“Those who win every battle are not really skillful—those who render others’ armies helpless without fighting are the best of all.” — Sun Tzu
In the tactical realm our firearms seem to become hammers and every possible problem a nail to strike. In many ways the use of your firearm is accepting the consequences of mutually assured destruction. You are willing to invite into your life the authorities, press, and a hostile stranger’s friends & family. As discussed in the use of force continuum there are many other uses of force available other than deadly force. There are ways to alter someone’s behavior to your favor without ever laying hands on them or inflicting damage. The most effective and complete victory is the battle you do not fight and still end in a favorable position.
Appropriate interventions may stop the inevitability of use of force, and as such lead to a better outcome for the defender. Availing yourself of these opportunities and living your life in such a way they occur naturally bolsters your defense against the authorities if it comes to pass you need to use force to defend yourself and/or stop a crime in progress. In very, very few circumstances is application of physical force a total victory. If you find yourself deploying your firearm, even lawfully, you or someone else “on your side” has massively failed somewhere along the line.
“In battle, if you you make your opponent flinch, you have already won.” - Musashi.
To expand on this making your opponent flinch in this context is causing your opponent to have doubts about their intended course of action and its success. This applies conversely too, if your opponent’s actions cause you to doubt your success you are in a bad position and need to change that immediately. Note that all of this involves preventing crime from occurring to as well, not just precluding combat.
Your observational skills and prediction of what is about to transpire may give you the time necessary to decisively deploy interventions that will prevent your opponent from producing their weapon or stripping them of the ability to use it effectively, thus rendering them helpless and unwilling to act. Winning before the fight starts is all about tipping the odds so far in your favor that defeat for your opponent is nearly assured so they do not even try. Understand criminal behavior. Criminals do not think nor act like normal people, if they did they wouldn’t be criminals. Thinking like them involves learning about them, not thinking what you would do if trying to commit a certain crime.
Do not rationalize away suspicious people and behavior. You have instincts that have been evolved through millions of years to help you survive. You must learn to listen to them and use them.
Remember the first O in OODA is “Observe”, without observation there is no orientation, no decision, and no action.
Positioning and posture: Making a use of force or criminal act against you appear difficult, impracticable, or likely to fail prevents many fights. Remember “peace through strength”. Appear physically dominant, confident, and capable. Have your awareness of the world around you obvious, as well as your processing of it. Be a bad choice of prey. Humans are predators, we can sense weakness. Use this to your advantage. Use positioning and posture to make your opponent take the actions you want them to take and go in the direction (physically and in action) that you would like to take them.
Position means you can put barriers between you and your opponent reducing their options. Position can gain you distance where you can strike effectively and your opponent cannot. Cover & concealment can be nearby so if a fight does occur you have an advantage in winning it. Or you may have a means of escape so fighting is unnecessary or your opponent cannot get their desired outcome. All of these factors may detour action against you in the first place.
Not only should one get off the X during a fight, prior is possibly even more important and effective. The purpose is setting up the moments before the fight such they are to your maximum advantage and only a reckless and stupid opponent would still attempt their assault. Your change in position will require your opponent to change their vector of assault. You want your opponent’s deployment of a weapon or initial strike to be awkward, difficult to execute well, and obvious to observe early. The more your counter would look like an ambush itself the less likely the opponent is to carry out their attack initially.
Have a purpose to where you are and what you do. Consider if it is necessary to be in this place, at this time, and insert myself into this situation. Is there a rational, clear, final objective if you intervene that will likely be produced directly by your actions?
Verbal techniques can slow and interrupt the opponent’s OODA loop by informing them of better courses of action than the one they are on. Using de-escalation techniques you can guide your opponent to a position they think they have won or attained the best solution possible, when you have in fact achieved your goal. It is not necessary your opponent “loses” for you to win. Do not let your verbalization increase the possibility of combat. This is the greatest mistake many people make, and they do it out of ego and desire to make their opponent lose. Arguments are not fights. Arguments can turn into fights though, especially when an opponent is upset about losing an argument and feels belittled or dishonored.
Find yourself at peace with losing verbal altercations. People may say whatever they like, you care only about what they do.
“If you wish to control others you must first control yourself” - Musashi
Opportunities may have existed to avoid a physical altercation altogether that were squandered, defeated, failed, or ignored. This often happens when a would be defender does not have their ego in check, and has little control of themselves. This person thinks emotionally rather than rationally and gives up control to that emotion. They desire to leave a verbal conflict with a self-esteem boost and dominant feeling (emotion) rather than maximizing the objective outcome.
A paradox of learning “The Way” is that the better you get, the less likely you are to need it in the martial sense, though you will use it all the time.
The closer you get to the application of force the harder it is to avoid being sucked in as your options grow less and less as you get closer to violence. By the same token the further away you are from the application of force the easier it is to get away, sometimes with such minimal effort you do not realize you’ve prevented a very dangerous situation. Close to the moment of violence large, obvious, purposeful, and decisive actions are needed to have a possibility of success in changing the outcome to your favor.
Never forget no amount of preparation and perfect execution will 100% protect you. Even if you do everything perfectly you can still lose as your opponent always has a say. Your opponent may be reckless, ignorant, irrational, and blow past all possible interventions and warning signs. Sometimes they will succeed. Sometimes your opponent is simply better and there is absolutely nothing you could have changed to succeed other than taking a completely different course in life.
You are also not perfect. You will err, have lapses of attentiveness and judgment. Sometimes these will be no factor, other times they may be everything.
“No man is invincible, and therefore no man can fully understand that which would make him invincible” - Musashi