 The concept of self-defense is probably one of the hottest topics of the debate when it comes to the martial arts. There's a lot of reasons why somebody might be training in the arts, but many times it is to learn how to fight, or more specifically, defend yourself in a confrontation. But at what point does self-defense cross the line? At what point can you have too much self-defense? So can you have too much self-defense? What does that mean? It probably is not something that's too much self-defense, but what there is is a point where self-defense might cross the line and become offensive. So when defensive becomes offensive is where you kind of have a gray area, where now you have to start taking a look at the situation and make some very key decisions because choices you make in this case can have long-lasting effects. What is excessive force? Basically, excessive force is exactly what it sounds, using too much force to stop a threat, or going over the line, or being too aggressive, however you want to define it. That's the point where it gets to be too much. Now it's up to you to decide what that amount is, and by doing that, and in order to do that, you have to first assess the level of threat. Who is threatening you? What are you defending against? There is a giant difference between somebody who is broken into your home with an intent to harm versus somebody mugging you, versus somebody attacking you in a road rage incident, or a drunk person at the bar bumping into you, or poor grandma who's off her meds, and she's kind of losing control of her emotions, and she's got a sewing needle. Each one of those situations has a completely different, appropriate response. So you have to understand and make that decision of how you're going to respond. Somebody broke into your home, the threat level is high, you have no idea what that person's intention is, your family's at stake, they have now crossed through your threshold knowingly putting themselves in danger to do this, so at that point in time, it's kind of hard to determine what the excessive force is because you've got every right to defend yourself and your family, but if you're in a bar and somebody just shoves you and you bust out a technique and you grab them and you do a judo throw on them and you break their arm, that might be a little bit excessive, and you might have caused more harm to the person than necessary, and this is where this common sense comes into play, and it's not always easy to determine, so you have to assess who is threatening you, is it one person, is it a group of people, is it someone who's much older than you, is the younger person, the minor, that's a big thing too, is if you're defending yourself against the minor, there is a certain level of liability there, so you have to look at the person and determine what do I have to do to defend myself. Unfortunately it's easier said than done, in the heat of the moment, emotions run high, adrenaline runs high, you can't always think clearly. By assessing the situation and the threat, you now have to decide the appropriate response you're going to use. Again, grandma coming at you with a sewing needle, you're not going to go into a boxing stance and give her a left and the right cross and knock her on the floor and then put her into some sort of a choke hold. That is way, way, way excessive. In a situation like that, you could probably just find a way to maybe disarm her and restrain her, hold her, try to calm her down so she's no longer a threat to you and somebody else, or even to herself, they can hurt themselves. Are you, is your goal to restrain the person? Are you just trying to injure the person, or is this a matter of life and death? You have to make that choice. A drunk friend, again, is different than a stranger at the bar. You might not want to be breaking another one's arm, but you might be able to talk this person down or pop your friend in the nose once, but this person, you know, you're gonna have to do a completely different choke hold or restrain or submission or whatever. You don't know. So unfortunately, real life self-defense is not like we see in the movies. You know, where, you know, a fight breaks out and the good guy beats up the bad guy and a cop show up and they talk for 30 minutes and the cop goes, okay, clear case is self-defense, you're free to go. Not usually. You know, a lot of times there are follow-ups, there's investigations, there's lawyers involved. I find it's interesting because I've got my Kempel instructor that I've trained with for 20 some years and I've got my Jiu-Jitsu instructor that I'm training with right now. It's kind of funny because my Kempel instructor always had this phrase he would say, he'd said, I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by six. And he's got a very valid point. When it comes down to a life or death situation, you have to save yourself or your family, you do what you have to do, then worry about the end result. The funny part though is when I say this this expression to my my my Jiu-Jitsu instructor, his response was, well, I prefer neither one of those and that the whole idea is, well, you don't want to be judged by 12 or carried by six. You know, you try to be smart about it, you try to avoid a situation and if you have to do a response, try to make it as appropriate as possible. And part of that appropriate response is be defensive. Cameras are everywhere, people have cell phones, a lot of witnesses. If somebody is trying to hurt you and you have to defend yourself, hands are up, man. Keep those hands up. Constantly say, leave me alone. Stop. Try to talk them down. Make it obvious that you are not the aggressor. You are trying to diffuse the situation, but if you are attacked, you do what you have to do, but you'd rather possibly maybe get some bruises or cuts on the inside of your hand versus your knuckles because the police might look and say, oh, you've got offensive wounds versus defensive wounds. It might sound stupid. You don't want to hurt inside your hands either, but you got to play the game. What kind of liability are you playing with here? And unfortunately there's biases you're going to have to deal with. There's a gender bias. Are you a male versus a female? Most of the time the female is not going to be the aggressor, but if she is and you beat her up, how does that look? Especially if there's witnesses who only stop part of it or if there's no witnesses. If a cop shows up and you're a large male and there's a female on the ground that you beat up, chances are you're going to be arrested and taken in for question investigated because that looks suspicious. Unfortunately there is a bias there. Also there's a size bias. If you're a big guy and a smaller guy for some reason tries to start something with you and you take him out, you're going to be looked at with scrutiny just as well. If there's not any video footage or witnesses to actually prove that you were not the aggressor, it might look like you were also your skill bias. Don't boast about your skill. Don't try to show off because if you do defend yourself, whether it's someone your equal weight, height, gender, whatever, and you hurt them, they might look at you. The cost might look at you like, oh, you've got 20 some years in this martial art. Well, you just really hurt this guy. You broke his arm, broke his ribs, and that person might have deserved it, but they might look at you saying you should have known better or you should have had better control and skill. It's excessive force. The term excessive force can be thrown around sometimes, not always fairly, not always in your favor, so you have to be aware of that bias. So don't try to show off and don't purposely hurt someone anymore than you have to stop the situation because that is a consequence you might have to deal with. And unfortunately, there's also demographical biases, race, class, background checks and records, location of residence. Unfortunately, all of these sometimes take part in an overall decision. People get hurt and when people get hurt, people are held accountable. So if you are defending yourself, you want to make sure that you've got your basis covered as much as possible, that you did not go overboard, that you did not go excessively, and you did not go out of your way to harm the person anymore than you had to because that might flip around on you even if you're on the right to defend yourself, you still might be the one held accountable. Now we're here in the United States and that being said is we do have to take into consideration self-defense and involved weapons. This is obviously a hot topic and we're not going to go into too much detail, but basically this is a level of consideration you have to keep in mind that when self-defense with weapons comes into play, there's a different set of rules here and every state's going to be different. You know, people argue about what rights they have or don't have, but bottom line is if you are defending yourself either against a weapon or with a weapon, there are a different set of laws and rules, you have your own rights, so I heavily suggest that you learn your state's laws, you learn your rights, and if you do have a weapon properly, spend the time to train yourself, become certified in it, make sure you know how to handle it safely, and also the more you understand it, the more you're going to understand how to defend against it. At what point the self-defense becomes self-offense? If somebody attacks you and you get to a fight and you get them on the ground and they're no longer a threat and they stop trying to hurt you, you stop and you leave. You go find help, you call the police, do not stay and beat up on them, don't keep kicking them while they're down, don't jump on them, don't put them into choke hold. Once the threat is done and you can leave, leave. Find help. Don't just stand around either because one, you don't know if they're alone, you don't know if they're going to recover, you don't know if they have a weapon, if they tried to use a weapon on you and you were somehow able to get away from them, don't just stand there hovering over them with the weapon because if police do show up and they find you in that position, what's their first assumption going to be that you might be the aggressor? And you're probably going to also want to seek legal advice just to make sure that you are okay, that you've got your liability covered and that your action was appropriate to the situation. Talk to the lawyer, learn the laws. It's always a good idea to look at your state laws anyway and find out what self-defense rules you have. Like for example, some states say that, you know, if you see a man who's abusing a woman in public, you can't go up and you know attack that guy. You might be able to get in between them and just try to separate them and if he hits you it's a different story but you don't want to just go up and start swinging but every state is different. So look at your laws, know your rights, know the confines of what you're going to be held liable for or not. So I know it's easy to say all this but in the heat of the moment, tempers fly, it's easy to get worked up. If you've been training for x amount of time, you might be itching to want to use your skills, you just have to be smart about it. It's dangerous, you can hurt yourself, you can get hurt, you can hurt somebody else and also here's something to keep in mind to you. Like if you have to defend yourself and you've neutralized the threat but you keep on going, why is this the bad thing other than the fact that you're hurting another person? Just because you're winning doesn't mean you've won and there is a sense of self-preservation. If you feel like you're in you're being threatened and you're in danger, you've got every instinct to defend yourself and you take whatever action you need to to defend yourself but if you say you've beaten that person, they're on the ground and the threat is done, leave, get help, call the police, whatever but if you stay and you continue to attack them and you continue to start beating on them and kicking on them you're kind of turning the tables a little bit that they now, their self-preservation might start to kick in, you're kind of escalating the situation. Perhaps they get a burst of adrenaline and they can they're able to fight back or they see an opening or they grab a rock or maybe they had a weapon on them that they didn't pull out but they might be pulling out now because now they're scared for their life. So when you have successfully neutralized the immediate threat, leave and get help. Do not stick around, do not prove a point, do not just try to show this guy, hey you pissed me off I'm going to beat you to a pulp now, it's not going to help anyone's case at all and you're actually just kind of you're now increasing the threat level. So just remember the martial arts is more than just learning how to fight. There's no self-defense technique that can replace good judgment. Thank you so much for watching. I would of course love to hear any of your guys stories and advice you know what tips can you provide if you guys have any interesting laws or things that people should look into or resources to educate yourself about. Please, by all means, share it below. This is where we all share knowledge like this to help each other and support each other. I appreciate your watching, please like and subscribe, click on the bell icon and we will see you next time.