This will be an interview between James and me, regarding his first article of the morning on the old man who was killed at 4pm on Friday, 12/2/16. It has evolved from questions I started to ask him about the incident, since I don’t have the stomach to watch such footage.
To begin with, I understand that it is most important to shut down my natural inclination to speak when spoken to. In order to do this, I must pretty much mistrust everybody and consider them worthy of being six feet under and of not a second of my time. So the jaded eye with which I have begun to regard people around me in Baltimore is well-justified and requires further fine tuning to improve my already high ability to discriminate when I am unsafe. It’s high, because I feel no pale face guilt. Even though all but one year of my schooling was in this country, my father taught me to see things differently than the way I was being taught. I am so grateful. James has simply reinforced that outsider’s view by making me aware of how things break down into specific street situations.
So I now have some street wisdom without the physical strength to take care of myself should such a situation arise. What does that mean? It means that my suspicion will raise my hackles much sooner than would happen to a guilt-ridden pale face. I may be able to simply avoid something without needing any kind of defense. What, if this is not enough, is what I want to solidify for myself in this article via interview, stopping randomly at whatever part of James’ report raised questions for me.
Lili: James, hypothetically, if any of us wanted to carry a cane and were neither in our prime nor old enough to need the cane, would this be an advisable weapon, how would we use it, and if not, what do you recommend for the non-fighter besides moving to the middle of the median strip and making a ruckus?
James: If you’re stable on your feet, I recommend using the cane like a bayonet and gun butt of a shoulder-fired weapon, to have both hands on it and not to swing it. You would not use it to push but to stab, to ram. The other stroke with two hands on the cane would be the butt stroke, which is the knock-out blow in pugil stick fighting, which is a competitive, full-contact exercise engaged in by the US Marine Corps wearing football helmets.
I’m going to describe your hand positions on the cane here: Imagine you have one hand on the crook of your cane. Pull that hand back so that the front of the cane rises to meet your other hand at about your hip or belt buckle. You will reach across with the other hand and grab the cane with an inward turn so that the palms of both hands are facing your body. This allows you to pull with one hand as you push with the other hand, which is the same motion, using golfing, paddling, and hitting a baseball. However, with this wide grip, it will be difficult to wrest the cane from you and would require both hands of even a strong man to do so. Aside from stabbing with the front of the cane, there are two other strokes: the butt stroke, alluded to above, in which you pull with the lead hand across the body as you push with the rear hand which holds the crook of the cane, chopping into the face of the attacker with the crook of the cane. Once this is done, you may stab with the crook, just as you did with the point of the cane, only in the opposite direction. You may also do the butt stroke with the front of the cane with the same push-pull motion. The third stroke is to push both hands over the attacker’s shoulders and strike him in the throat with the center of the cane. Aaron Seligson once knocked me out with this stroke, even though I had two layers of ¼” leather (1/2” total!) protecting my throat. There’s one variation on the stab with the point, which is to face your knuckles up as you stab at the face at shoulder level, trying to run the point into the eye. If a strong man uses these cane tactics, he would have to take care not to kill the antagonist. For a normal person, this is the best way to apply your whole body in using your cane to defend yourself.
Lili: What is a knife clinch, btw?
James: To clinch is to grab another person, either with the hand or in an entangling manner with the arms. A knife clinch comes in two varieties: offensively, one grabs with the empty hand and pulls the opponent into the thrusting knife blade; defensively, one grabs the knife hand with both hands. Unless you’re a monster martial arts stud, one hand doesn’t get it done.
According to a study reported in a journal of the AMA, 1998 or ’99, longevity of men had a strong correlation with grip strength. The one area in which male strength continues to increase into old age is the grip. I recall when I was 16 years old and able to curl 120lbs with a barbell, that my 69-year-old grandfather was still able to defeat me easily in arm wrestling. He claimed to have maintained his hand strength twisting off beer bottle caps in retirement. I recently sparred with Charles and Erique who are in their prime. Before and after the session, I was barely able to walk to and from the car, but in the stick fighting zone, where so much counted on hand conditioning, I was able to remain competitive in the sparring.
In a situation where an elderly man has to defend against a taller, quicker, and overall stronger young man, then falling into a clinch and grasping with the hands is a functional act of desperation, especially in a world where so many of these loosely dressed fellows carry knives. In the video, the attacker was seen struggling to pull out his knife. Most of my successful actions against knife armed aggressors involve me using their clothes to pin their hands and prevent the knife draw. A thug wearing a hoodie will either have the weapon in the front slot pocket or in a belt or pocket in the pants beneath the hoodie. Simply pulling the garment down, either by the hood or by the breast section is a functional defense though not a guaranteed prevention.
Lili: Thank you, James. This helps a lot. Now all everybody needs to do is find a practice partner or a heavy white oak cane and a punching bag and vow to cause as much hell to any potential attacker, if the situation, G-d forbid, may come up.
Twerps, Goons and Meatshields: The Basics of Full Contact Stick-Fighting
If you lack mobility (and even if you don't) I would recommend wearing some kind of armor. Even if it's just a hack like a vest or jacket with paperback books duct-taped to the inside, it could still be enough to help you escape the "kill zone" in a knife assault, and/or repel the attack, before you suffer serious injury. It's became apparent that the dindu reparations recovery agents have taken to gratuitously cutting and stabbing their white victims out of racial animus. So even if you "give it up" there is little assurance you will not be harmed. Wearing armor might seem excessively theatrical and even paranoid to the point of being clinically crazy to some people, but if you live in a "war zone" the first thing you must do if you sincerely want to survive is accept the reality that that is where you are, and then prepare accordingly. Wearing armguards and having something you can use as a shield to ward off blows, either one handed or two handed, would also help. You can buy Kevlar inserts for backpacks and purses that will stop a bullet. FYI: AEArmor.com and Bulletblocker.com currently have them on sale for 99 bucks in various sizes. The bad guys will almost always have the initiative over their prospective victim so being able to evade or ward off the aggressor's initial blows will always be an important factor in surviving an attack.
"Wherever the criminal classes use weapons, the respectable classes also adopt them for private defense. The police all the world over share the trait of never being on the scene when wanted." - Captain Hugh B.C. Pollard, "The Book of the Pistol & Revolver (1917)
"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."- Ephesians 6:13 (NIV)