“We don’t eat until you back on the street. Bail posted in 15 minutes.”

-advertisement on the #44 Bus, Baltimore, July 2012

I recently had a conversation with a self-defense instructor about an encounter I had with three youths who had been in the act of intimidating a woman—trying to drive her off the sidewalk and away from her car—until I interceded. I was discussing my frame of mind, what was going through my head, while these three guys circled back around to confront me after I had been so rude as to interrupt their dominance display. I confessed that I had been visualizing stomping the smallest one.

He said, “Why not the biggest? You take the biggest one out first.”

He had a point. Taking out the biggest threat is the dominant self-defense strategy taught against group aggressors. I confessed that I was practicing self-defense, not against these three, who I judged incapable of beating me to death in less than a half hour, but against my true enemies: the police, who would lock me up, and the lawyers who would prosecute and eventually sue me for a successful self-defense.

He shook his head, so I explained the two huge legal liabilities that come with the preemptive strike against the most dangerous member of an attacking group. First, this would have reduced the chances of me being banged up, and increased the chances of their primary assailant being injured and his accomplices dispersing.

Why, he wondered, was that not a desirable outcome. Why was I willing to take a beating by the man-sized aggressor while crushing one of the smaller punks?

It is quite simple really; in the eyes of the American justice system, the injured aggressor is the victim, and the successful defender is the criminal. By knocking out the big boy, which I might have been able to do, I may have seriously injured him and would have insured that his two accomplices morphed into innocent bystanders who did not even know this kid, and saw me jump him from behind. That is at least a weekend in Central Booking, possibly jail time, perhaps even a prison stint, definitely a law suit filed by the parents and possibly a DOJ case against me for violating this saint’s civil rights. My life as I know it might very well end and descend into a living hell as his mother, the newest civil rights martyr, copyrighted his name.

If I dissect the group, focusing on injuring the least dangerous attackers, while the others beat on me and provide visible evidence for the defense of my freedom, than I have at least a credible defense, and might, with a black eye and bloody nose, be able to convince the cops not to lock me up, particularly since all three of these maggots will have obviously been in a fight.

The self defense instructor then made some very good points about what was right, what was wrong, and how things should be. I countered with examples of how right things are not, how wrong things are, and how things are not as they should be. I think I just managed to depress him.

Think, if they are not shooting or stabbing me, how can they possibly be as big a threat to my way of life as the evil state for which I toil, which owns me, and which has a vested interest in the total monopoly of force?

In America my friend, you and I have no right to defend ourselves. That right belongs exclusively to the government, and their heavily armed enforcers, who harass me for being a pedestrian and would certainly take away my highly conditional semi-free status if they caught me wearing a bowie knife on my hip, a weapon with which I could effectively combat any group of athletic young criminals within seconds, even if they were armed.

The state will not permit us to carry arms in our defense. So, as we age, or if we are a female, or alone, we will always be hanging out there as apparently soft targets for groups of able-bodied but unarmed young predators, who cannot be prosecuted to any meaningful extent for any unarmed act of violence that does not result in death. Even then, even if they stomp you to death, only 25% of the group will face charges.

So, you say I am insane, or at best eccentric for seeing my masters as the enemy. Again, who is the larger enemy, the group of punks who want to experience the thrill of beating down some old man, or the trillion dollar web of law enforcement institutions that devote massive resources to making certain that I am unarmed, and, should I manage to defend myself with my aging and oft broken hands, will detail at least one law school graduate to make certain that I pay for my crime.

Who is the enemy if not the police state that steals from me every week and bars me from the use of most forms of defense against the fatherless criminals that this same police state feeds with my hard-earned and stolen money?

Crush was a sixty-year old biker, a large, tough man. He had an insulting discussion with two young men who were "big football player college types." The men approached him on the sidewalk when he was on his way to his bike meaning to do him harm. He tore the one "punk’s" leather jacket in half and broke the other young man’s jaw. Both men were KO’d and hospitalized. Uncle Crush spent six months in prison and had to pay medical expenses and even pay for the torn leather jacket.

I ask you on what planet is that justice? People might say that this is some form of new liberalism. In fact this incident occurred in rural Pennsylvania in 1977. It’s the American way, baby.

Your attacker is a minor—a child and therefore innocent, even though testosterone courses through his veins and he has more lean muscle mass than you—in a society where manhood is a crime against humanity. He is believed by the media, the state, and his mother to be chronologically incapable of crime. If you harm him more than he harms you than you are a criminal.

My advice is this: take a beating, or at least scrape some of your face off on the curb if you want to avoid a weekend in jail, mark up his accomplices, and then, and only then, beat his young, frosted-flake fed ass.

If he has a friend, you absolutely must drag that bastard—he is, isn’t he?—into the combat. If you do not he is the perjuring torpedo that will sink your ship of freedom. You must sustain visible injuries and apply visible injuries to the entire aggressive group or you will be jailed, charged with a felony, and eventually sued. Try to avoid any of the crippling blows and debilitating choke holds used by martial artists. These are effective countermeasures but are considered excessive legally. Never, ever stomp the head. Stomp the ankles. You can even do that while they are on their feet. If you cannot lay a fist into them claw their face. Do anything to mark them up.

In urban areas however, beatings with the fists are considered to be minor affairs which do not, ever, justify an armed or bone-breaking defense, even if the guy beating you is six feet and 180 pounds of prime, athletic, adolescent muscle.

Stay free, my friends.

August, 22, 2012

Skulker Jones is the sequel to A Hoodrat Halloween and an urban horror tale of a failed man looking for a final saving grace.