In the world of law, there are essentially two types of crimes:  mala en se (Latin for evil in itself) crimes and mala prohibita (Latin for evil prohibited) crimes. The distinction is important, and most Americans don’t understand these concepts.

Image via Wikipedia

Mala en se crimes are obvious infringements upon the rights of others. This would include things like robbery, rape, or murder. I say that these crimes are obvious, because every organized society has laws against these crimes, and the harm they inflict is obvious and immediate.

These acts contain the element of mens rea (a guilty mind). Anybody of normal state of mind knows that they are violating these laws and thus understand they have committed a “wrong”.

Contrast that idea with mala prohibita crimes – acts that are crimes because somebody said so. These are laws like prostitution, drug use, etc.

You can argue the ills of these acts, but in themselves they do not infringe on anybody else’s rights. Mala prohibita laws are not universal in US states, across the globe, or historically. Why? Because mostly they enforce whoever is in power’s moral system. They try to replace self-regulation with government regulation of consensual activity.

The US constitution was originally drafted and has been amended to bind the federal government from creating and enforcing mala prohibita laws. The bill of rights is a stunning document outlining the types of things the government cannot infringe upon – freedom of speech, religion, freedom from self-incriminatiom, freedom from illegal detainment, search and seizure, the right to own and bear arms.

Mala prohibita laws are tricky because you can violate them with no mens rea. You can be in violation of mala prohibita laws without even knowing it quite easily. Think about the tens of thousands of pages of tax code.

You may have heard that ignorance of the law is no defense. That saying comes from 18th century British Law scholar Blackstone  who wrote:

“Ignorantia juris quod quisque tenetur scire, neminem excusat.” (ignorance of the law, which everyone is bound to know, excuses no man)

Most people have never heard the “which everyone is bound to know” part. What he’s talking about here is Natural Law. The idea of Natural Law is that you have certain rights by virtue of being born human – whether you think they are endowed by God, or simply extend from your status as a person. Everyone in society is bound to know that violating your personal or property rights is wrong. On the other hand, I may not know that whistling on Sunday is banned in certain towns, and I might get pardoned for whistling if I’m from out of town.

Why is understanding this important for self defense in Maine?

First, you should understand that your right to defend your person and your property from harm is a natural right. It extends from the very fact that you are human. All states have guidelines on what citizens may do to defend themselves. I’ll let the legal scholars argue about them. But you should read and understand what they are – and good luck.

Second, I think some of our mala prohibita crimes with regard to self defense are ridiculous. For example, if your kid has a slingshot in his backpack – technically he is committing a Class D crime in Maine and can be imprisoned for 364 days. A woman who has a concealed carry weapons permit allowing her to have a gun concealed on her person, she still could be arrested for having a stun gun in her purse.

I raise this because my students frequently ask about which self-defense weapons are legal to carry in Maine. I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice, but as I read the law it basically states that no item used for self defense can be carried concealed on or about your person except for a firearm by someone who has a permit or defensive sprays like pepper spray.

This is a bad law for numerous reasons, not the least of which is that there probably are many thousands of people inadvertently breaking this law every single day.

The real problem with outlawing objects is that it disarms the law abiding citizens, and creates a class of criminals who have never violated a law except for owning the object – and may not ever know they have broken the law. In general, laws restricting people’s ability to defend themselves from violence increase violent crime.

I have written to my state senator and state representative recently in hopes of opening a dialog to discuss Maine Statute Title 25 252. Section 2001A. “Threatening display of or carrying concealed weapon”. I will keep you informed, but I hope you go read and understand the laws of the state regarding self defense.

Yesterday marked the third conversation I have had with a Maine resident who told me that they didn’t lock their doors because, “locks only keep out the honest people.” Honestly, I’m flummoxed  by the total lack of logic here, since honest people have never tried to break into my house. This is one of those folksy statements that sounds like it might be true, but is actually really dangerous to put any stock into.

Here’s the deal: Somebody who has dedicated themselves to breaking into your house will get in – no doubt. It’s only a matter of time no matter what precautions you take. However, why are you going to make it easier for them? Making it harder for them to get in can potentially save your life.

Break-in Image via Wikipedia

The fallout of a break-in can be severe. If you’re not home the loss can be financial, damage to your home, and your sense of security. A friend on Facebook just posted that his 5 year old daughter is having nightmares from an earlier break-in. I can remember the sense of violation and fear that my wife and I went through in Boston when a downstairs neighbor was burglarized.

Even worse is the potential outcome if somebody is home when a break-in occurs. Your chances of being assaulted if you are home during a break-in are 60%. The vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults happen in the home. Being in your home with you, provides an invader with privacy from the outside world.

You need to make break-ins reasonably harder.

Solid perimeter security (door and window protection and alarms) provide a number of safety advantages:

1. Delay – the longer it takes an intruder to break into your house the longer you’ll have to react to a break-in. If it’s hard enough – an amateur looking for a simple property crime might move on. Delaying an intruder gives you critical seconds to react where you might grab a weapon, escape, trip an alarm, or grab a phone and pray that the police come.

2. Detect – somebody simply turning a doorknob and walking in might not be noticed until it’s too late. Forcing a door or breaking a window makes noise. If you’re in the house you might be awakened by the noise if sleeping. If an intruder makes enough noise he might alert neighbors. You can’t defend against an attack you don’t know is coming.

If you are not home when an intruder enters, having a broken window or a kicked-in door when you return might alert you to the fact that a criminal is lying in wait inside your house. At that point you retreat to a safe location and call the police to clear the property. If your doors aren’t locked you may walk into a burglary in process completely unknowing.

3. Deter – Again, a determined intruder will get past any defense, but it will take time. Most criminals do not want to get hurt, caught, or identified. It’s simple economics, the greater the risk to an intruder, the less likely they will choose your house.

Recently someone tried to break into our house, but was scared away by our alarm. They opened a side-door that had been accidentally left unlocked. Good thing we had the alarm. It seems like the potential burglar walked around the house trying the doors until he found one unlocked.

The other argument I get against locking doors goes something like: I have lived here for 11 years and have never had a problem, or, I live out here in the country. In Maine, home invasion is on the increase particularly in rural areas where prescription and synthetic drug abuse is growing rampant. I live in one of the safest towns in the country. The issue is, you just never know.

In Boston, back in 2001, there was a serial rapist attacking women at random in the North End. The North End is a close-knit Italian community with almost zero crime.

Security is always a trade. You have to give something to get a bit of security. Sometimes it’s time , or money. Locking your doors takes around a single second each time. It really seems like a very minor trade for something that may very well save your life.

The reality is that people feel uncomfortable accepting the fact that they might become the victim of violence. The person I was talking to yesterday told me, “I don’t want to worry about those things.” Let me make this clear: preparing and making your family safer does not mean you live your life in perpetual worry.

After all, I have working smoke detectors in my house, but I don’t go to bed shivering in fear that my house might burn down. My doors are dead-bolted and the alarm is on when I go to sleep, and I sleep well. If something happens, I have at least thought about it, and have some preparation. I feel better knowing that, in the unlikely event of an emergency, my preparation means my family is more likely to fare better.

I cannot imagine that sticking your head in the sand and pretending that nothing bad could ever happen to you actually builds a worry-free lifestyle.

I recommend that all my students take at least a basic gun safety course at some point. I prefer they do a course which involves live shooting on a range. There are a number of reasons for this.

The topic of guns can be an emotionally charged one. When emotion gets involved, reason goes out the window. A few years back my wife told me that she had always been afraid of guns. I signed both of us up for a gun safety course and we fired a couple of handguns at a range. My wife’s irrational fear subsided and, after the first shot, she found the experience to be fun. Hey – target shooting is a safe sport enjoyed by millions worldwide – it has nothing to do with violence.

USMC marksman Image via Wikipedia

So here’s why I make the recommendation for everyone:

A healthy respect for the danger of firearms starts from understanding not ignorance. Ignorance breeds irrational fear, which breeds poor decisions.

Love them or hate them, guns are part of our world. Even if you live in a country where guns are banned completely, criminals are still armed. You should understand the capabilities of firearms so that you can more realistically learn to defend against them.

If you were to encounter a firearm, say your child found one, or you disarmed an attacker – do you understand how to make different types of firearms safe so that nobody gets hurt by accident?

If it comes down to defending the life of your family, and you had the chance to pick up a firearm, would you know how to use it? Beyond just pointing and pulling the trigger – would you know how to chamber a round, clear a jam, or reload?

Once again, your opinions about firearms are yours to make, but don’t you think they are better coming from a place of education rather than a place of ignorance? Unfortunately, like martial arts, most people get nearly 100% of their information about guns from TV and movies. The reality is very different.

For modern martial artists, learning about guns is like learning about swords for the traditional martial arts.

Here’s a video covering a story where an 11 year-o successfully fends off a kidnapper who was trying to drive off with his 9 year-old sister. Jonah Yano credited years of training in jujutsu (or Jui Jitsu) with helping in his defense of his sister.

Here’s  important takeaways I want you to understand:

Image by rinpoche via Flickr

1. You do not have to be Bruce Lee to defend yourself: A little bit of skill goes a long way.
2. You do not have to be bigger or faster than your opponent: simply putting up resistance makes an attacker’s job very difficult. Most attackers rely on compliance.
3. Self defense doesn’t mean beating up or defeating an attacker necessarily: Self defense is about creating opportunity for escape.
4. When you surprise an attacker by attacking them back they will be at a disadvantage.
5. Get training for yourself and your kids.

When I was a boy I was drawn to martial arts mainly because of images in the media. I saw Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee beating up bad guys. I saw the Karate Kid win the tournament. This was inspiring, but even more spoke to my insecurities with a promise to become someone more powerful, more in control, safer.

Chuck Norris Image via Wikipedia

Having spoken with many martial artists – I think this is a common point of entry. Ask someone who has been training in martial arts for a long time why they started to train, and why they continued to train, and you are likely to get two different responses.

Evolution as a Martial Artist

As a young man, I found myself attracted to the commando tough-guy types. The guys who claimed to train the CIA and the Navy SEALS etc. I would seek out seminars and products from these guys.

Again, the underlying feeling was that I wanted to feel tougher, more powerful.

But there’s a problem with this approach. When you have deep seated insecurities, covering over them with bravado or tough act, you still have insecurities.

I eventually was drawn to teachers who were kind, fatherly, skilled yet friendly. Teachers who didn’t have giant photos of themselves wearing gold embroidered outfits at the front door of their dojo. These are the people I could really learn from.

Enter the Ego

Without getting overly philosophical, the main issue here is the ego. The ego in this sense is a survival mechanism. It is a psychological construct that makes you crave safety, control, and approval so that your identified self can survive.

The ego is a big bundle of insecurities that often masks itself by all kinds of crappy behavior – like acting tough, getting angry easy, putting down others, building up false images of yourself, lying, Internet flame wars. Some psychologists appropriately call these behaviors defense mechanisms.

Moving Beyond Ego Satisfaction

As I progressed in the martial arts, I found myself less attracted to physical strength, macho bravado stuff, and top secret commando killing techniques. I gravitated towards teachers who skilled yet extremely humble.

Write this down: humility is the opposite of low self esteem.

I really enjoy the recent Ip Man movies with Donnie Yen. To me, this representation of the master who taught Bruce Lee shows an ideal self mastery:

• Always humble
• Kind to students, and other masters
• Difficult to anger
• Even under difficult situations smiles easily
• When forced to fight tries not to harm others

Physical skill is admirable, but self control is is an even rarer trait.

Overcoming Ego through Martial Arts

It’s time to examine your role models and your training.

For me, the more I train and the better I get the less likely I am to ever need to fight. This is the paradox of martial arts training.

Predators, animal and human, are instinctively attracted to psychological weakness. Insecurity shows in your body language. In my experience, people who act like “tough guys” tend to get into a lot of confrontations unnecessarily.

An interesting study conducted by Model Mugging showed that women who took the course were less like to ever have a mugging attempted. Why is this? I could argue that an increase in awareness helped them avoid dangerous situations. I also think it’s true that their confidence shines through in their body language making them a less attractive target.

Growing in martial arts means becoming more aware, more self aware, less attracted to the superficial. Look for practices that help you become aware of and work with the ego, with insecurities.

Martial arts Internet forums are full of some of the biggest collections of haters I’ve ever seen. There’s so much trolling by low self-esteem chairborne warriors that these things are nearly 100% useless.

One of the things that frequently comes up is the topic of lineage. Who’s your teacher, who is their teacher, who’s their teacher’s teacher … and so on. Then there’s the incessant arguing over who’s lineage is mostly fake or mostly real. Most of it is crap.

Why Lineage is Mostly Unimportant in Martial Arts

When I met my teacher, Peter Freedman Sensei, it was at a kubotan seminar at my kenpo karate school. I had many years of martial arts training by that point. I was instantly impressed by his teaching style, teaching ability, his technical expertise, and his depth of understanding. When I had the opportunity to study with him, it was a no brainer. I grew more in a few weeks with him than I had in years of other types of training.

(Please note, I realize the irony of mentioning my teacher’s name in an article talking about the unimportance of lineage. I don’t mention his name to build credibility for myself, only to highlight a story from my own training.)

You know what? I never asked him or cared who his teachers were. I know who they are now, but it doesn’t matter.

I have met many very skilled martial artists who were students of very famous martial arts teachers. However, none of them had the ability to teach that matched my instructor. If I had chosen to train with one of these folks because of their connection to somebody famous – I would not be as good as I am today.

Martial arts ability does not equate to the ability to teach martial arts. Being famous does not equate to being able to teach. Having a famous teacher does not equate to being able to teach.

You can have the greatest lineage on the planet and still suck.

Neither Mike Tyson nor Sugar Ray Leonard have never trained a champion boxer, but Cuss D’Amato trained Floyd Patterson, José Torres, Vinnie Ferguson, and Mike Tyson, and discovered Rocky Graziano. If you ask almost anyone who doesn’t know much about boxing who they would raher have learned to fight from Cuss D’Amato or Mike Tyson, most people will say, “Cuss who?”

My point is that teaching and training is a skill unto itself.

Martial Arts Lineage = Marketing

For the most part in martial arts training circles, lineage is used and abused as a way of “borrowing” credibility. It’s a marketing tactic and, as far as I can see, it always has been.

There’s nothing wrong with marketing, of course, as long as it’s done ethically. I even have a masters degree in marketing and often serve as a marketing consultant.

One of the things marketing communications does is to highlight things as important which might not be. For example, the coffee brand Folgers positions itself as “mountain grown.” Did you know that ALL coffee is grown in the mountains? The Folgers marketing people siezed on the fact that nobody had claimed that yet in their marketing.

Lets run the lineage numbers game

So, when someone tells me they are the 9th generation grandmaster of some lineage, really so what? Imagine that a founder of a system 9 generations ago had only five students, and each of them had 2 five and so on through each generation.  By my calculations, there would currently be 1,953,125 lineage holders. Just through personal experience, I can say that maybe 3% of these people would be good teachers.

That makes for a whole lot of crappy martial arts teachers.

When Lineage is Important

For my money, lineage is really only important for historical reasons. I think that people who pass down and preserve traditional martial arts are great. Historic martial arts study is important, as is collecting scrolls and doing lineage trees.

Some people like the connection of studying a traditional martial art handed down over the centuries. For example, there are many schools Koryu (traditional) Japanese martial arts. There are arts from the Shaolin Temple, and the Wudang mountains in China. Some people might enjoy mounted archery, or very traditional Okinawan karate.

All of these things are totally great, and having lineage might be helpful in making that connection.

When it comes to arguing some authority on the Internet – not so much.

In an effort to draw a distinction between training and competing in sports martial arts and the reality of self defense, I make the analogy: training for sport is to self defense as NASCAR is to parallel parking.

I did sport karate when I was in college, and it was fun. But I stopped because I believe I was developing bad habits which would score in the ring, but make me more vulnerable in self defense. MMA and any other sport martial art fits.

While no analogy is perfect, this one holds up pretty well. Here’s how I break it down:

I’m sure you could keep going with comparisons of your own.

My buddy Ray, who is studying Systema, gave me a link to a great article here on neurological training.

Another thing that self defense “experts” (the one who pay thousands to advertise in Black Belt Magazine) have been touting like mad over the past few years goes something like this:

• Under stress only gross motor movements will work
• Conscious reaction time to an attack is .1 to .25 seconds, too slow to react so you need to strike preemtively
• You cannot retrain reflexes – the flinch response is all you get

I’m here to tell you that most of that is crap mixed with a little truth.

Think about this for a second: If you couldn’t train yourself to react to things faster than conscious processing, professional baseball, boxing, and driving a car would all be impossible. If the flinch response were absolute and in-alterable, the same things would be impossible.

What holds a bit of truth here is that fine and complex motor skills do tend to break down under extreme stress. What is true, is that you can train reflexive actions.

In his book, On Killing, Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman talks about soldiers being unwilling to kill other human beings and primarily shooting over the heads of enemies. The army figured this out after a couple hundred years of dismal hit ratios, and started training soldiers with targets that looked like people and popped up. They literally trained a soldier with a rifle to reflexively squeeze the trigger when the stimulus was a human shaped target that popped up downrange.

So, it can be done, it is done, it works.

Here’s the thing – it requires training. Let me go on record saying that everything worth doing well requires training. How much training depends on the person.

The problem comes from the “commando in a box” salesmen who promise to turn you into a lethal fighting machine in 5 minutes a day.

It sounds great until you consider that human beings have been naturally lethal towards each-other since the beginning of time. It takes very little training to learn how to kill another human being. Here’s the first and last lesson: Grab something heavy and hit the person with it, repeat.

My problem with these systems is that they do not teach the control and skill of long term training. Chances are, if you kill another human being, even in self defense, you’re going to be well acquainted with your legal system. If you can’t prove that lethal force was justified – you’re going to use your new-found skills to fend off rape in the prison shower for the rest of your life.

Not all self-defense situations require lethal force responses. Imagine trying to stand in front of a jury and justify shooting a guy because he tried to throw a punch at you.

Control takes time, skill, and proper training. And yes, sometimes lethal force is justified and necessary.

Sometimes I’m called on to teach very short self defense seminars. In those seminars I use a few gross motor skills which are highly effective, but I encourage the students to practice and seek further training. Never do I promise to turn them into Rambo in an hour. Most of the training is awareness, avoidance, and psychological.

Be a critical thinker and examine “truths” that are given to you, even if they sound like the truth.

Today I was inspired by this story about a local grandmother who single-handedly fought off two armed home invaders. I was inspired because this story highlights how untrue many statements are that I’ve heard from martial arts and self defense ‘experts’.

Let’s break down a few myths that I’ve been trying to debunk for years:

Self Defense Myths Perpetuated By Experts

1. You can’t fight multiple attackers
2. You need years of training to defend yourself
3. All fights wind up as a wrestling match on the ground
4. You can’t fight armed people without getting killed
5. Untrained people just freeze up
6. You have to be in great shape to defend yourself

In my experience, most instructors out there get their ideas about self defense from the same place most people do – movies and the TV. They also tend to think in absolutes like “never”, and “always”.

Here’s an absolute that makes sense: “Every situation is different”.

Here’s what I would rather hear:

1. Defending yourself from  multiple opponents is hard, but it’s definitely been done and can be done.
2. Untrained people defend themselves successfully every day. Training makes you better at defending yourself.
3. It’s a good idea to learn how to disengage if you’re ever grounded. Some self defense situations wind up with both opponents on the ground, but you don’t want to go there if at all possible.
4. Weapons are always to be considered dangerous. Sometimes armed assailants wound or kill their targets, but this isn’t a definite outcome.
5. Sometimes people freeze up, even trained people. But there are a range of reactions including fight or flight that are more common. Most people are not good at predicting what would happen to them or others under duress.
6. Fitness is a definite advantage in self defense situations. However, unfit people can be skilled. Skilled and unskilled people defend themselves successfully every day. If your self defense training requires you to be in peak physical condition to execute, it might be less effective when you are sick, injured, or elderly.

You do not need to be some kind of commando trained lethal weapon to defend yourself from most common situations. Real self defense is not about fighting like you see it in the movies.

I encourage my students to train mentally with little imagination exercises they can  do when they’re out and about. When you go to a place that isn’t your home look for the exits, look for improvised weapons. When in the presence of other people, gauge their distance and imagine how you might react if they were to suddenly attack you. Look at everybody’s hands. Above all, always be aware of your environment.

Last night, during class, one of my students told me that she had been doing these exercises all the time. Great. Then she asked me a really good question, “isn’t it a little bit paranoid?”

My answer to that, as you could guess, is no.

To me, paranoia is about unjustified fear. In contrast, we work these drills in part to instill a sense of confidence. We aim to remove fear. Imagining a threat is around every corner is paranoia. Asking yourself what you’d do in the event there was a threat around a corner is mental exercise. One is healthy, and the other is not.

Paranoia is particularly a problem if it interferes with your normal life. You may be safer locked in your basement all day – but that’s not healthy. Preparation might point out some changes to your routine which would make you safer, but shouldn’t have you cowering in bunker for the rest of your life.

I live in a really safe neighborhood and have been mocked for locking my doors and owning an alarm. Then somebody tried to break into my house. Locking my doors and turning an alarm on and off are not disruptive in any way to my enjoyment of life. In fact, those two things give me a peace of mind that help me enjoy life better.

I was talking with a woman in Boston where I suggested that women probably shouldn’t jog alone at night on the Esplanade. About 5 women had been attacked and sexually assaulted at gunpoint doing just that. She was indignant, “Well, I fell that women should be able to go any where they want.” Absolutley, I agree with that statement. And I should be able to walk into the roughest neighborhood in the country with $100 bills falling out of my pocket and expect no problems either – but that’s just not realistic. It’s simply about recognizing an existing danger and making better choices.

Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that nobody and nothing would ever harm you is as unrealistic as paranoia, and it’s probably more dangerous.

To me, the two aspects of what we refer to as paranoia (in a non-clinical sense) are unreasonable belief of danger and unreasonable fear of danger. In my classes, we try to inject as much reason as possible. We discuss recent crimes, local crime rates, the differences between TV crime and reality. Nearly all of my students have reported a greater sense of confidence which I equate to less fear. We do not teach paranoia here.

In fact, my new school slogan might be “preparation, not paranoia ™.”