martial artist, but that’s not the point. Once more, this isn’t about fighting, but defending. Everyone is capable, on some level, of defending themselves, so any self-defense program worth the cost will help clients find that ability within themselves, along with underscoring the difference between fighting and defending. You don’t need to train in martial arts daily to be able to protect yourself and your loved ones.

There are other programs out there, including Model Mugging. Many of these programs offer courses tailored to different types of people - women, children, even men. Which ever program you decide upon, the key is to find the one that spends at least as much time teaching how to recognize and avoid danger as they teach the physical techniques, discusses the legal implications of using force, and recognizes the difference between fighting and defending. A program that doesn’t do all three of these things is probably not the one that’s going to keep you out of trouble.

I think I’ve beaten the topic of martial arts to death for now, but I hope the length of this section underscores just what an extensive debate it constitutes. I’m sure I’ll return to this topic in future essays.

Pepper Spray

Scientifically referred to as oleoresin capsicum (OC), pepper spray is an attractive option, especially among women, due to its portability, ease of acquisition due to minimal regulation, and simplicity of use (more on that in a bit). As for effectiveness? Pepper spray proves that the easy way often provides little protection, if any.

Right off the bat, the problem with pepper spray is that its effective range is within 10 feet - well inside an attacker’s “lethal envelope.” By the time you’ve drawn your canister, your assailant is probably able to get their hands on you. All weapons constitute last-ditch measures at saving yourself, but pepper spray not only makes for a poor deterrent to attack, the moment of deployment will come when the assailant is in position to do serious damage to you. The same goes for a knife, which is at least more effective at stopping an attacker. On that note, don’t ever think about taking on a knifeman or gunman with pepper spray. Less-lethal force is no answer to lethal force.

The second shortcoming is that pepper spray works only when it gets inside an attacker’s eyes. Breathing in pepper spray can cause problems for your assailant, but guess what - it can cause problems for you too if you catch a whiff of it. For pepper spray to really work, you need to get the agent into their eyes while they’re still over an arm’s length away. Tough to do when the attacker’s ducking and weaving as they make their way towards you, isn’t it? This means successful deployment typically occurs when the attacker has their hands on you, but if they have their hands on you, they can remain holding onto you. This is especially true if you’re dealing with an experienced criminal who’s already been sprayed before and knows what it feels like. No, it doesn’t make the burning any more comfortable, but it at least has taught him not to rub his eyes.

A third shortcoming is that you can end up exposing both yourself and bystanders to your spray. It’s probably not something you want to use if you’re in a crowd or in close quarters, unless you really have no other option. You also want to avoid using it in the presence of infants and the elderly unless, again, you or someone else is on the precipice of life and death. Unlike a gun, which discharges only in one direction, or a knife, which has limited axes of attack, pepper spray can go anywhere and end up on anything. You’re liable for any repercussions which come as a result of deployment.

Should you just not bother with pepper spray? If it helps, I mentioned back in my post about Everyday Carry (EDC) that I carry pepper spray. Like martial arts, it’s better than having no way to protect yourself. Even if you carry a gun or knife, it’s never a bad idea to have a less-lethal option. I often explain that using any level of force is mostly unnecessary unless a clear threat to your safety exists, but there are instances where immediately escalating to deadly force can be imprudent.

For example, if you get into a verbal altercation and it leads to pushing and shoving, shooting or stabbing your attacker are wildly disproportionate responses. However, if you have no way to safely extricate yourself from the situation, something like pepper spray could be useful in creating that opening for breaking contact. Killing is sometimes necessary, but it’s also something which should be avoided when possible. If you really need to take someone’s life, they’ll make that decision for you.

As explained earlier, the less-lethal nature of pepper spray doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility of using it appropriately in judicious fashion. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, don’t think of pepper spray as a weapon: think of it as an escape tool. You only have a limited number of sprays (civilians are often limited to smaller-size canisters), so you have only a few opportunities to create an exit for yourself. You’re not a police officer, so don’t use it to subdue someone. Even in a perfectly justifiable citizen’s arrest, putting anything other than your hands on another person can be problematic.

Finally, as with any other tool, train with it. When you purchase pepper spray, they now typically come with an inert practice canister which sprays water instead of OC agent. Ask a family member or friend to role-play as an attacker and see how quickly you can draw and spray accurately. You’ll discover it’s much, much harder than it seems. When exposed to the reality of how these things function in the real world, it ought to force you to reassess your assumptions about violence and to come up with a more realistic plan for protecting yourself and your loved ones.

Shock Therapy

I’m not a big fan of electroshock weaponry. Popularly known by the brand name “Taser,” reliable electroshock devices are expensive, take up space, and, like pepper spray, are effective only when an aggressor is already within lethal range. Tasers which shoot out a pair of prongs, similar to that equipped by police, are available to civilians in watered-down versions, allowing you some distance from your attacker.

However, these prongs are notorious for failing to make contact with skin, with both needing to make contact in order to close the electrical circuit. Unless it makes contact with bare skin, Tasers won’t register the intended effect. There are cases upon cases where police officers deploy a Taser against a non-compliant suspect, only for it to accomplish nothing because it made contact with clothing, instead.

Like pepper spray, Tasers seem like a preferable option over guns and knives because they’re less lethal and not as stringently regulated. They are easy to purchase and have far fewer prohibitions against carry compared to guns, even in self-defense-unfriendly states. However, they cost much more than pepper spray, with higher-end models more expensive than many handguns. Legal limits on usage are the same as with any other weapon with the downside being that electroshock devices simply don’t pack much of a punch, unless you subject your attacker to an extended shock or you manage to induce cardiac arrest.

This isn’t to say electroshock is entirely useless. It’s nice having a range of options and some people may simply be more comfortable with a Taser. I consider it only about as useful as pepper spray, but if I had to choose between the two, I’d still choose pepper spray. An OC canister is smaller and cheaper, plus I don’t need to worry about shocking myself rummaging through the EDC I carry the Taser inside. If you choose to carry such a device, it’s better off being treated like a gun, so unless you’re willing to have it holstered on your person, it may be awkward to carry around, given it’s size, weight, and safety considerations.

When you’re dealing with threats up close, weapon effectiveness is twice as important. Given it’s high pricetag, combined with troublesome reliability and heftiness, Tasers are probably not worth the trouble.

Your Mind Is Your Best Weapon

There are other less-lethal weapons we won’t discuss here (though you can do so in the comments section), such as tactical flashlights and tactical pens (yes, these do exist!). No matter what less-lethal option you select, it can be of no use to you unless you train with it and understand when it’s appropriate to employ. More vital, your prime focus should always be to make it through the day without needing to use violence of any kind. This means your best, most reliable self-defense weapon is your brain. If you orient yourself towards avoiding dangerous encounters, you’ll end up in far fewer of them compared to someone who doesn’t. It’s not complicated.

Part of using your head involves planning. You don’t need to brainstorm too hard about it. Just imagine a hypothetical scenario - the one time you engage in a “what-if?” exercise - and ask yourself: what routes of escape are there? How will I communicate to the threatening party? What defensive measures do I have? Keep it realistic; scenarios like mass shootings and hijackings aren’t just a whole different ballgame, they’re also among the least likely of scenarios you may encounter. Instead, imagine you’re going about your daily business when the threat manifests, since it’s during the course of our everyday lives these things are most likely to happen.

Distance is a major factor in selecting a less-lethal defensive tool. This ought to alert you to the importance of keeping would-be assailants at a safe distance at all times. This isn’t always so easy; what are you going to do, run all over the place trying to keep everyone 20 feet away? That said, don’t overthink distance, either - what you want is to maintain space for reaction. If someone’s within 10 feet, you’re not going to have much time to recognize a threat and react to it, unless you have a sixth sense and managed to anticipate it. Even 20 feet is barely enough reaction distance, but it’s definitely better than 10 feet. Keep a closer eye on anyone within 20 feet and stay moving. If you have to do things deliberately to increase distance or lose a follower, do whatever it takes.

If you do end up face-to-face with someone who poses a potential threat, it’s time to de-escalate. Keep in mind that most people you end up in a confrontation with aren’t going to be hardened criminals, but those who are also just going about their day and you ended up getting in their way, regardless of whether you were in the right or in the wrong. Don’t take it personally; we all have bad days. But bad days can easily spill over into deadly violence if you don’t manage the situation properly.

Though not a lethal encounter, the following incident shows just how easily tempers can flare over something as mundane as a shopping cart:

We all have a sense of pride. We don’t like being spoken to rudely by others or treated as less than. This is why it’s so important to remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible. The longer you stick around, the more likely the situation will escalate. Sometimes, simply refusing to engage the other party will defuse the situation on its own.

If driving or walking away silently isn’t that easy, it may be better just to apologize. It doesn’t need to be a sincere, groveling apology. It can be a simple, “Okay, let me get out of your way.” This may seem like a capitulation, but it’s not. If anything, you’re being the “bigger” party by being willing to take the hit. Having thick skin is important here; you have to be able to brush off what people say, no matter how rude or personal it gets and keep it moving. You have neither a legal nor moral obligation to argue with someone. If things do get rude or personal, walk away immediately. The person thundering away at you will be the one everyone’s staring at, the one everyone’s camera will be trained on.

Stay calm and poised. Keeping your cool is often enough to de-escalate the situation, since you can’t be hooked unless you take the bait. That said, not everyone can be de-escalated. There are some genuinely bad people, serious social predators out there who thrive on confrontation and winning them at all cost, even at great risk to themselves. Someone who tells you anyone can be talked down is either lying or has no clue what violence in the real world is like. The legitimately violent aren’t people who just had a bad day and you just happened to be that final straw. Instead, these are people who need to hurt or terrorize others to feel like they’ve done something meaningful with their lives. When facing someone like this, you need to be prepared to either run or fight, hence bringing us full circle on the topic of possessing the means to defend yourself when that savage has you in their sights.

Less Effective? Or Just Less Lethal?

What are your thoughts? Do you agree that less-lethal defensive measures also provide less protection? Do you train in martial arts? If so, what discipline? Do you carry pepper spray or an electroshock weapon? Why or why not? What are some de-escalatory techniques you employ? Have you ever talked or fought your way out of an encounter with a threatening person?

Talk about it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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