by Gila Hayes
Jacqueline drives the end of her practice mini-baton into the metacarpals of the assailant who has grabbed her. When that technique does not work, she uses a cloth representing the keys usually carried on a mini-baton, to simulate a devastating strike to the assailant’s eyes.
Courses in baton use or stick fighting ingrain skills that can put any improvised weapon to effective use. Don’t bypass training and go right to the security guard supply store to buy a baton, which may not even be legal for possession by the private citizen in your area. Impact weapons can be grabbed and turned against you viciously if you poke ineffectively at an assailant or even if you make a good strike, then fail to move quickly out of a vulnerable position. Integral to this skill is footwork to keep you in position to inflict injury, while moving out of the way of retaliatory strikes, slashes or kicks.
Some years ago, Calibre Press produced a video titled Surviving Edged Weapons that, despite the fact that it is now rather dated, is must-see viewing for anyone at risk from knife-armed assailants. If the scenes depicted on that classic piece of video don’t persuade you to seek further training, consider the following: Stabbing survivors frequently report that they were quite unaware of the knife, or other weapon, until they saw their own blood. Any blade can do incredible injury in the hands of even an untrained person, making it a truly fearsome threat.
Contact, puncture and slashing attacks are completed with a variety of utility tools, not just knives. Screwdrivers and other weapons of opportunity are often used with deadly results and can be obtained and possessed by felons with no threat of prosecution. Likewise, boxcutters are legal, available and common tools on many job sites.
While counterintuitive, a rapid and violent defensive reaction is one of the most effective responses to a knife threat or attack with any sort of bludgeon. Called “getting inside,” a rapid step inside to control the attacker’s arms is an effective first step to subsequently disarming an assailant using a contact weapon. Realistically, moving inside and blocking the arm’s arc of motion offers greater control than dodging thrusts and being forced backward, where losing balance is a real hazard.
A forced retreat is extremely dangerous, for the attacker has all the advantages of forward momentum’s speed and balance. No one can move back as dynamically as they can press forward, putting the retreating victim at a dangerous disadvantage—one that may cost her life. From the stronger inside position, the trained practitioner can trap the hand or arm to disarm the attacker and counter attack with her own elbow strikes, head butts, eye gouges or leg traps.
Think through what you would and could do if threatened with a knife or with a bludgeon. Keep your defenses simple and immediate. The goal is to disable the assailant, break free and run for safety. If attacked with a knife or other gouging, stabbing or cutting instrument, the odds say injury is extremely likely. If the crime attempted is simple robbery, by far the wisest course of action is throwing your purse or wallet to the robber and running away if possible. This is yet another reason to be careful what information is inside your purse or wallet that could lead a thief to your home. Cash should be kept separate from driver’s license and proof of automobile insurance or other identifying paperwork, and keys should absolutely be in a pocket or on your person, not in your handbag. These plans deserve attention, and are ideas you can implement immediately to increase your security.
Lies and Dangerous Scams
In a society that does not seem to trust its citizens with deadly force, women are often given dangerously ineffective tools for defense.
“#1 Police Recommended Safety Device!” I read that claim on an ad for a stun gun, and less than a week later was told by a personal alarm sales representative that their device was the #1 policerecommended safety device! The truth is that neither is adequate defense in an attack. The stun gun, despite advertisements bragging about 75,000-volt shocks, works only if both terminals are held against the attacker for seven to 10 seconds, until the muscles go into spasm. No one, not even a small person, will compliantly stand still while you press the stun gun’s electrified prongs against them. A struggle will break the contact before the muscle spasm can be induced. Why are women being told to use non-lethal gimmicks against rape and lethal assault?
Confronted with a contact weapon, Kathy’s hands come up so fast that the motion is just a blur! She knows she has almost no time in which to control the attacker’s blow.
So she traps his arm, crashing forward to throw him off balance…
…and essentially doing a walkthrough disarm, stripping the pipe away as she disrupts his balance.
High-decibel noisemakers are frequently touted as deterrents to assault. The high-pitched siren “will drive him away and bring help,” say the promoters. These devices sound much like car alarms. The screech of a car alarm is considered more of a nuisance than a deterrent. If the owner is in hearing range, they can run to the car to quiet the alarm, but no one else, police or otherwise, hurries to investigate the squeal of a car alarm. Do not believe claims that a noisemaker or siren will summon help. It will not.
I do endorse the motion-sensing noisemakers as budget alarm systems, if you can adjust the device so it responds only to gross movement, like the opening of a door or window. Not everyone can afford to pay a major company to install and monitor an alarm system, yet all of us need ways to be sure our doors and windows won’t be pried open as we sleep, allowing an intruder in our homes while we are vulnerable. Attach the noisemaker to your sliding patio door or to windows that don’t have adequate locks in that primitive cabin you rent for vacation, or the window of the motel room that turns out to be on the ground floor even though you requested second story or higher, and trust it only to alert you if someone breaks in.
One of the author’s favorite demonstrations in women’s self-defense classes is holding a stun gun to her leg and pressing the switch. Students are astonished by its ineffectiveness.
Tools Are Only As Good As Your Training
Any self-defense device is only as effective as the training you receive in its use. Even the simple OC spray is most effective when combined with patterns of movement and other good defense tactics. Equally important is the legal defense you muster by presenting training certificates in both non-lethal and firearms defensive techniques. Your training certificates show the prosecutor, judge and jury that you carefully studied appropriate ways to stop varying levels of criminal assault. You can testify that your training was the basis for the method with which you choose to defend self and family.
Legitimate instructors of the mini-baton, oleoresin capsicum/OC spray, stick fighting, or hand-to-hand defenses must inform you that intermediate force is not sufficient against a deadly force attack. Use intermediate defenses to stop harassment before a lethal assault begins, yet always be prepared to answer lethal force with a firearm if that is the kind of attack you face. More about that later.
This high-decibel noisemaker can alert you if someone forces open a vulnerable window, but it is good for nothing more.
CHAPTER 12
Tasers
Well over a dozen years ago, I sat across the dinner table from John Farnam, one of the most down-to-earth members of the firearms training fraternity, and was openly skeptical when he said he thought that within our lifetimes we would see the technology of self defense advance from firearms to highly effective phase pistols. What seemed fantastic then now seems only one or two new inventions away. Though we aren’t quite at the Star Trek stage yet, police and private citizens are fighting back with electrical devices that make the stun guns of a few years ago look like child’s toys.
I refer, of course, to the Taser®, a battery-powered electronic control device (ECD) that projects barbed electrical leads into the assailant and applies pulsed electrical current that runs through the neural network. This inhibits voluntary control of skeletal muscles, rendering the subject unable to move, provided that the barbs embed at sufficient distance from one another. Curren
t is transmitted through two barbed probes that are discharged from a one-time use cartridge. When both barbs contact the target, an electrical circuit is created and the electricity acts on the muscles, which contract during the electrical pulse, then relax between pulses, though in reality it happens so quickly that the subject is not aware of the contraction/relaxation cycle.
The Taser C2 model starts its cycle with 17 pulses of electricity measuring about .072 joules per pulse, compared to a cardiac defibrillator, which delivers 150 joules of energy. Pulse frequency is varied during the C2’s 30-second cycle, during which the citizen is advised to set down the ECD and run to safety. Nomenclature describing the power delivered by ECDs may sound confusing. When the term “volt” is used in advertisements, it primarily indicates the distance the spark will jump. The Taser uses 50,000 volts, the minimum required to deliver the pulsed current through up to two inches of clothing. This amperage is too low to pose danger of electrocution, but the pulsed delivery infiltrates the human neural network to accomplish incapacitation, according to Dr. Mark Kroll, PhD on Taser’s training DVD.
Law enforcement has been using the Taser as an alternative method to control and subdue subjects since the 1990s. In 1999, the Model 18 Advanced Taser was released for civilian use, and in 2002 the model X26C was released to private citizens, though a price tag in excess of $1,000 puts it beyond the budget of most private citizens. In July of 2007, the Taser® C2 Personal Protector came on the market, and with prices of $300–350 depending on options, it looks like the personal Taser is here to stay. Retail outlets like Sports Authority are now stocking the C2 and the unit is sold online as well.
The C2 is a 6″×2″×1.25” ECD with specific operational features that take into account the private citizen’s need to stop an attack, but not take the offender into custody. The C2 comes with the manufacturer’s offer to replace any unit left behind when it has been used to stop an assailant. All they want is a copy of the police report detailing the incident, something that would probably get to them in any case, due to discharge of miniscule tags bearing the serial number of the Taser cartridge, for law enforcement to collect following Taser use. These, along with the background check required before activation of the C2, are part of the manufacturer’s effort to keep their device in responsible hands.
“Was Farnam right?” I wondered after reading all this. Is the C2 Taser a good defense weapon for people who don’t want to or can’t carry a gun? Or does it fill a defense niche completely separate from the concerns of the armed citizens?
In search of answers, I called a Taser Senior Master Instructor, Chris Myers, who is also a partner in the nationally recognized CRT Less Lethal research group in Seattle, Washington. Though very positive about the defense capabilities of the C2, Myers expresses concern that the C2 looks so user-friendly that potential owners won’t realize that the tool is of limited value without training and practice. Without training, too many C2s could just take up purse space, where they would not be accessible during a fast-breaking attack.
The Taser®C2, sometimes called the personal Taser, comes in a variety of amusing colors and patterns.
The Taser®probe cartridge slips into the front of the C2 unit.
A barb at the end of the wire pierces clothing and skin, so when two probes contact an assailant the electricity makes a circuit and flows between the two points of contact.
Myers, a police officer by profession, explains that hesitation to use a weapon against another human being is common, regardless of the self-defense tool employed. Couple that with the difficulty of deciding whether someone walking toward you is just another pedestrian in the parking garage or someone who is about to attack you. Thus we acknowledge the next reality about using the C2 Taser: it will be deployed at very close quarters, as Myers explains.
The citizen’s Taser C2 model only has 15-foot probes, compared to the 21- to 35-foot long probes on various police versions. Realistically, a private citizen under attack rarely begins to fight back at any greater distance, simply because many people do not detect the threat at greater distances, or the assailant does not reveal his intentions until he is close enough to grab his victim.
Perhaps this is why the least expensive version of the C2 has no sighting mechanism at all, though the $350 model has a laser sight. Myers is disturbed by the sightless model, explaining, “I cannot imagine using a C2 without the laser sight that is on the more expensive model.” When beginners take their first test shots with the C2, the probes commonly go high, because the trigger mechanism is on the top of the unit where it is depressed with the thumb. Under stress, with hand and arm muscles tensing, far too much pressure is imparted to the switch with results similar to a pistol shooter who “milks” the grip by convulsing the entire hand during the trigger pull, Myers suggests.
With Tasers being marketed on the Internet, in retail stores and at the popular new Taser home parties (successor to the Tupperware parties of the 1960s), many C2 units go out with only an informational DVD to educate the new owner. Myers expressed concern that without having ever discharged Taser cartridges (an expensive undertaking at $25 per cartridge), when faced with deploying their Taser, these new owners have little idea what to expect. Without confronting concerns about hurting another human, and having not worked out aiming issues, Myers predicts only limited success. Practice also serves to satisfy the natural human doubt that wonders, “Will it work?” which we face with any defense tool, he concludes.
When asked about classes for private citizens, Steve Tuttle, vice president of communications for Taser, explained that the price of the high-end X26C includes a one-hour training session with a police officer, but for the less expensive C2, the company ships the informational civilian training DVD, though he commented that the possibility of offering training courses with the device in various localities was of interest to the manufacturer.
Two thin wires carry the electrical charge from the Taser® C2 unit to a practice target up to 15 feet away. The upper wire travels straight out from the device; the lower at a declining angle.
Myers, on the other hand, repeatedly emphasizes the need to know how the C2 works before relying on it for self defense. “You need to fire the Taser enough until you know where the darts will hit every time,” Myers stresses. In this way, self-defense with a C2 Taser is no different from practicing martial arts or learning to shoot a gun.
With proper training and an aggressive determination to defend oneself, Myers believes the C2 Taser is a reasonable defense option. “At this price range, there is simply no competition for the C2 in ECDs,” he says. As a veteran patrol officer, he relates that when ECDs were the new tool for police use, law enforcement officers Tased a lot of offenders. Now, when the little red dot of the Taser’s aiming laser moves across an offender’s chest, he sees a lot more tough guys ready to surrender before things go any further. “The deterrent effect of the Taser laser is huge,” Myers exclaims. Women using the C2 could ride on the coat tails of the law enforcement experience and find considerable reluctance from an “experienced” criminal to be Tased, he suggests.
I must emphasize that just like the misconception of “scaring a criminal away by pointing a gun at him,” the deterrent effect with a Taser is only as strong as the willingness of the woman holding the Taser to use it! Myers is right: only training and experience give that kind of confidence and determination. Do not get a defense tool without being trained to use it.
Different Applications
Though the recommended use of the Taser entails deploying the probes and embedding the barbs through which the current runs, the C2 model, like law enforcement models, also has the “drive-stun” or contact capacity: you stick the device into the assailant and trigger it. A drive-stun is used if the probes have been discharged but failed to connect, or it might be applied to a second aggressor.
A drive-stun is a pain-compliance technique, and when contact is broken, the pain stops. In my experience, it was easily escaped
by simply wrenching away or knocking the device out of contact. Taser recommends pressing the front of the C2 into the assailant’s neck if using it for a contact stun. The drive-stun is also useful if only one probe has contacted the offender, because contact can close the circuit. In law enforcement, officers are taught to close the distance to the subject and apply a drive stun to complete the circuit if a probe misses. “This move is a lot more aggressive and requires confidence in the device that it will work,” exclaims Myers. Still, this should not be overlooked as a tactic, whether to correct poorly aimed probe deployment or in response to multiple assailants. Reduced to this strategy, however, the woman armed with a C2 cannot follow Taser’s advice to leave the C2 on the ground and use the 30-second electrical discharge to run away, so she will need a strategy to escape or overcome the aggressor at some point in the fight.
The Taser C2 cartridge.
Even a small circuit created by hooking Taser®probes into Brenden’s shirt relatively close together, creates considerable distraction. (Exposure made with subject in kneeling position for safety.)
Brenden experiences a brief exposure to the Taser®C2’s power. The circuit created by these close-together probes will not take him to the ground, though it takes his attention off most anything else while the C2 unit is sending electricity down the wires.