Brutal Knife Attack

This video is VERY graphic and VERY rated-R. While we use this as a training tool, please prepare yourself for a violent video, or do not watch this if you are offended by similar content.

I once gave an hour-long, co-lecture with my boss, just on this 2-3 minute video. While there are millions of minutia to pick up on (the loss of blood from the skin of the head and the other guy's arms until the fight is over, the instinct of the shop owner to go towards the badguy rather than towards the gun, situational awareness, why you should carry your gun on your person, etc...), I would like to focus on just one point today:

Television always lulls us into believing that we will be ok as long as we don't go to bad locations and participate in criminal activities. Job policies often assume that people will try to rob you and that the best option is to comply. These attitudes always assume that a criminal wants something from you and that you will be alright as long as you comply.

In some scenarios, I teach my students the similar things. If an unarmed person tries to rob you, first give them your wallet. If they leave, call the police: you are not a vigilante with a gun. If they want your life, on the other hand, you need to show them that you were a wolf in sheep's clothing. You need to turn the tables, and at that moment become a predator as well.

Unfortunately, all of these preclude the idea that you will have some dialog and options with an attacker. In this video, the person in the entryway of the store has none of these options. He appears to be reading a magazine, he doesn't appear to be in a crack house or walking down a dark alleyway, he doesn't threaten anyone, if he was aware of what was happening, he may have even been compliant.

Two things go very, very wrong for him. First, he has no awareness of what is going on around him, because he has never been taught to do so. Second, the badguy has no intention of giving people the option to comply, he is only giving people the option to die.

While this is often how crime really works, it is never what we see on tv, or read in books or magazines. Unless you yourself are a bad person, or witnessed something similar firsthand, how would you know that evil people behave this way?

I pray that you never need to defend your own life. I pray that you never have to take someone else's life in order to defend your own. But, when push comes to shove, and it's a choice between you or an evil person going home that night, I pray that you are aware of your surrounding, prepared to react without warning, and prepared to prevail against evil people. Now, hopefully, you know a bit more about what evil looks like.