Low Probability Events

Connie Shultz, wife of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and real journalist writes about a woman who was carjacked and did everything right:

In this story, Ms Yee did almost everything exactly right, and she did do everything that needed to be done. The only thing she could have done better would have been to hit the "panic button" on her car key. Hard to think of everything ...

It's interesting to consider a case like this in the context of the current gun debate. What would have happened if Ms Yee had had a gun? Best case, it would have played out exactly like it did. Problem is, she had a gun pointed at her. She had no time to get her own (theoretical!) gun into action. Grabbing for it would probably have caused the attacker to shoot. If somehow she did manage to get her own gun out, she'd be in a gun battle at zero range, inside a car. Bad, bad, bad.

Problem with the pro-gun types is that they talk in terms of imaginary scenarios. It's far more useful to look at real-life situations like this one. The main problem with the scenarios that the pro-gun types use is that they ignore the time it takes to get a defensive gun into action -- a dead-flat minimum of two seconds. On the street, a heck of a lot can happen in that two seconds, and experienced robbers know how to keep a situation ambiguous until the last possible instant.

Another problem with the pro-gun types is that they assume that they will always be able to identify a situation requiring deadly force. Cops have trouble with this one. Harmless street person panhandling or robber? Life is ambiguous. Deal with it.

I may do a post later with my views on self-defense and martial arts. I have a lot of experience with American style wrestling, Judo, and Aikido. I have taught (as an assistant, not a primary) women's self defense. My opinions on the subject are pretty much The Common Wisdom, with some additions from experience, plus some things that are probably so "common wisdom" that they never get mentioned.