Armed and group attack

Armed and group attack.

Two possible scenarios of armed and group aggression.

There are hundreds of self-defense courses in Italy whose stated task would be (I use the conditional purposely) to prepare you to face the disturbing scenario of an assault by a stranger.

But from an assault with an armed and group hand?

Too often, though, what we prepare for is pure theory with all the dynamics NOT correct.

And so in the hypothetical scene of a single-faced attacker, unarmed, also intelligent and willing to talk that materializes out of nowhere and jumps on you.

Or the usual rapist, also only so-called, also unarmed, who emerges from the shadows, who takes the allegedly ill-fated pupil of the course behind that comes from this private fingered and castrated sight.

These hypothetical scenarios are ideal, but since often a well-respected aggressor, especially if only, shows up at least with a knife, as well as the rapist who Of course, to make her comfortable she needs at least a free hand and for this usually “persuades” her victim by showing her something sharp and sharp, rather than wasting on immobilizing her by force.

Unfortunately, in the face of real cases, what they teach us in the gym seems to be of little use.

So, what to do in these cases? but why is it so?.

Armed assault and group assault.

As I told you several times in the blog if you have to have in front of you an armed attacker the simplest thing is that you are also armed.

Now I’m not talking about carrying a knife because, in addition to being always illegal (the famous story of the shortest blade of the four fingers is a popular fantasy), it is completely counterproductive.

Using a knife is a science mixed with art.

You must have pepper spray (legal), telescopic stick (illegal transport), in short the police endowment (excluding the firearm), STOP!!

Challenging an attacker with a knife, it’s a real suicide.

It’s complicated for an expert let alone if you’ve never done it, it’s like you want to play Russian roulette.

Don’t think about disarminghim , what is taught in the gym about disarms is a dangerous way to get hit with the weapon.

The whole process of disarmament that is explained never works in dynamics because it starts from the wrong assumptions.

Never seek disarmament! Never! Disarmament is like smashing in tennis, it is only done if the opportunity is given.

As long as some law does not prohibit the port, the only viable alternative is pepper spray cans that you are a man or a woman.

Some models are effective even at four meters and are really able to neutralize one more attackers in a bloodless way (no one will get hurt even if I know it would not hurt to give him a hard lesson).

Personally I never had to use a spray can but a friend who had an argument with a very aggressive motorist came out of this situation at risk with an anti-aggression spray without anyone getting hurt, apart from the attacker who definitely had to wait to resume driving at least half an hour if not more.

Important!! A piece of advice, after such an episode you have to go and denounce the incident by explaining very carefully and very detail.

Make sure you have a legal anti-aggression spray for their use apply to the same considerations as any armament: guns, knives, electric devils or other.

One important thing, but one that everyone underestimates, it is useless to have anti-aggression tools with you if you are not able to use it in less than a second.

Even having a loaded gun, it doesn’t do much, if we have to waste time pulling it out of the holster (perhaps hidden behind the jacket).

A man armed with a knife a few meters away would not give you any chance to pull out the gun: at the first nod to put a hand in your pocket, the bandit would pounce on you.

Experiments have been carried out in the past on what safe distance a man armed with a gun in the holster should hold against a man armed with a knife: the result is disconcerting, they serve from seven to ten meters!

At lower distances, the stabber has a very high chance of coming into contact and also fatally injuring, before the other can pull out the weapon and shoot.

Basically, if you decide to shoot with a weapon of any kind (legal or not, but this is your responsibility), you should have it already in your hand
before
you get into trouble.

After that, you may no longer need it, or even add more danger to the situation.

In short, the concept of immediate availability is fundamental and at the same time represents the limit of use of such tools that you can often not bring in good view because you are not at war.

All the ladies who equip themselves with cans or Tasers (so-called electric bollards), by habit leave them in their handbags, but where?.

They don’t remember anymore, they’re in the company of bunches of keys, makeup cans, purses, paper towels, or rustling piles of old receipts.

In a chaos like the sudden scare of one that threatens you is quite difficult to find the tool, it is already difficult for you to find everyday things, let alone if in a moment of panic you can track down the fateful can!

This is why it is important indeed essential that you understand the principles of prevention and attention to context.

I want to exhaust you on these issues.

If you have a spray can with you and you are going through a dimly lit tunnel in the under-station, you are going to the underground parking lot, etc. it is time to pull it out and keep it hidden in the palm of your hand, better if already with your finger on the safe.

The most at-risk contexts, stations, corridors, building halls, parking lots, are well known to everyone and it is certainly not appropriate to list them, just as it is useless to be taken by paranoia but the risk exists, it must be evaluated and prevented in a serene way, taking the necessary precautions if you want to give yourself a chance to survive an attack with armed and group hands.

Attackers armed with knife

What to do if you are unarmed in the presence of an individual armed with a knife is one of the complex questions of self-defense but essentially there are two assessments to be made:

The first assessment to be made is in relation to the risk you run by reacting: If the attacker wants to rob us of his wallet, it seems to me really crazy to try to fight back. Let’s stay calm and give him what he wants.

The second assessment to be made is that if the risk is directed at the person,that is, there is a clear intention to kill, or we are faced with an attempted rape, things can change.

Escape is the preferred option, but it is not always possible. If you cannot escape, you must immediately choose a method to defend yourself.

Do not grab the hand holding the knife NEVER: it is too dangerous, you would find yourself without a hand or at least with serious injuries to the arm.

What you need to do instead is try to move as fast as you can trying to keep the body away from the blows.

If you can’t escape try to “dance” around the attacker, being careful not to get trapped in some dead-end corner.

This need for a lot of energy!!

If you are lucky, and find a blunt object, USALO!!: a stool, a chair, a bottle, a coat hanger, a stick, an umbrella, a shoe, the belt, etc. Anything.

Now how to use a fortuitous object depends on the object found and you need a minimum of training but what you need to do first is hit the hand armed with a knife because this is a fundamental aspect is necessary.

Hitting him and not his armed hand is an important and unresolved risk, you must first neutralize the weapon and even if it falls take it yourself or drive it away from both.

At this point you run or fight.

In the case of an attempted rape, the situation is particularly critical as the victim almost always cannot escape (it would be immediately reached) and can not react, as he is almost never able to face a fight with his bare hands against a weapon.

In this case, a “wait-and-see” tactic could be useful, that is, to give the aggressor the feeling of wanting to give in without reacting, to declare that he is afraid, waiting for the good moment for a decisive reaction.

It is clearly a desperate choice, but it is probably the only viable one in such a context: if the aggressor wants to consume violence, sooner or later he will have to lay down the knife, perhaps for a moment, or he will have a drop in attention.

That’s the time to attack, bite, hit repeatedly, kick fingers in the eye, give knees to the groin, scream, run, ask for help…

No guarantee that all this will work,yes, you got it right but when you fight for life there is never anything certain and obvious.

A short “case story”:

“An American woman jogging in the evening in a park was attacked by a knife-wielding rapist. He beat her and threatened her, dragging her to a secluded place, where he began to rape her. During the rape, the assailant attempted a deep kiss and it was in that while the victim grabbed the wrist that still held the knife, and simultaneously detached the man’s tongue with a bite.

The rapist, in pain, tried to free himself and the woman struck him again with the knee, wrished and got up, fleeing.”

Aggressions by the herd

Another nightmare scenario is the herd’s attack.

This is also a very dangerous situation and not just a resolution.

Unfortunately, there are often cases of group violence against a boy in national newspapers and it is one of the most likely cases of aggression. Being in a group turns usually meek and cowardly individuals into dangerous brawls.

Membership in the group determines psychological components of prestige and pride in front of other gang members.

Meeting such scum is a bad experience for anyone, regardless of their martial preparation.

Unfortunately, although it is easier to have problems with groups of attackers, rather than with individual attackers as repeatedly encountered, in gyms where it is self-defense you use the same approach as for knife attacks, YOU DEDICA VERY TIME, but why? it seems that they treat these situations as a rare and marginal event, it is NOT COSI’!!.

• The attackers alone are almost always armed.
• The attackers are often two or more than two.

When you see one-on-one quarrels often are two neighbors, relatives with grudges lasting months or years challenging each other, or regulations between two drug dealers or toxics.

Of course nothing is excluded but they are rarer events if you are not stupid to accept any provocation of a bully.

Now if these are the most common cases and there can be no unarmed one-to-one sports approach because it is a serious training error and for more fundamental reasons both tactical and technical but I do not want to explain this to you now.

So as you may have understood you train very little to deal with such a situation, as if there is some sort of oblivion on the subject and when you do it, as usual, the scenario for which you train seems to have come out of a science fiction movie.

So it is normal to attend workouts in which, the one who trains, faces one by one his unlikely attackers who, for their part, attack one at a time, standosene good waiting their turn as in the queue at the post office, who does not stick behind you, all unarmed, etc., .

It is obvious that the reality is a little different: maybe four or five axed attack you simultaneously from all directions, knock you to the ground, and then slaughter you with kicks and punches.

Perhaps the reason why in the gym you do little training to such a scenario, is because in such cases there is very little to do??

It is already difficult to deal with an isolated attacker, let alone two or three energetic attackers, perhaps with knives and sticks, but this is not the correct approach.

Importantly, if you have a spray can, use it immediately,you can have a very good chance of dispersing the herd by fanging the nettle liquid, it is a countermeasure almost always effective and bloodless. Run!! Run!! Run!! go Go GOOOO!!!!

Unfortunately, in most cases, since you’re a man and you’re a tough guy, you don’t have it because it’s a women’s thing, so you’re screwed and there’s nothing for you to do and trouble starts.

So what to do?.

The most tactically viable indication in such cases is to face one opponent at a time!

If you are facing a group of thugs on your own, the first goal must be to avoid encirclement at all costs or someone behind you.

You have to be VERY mobile,you can never stand still, so you have to back off, move to the side, diagonally and know how to take advantage of the terrain, parked cars and bikes, obstacles, tables, trees, in short anything you can stand between us and at least part of the herd.

At the same time, you have to move so that you only have one opponent in front, that is, that the other thugs find their companion between them and you.

You have to hit the man closest to you decisively, strongly and repeatedly but for a short time, you must be ready to stop immediately if the others come out to the sides to encircle you, at which point move back to the side looking for the position that puts “shadow” as many assailants as possible and that get in the way of each other.

Against multiple opponents you have to focus on some important points:

• An exaggeratedly mobile footwork on back and side steps
• Perform short combinations and possibly on primary targets (eyes and genitals)
• Be careful not to be grabbed or thrown to the ground so anti-grappling techniques
• Projecting but never in sacrifice

This combat condition is not easy because you have to use peripheral vision to control all the space around you but at the same time you have the tunnel effect related to heavy stress and adrenaline.

One of the systems that works a lot on the concept of multiple aggressions by multiple subjects is the Jeet kune Do system,the Keysi system.

There is also the Krav Maga but you often see ridiculous things! A problem within them for filling the market with incompetents and making them use their brand and that they have to resolve themselves.

These are conditions that need to be tried several times and should be done as a sparring so not a cinematic simulation but without script with the intention of hitting you by your training partners, then complete protections and away. you as you can imagine especially at the first “simulations” you will take a lot of shots and you will be surrounded in a second.

If you’re in a closed environment, try to sneak into a corridor as cramped as possible, force the herd to line up behind the first one.

Theory? No, but it’s the only thing you can do, as long as you can.

It’s something extremely complex and full of variables.

Start in your training with two on one and different positions of the two attackers, then three on one, etc.

Get used to hitting primary targets accurately.

An extra chance comes to our aid from the psychological dynamics that often involve the members of the herd.

Acting as a group often masks insecurity.

Sometimes, by decisively hitting the former, especially if he is a dominant member, it can lead the rest of the group to hesitate, to lose confidence by giving you time to escape.

Plus, if you can roll out one of the gang, the others will have the tactical and logistical problem of one of them to manage and help.

Armed and group aggression may also mean that the group is also armed.

In conditions of war, often the sniper chooses to hurt rather than kill because a wounded man obstructs, demoralizes and keeps the other soldiers occupied, much more than a slain soldier but this is a different context but the psychological reaction of the comrades is not much different.

In the case of women assaulted by the herd, the same considerations apply even if, of course, we are in the most difficult scenario imaginable, the only possible defence is the use of pepper spray and/or the intervention of brave people with a good dose of luck.

Armed and group attack.

Ultimately, the real defense is a healthy prevention, in addition to a lucid head, determined and ready for improvisation but not always enough, the technical part you need to get out of a situation of danger that could not be avoided despite your attention to avoid conflict (they targeted you point and just for fun while you were coming out of the parking lot , you did nothing they chose you even if you remember that your attitude affects their choice, however something went wrong but you can not even live in paranoia.

What you need to look for is a “space” to give you escape, do not look even if you lay out one of the pack to fight with everyone, it would be a serious mistake, the goal is to find the way out.

Stay Tuned! Armed and group attack!

Street Fight Mentality

Andrea