When it comes to firearms ownership, the suburban survivalist will, depending on his location, face a wide range of obstacles and opportunities, from the gun havens of Texas and Mississippi to the farcical dystopias of Massachusetts and New York. But expecting to handle all conflicts with a firearm is simply not realistic, and unlike the patchwork of gun laws across the country, when it comes to unarmed combat the laws are the same no matter where you live. You can - and should - become as proficient as you can in combatives, whether you live in Dallas or Jackson, Boston or Buffalo, and here’s why.

One reason is that, like Scotty in Buffalo, you may be up against huge obstacles to carrying a gun legally. Or you may be like Yabusame, who lives in a country where all firearms are illegal. With no way legally to carry a handgun, hand-to-hand combat skill may be your only option to defend yourself and your family against assailants.

Another is that, even in places like Texas and Mississippi, it’s not always practical to carry a handgun, even if you have the concealed carry license, even if you have the perfect carry gun and all the best leather. If you live in the south or the southwest you know, but if you don’t, let me remind you: It’s hot down here. Yes, we have four seasons, but they’re December, January, February, and Summer. And yes, there are a few people who carry year-round in that kind of heat, but they’re few and far between. You can find plenty of people who always have a gun in their car, but very few always have their gun on their person in the middle of August.

Another is that, even if you do find yourself in a conflict and you have your sidearm on you, it may malfunction, or you may be disarmed, or you may not have time to draw it, or you may realize at the last moment that responding to an unarmed attacker with a couple of rounds from a pistol is too legally or morally questionable for you to execute.

Whatever the reason, when faced with the question of “Should you become proficient in unarmed combat?“ it’s hard to come to any other conclusion other than, “Yes, you should.“ If you’re reading this site, then you’ve taken an interest in preparedness, and knowing that, I can guarantee you one thing: Part of your interest stems from a desire to be better prepared than the average person; to make sure that you belong not to the group that makes up the large percentage of people who are ill-prepared, but to the group of the smaller percentage of people who are better-prepared. If you pursue that desire to the point of purchasing a firearm and learning to use it, then you’ve separated yourself from the majority of the citizenry. The next logical next step, then, is to start looking at becoming skilled in unarmed combat. If you like the idea of moving from a large unprepared group to a smaller prepared group, then you should at least be interested enough to give some serious thought to joining an even smaller and even better-prepared group distinguished by its proficiency in hand-to-hand combat.

I should stop right here and say that I am by no means an expert in martial arts. I’ve never taken instruction in any of the traditional eastern martial arts. I train in Bussey Combatives, developed by the legendary Robert Bussey. And yes, Bussey made his name by climbing the ranks of ninjutsu among the world’s masters, but what he’s been doing for the past decade is focusing intently on real-world combatives. He has put aside all of the formal and sport-oriented aspects of combat to focus exclusively on what happens in real-world situations. He is a controversial figure in the world of martial arts (although, I think it’s fair to say that anyone who attains any degree of success in that field can’t help but be controversial), and as such he has his fierce loyalists as well as his fierce critics.

I should also add that I am fortunate enough to live in one of the two cities in America where this instruction is offered (Jackson, MS; Dallas is the other one), so unless you live in or near one of these places, you’re not going to be able to get this instruction on a regular basis. However, there are several similar types of combat styles that are widely available, which I’ll talk about shortly.

I am not about to dismiss the value of learning eastern martial arts, but neither am I going to recommend it as something you should count on to save your life or those of your family. The reason is that almost all eastern arts emphasize form over function, and sport over real-life effectiveness. Most eastern arts taught in America today are about belts and trophies, and that’s fine if that’s what you want to achieve through your training, but it’s not fine if what you want is to be able to defend yourself and your family in a real-life attack.

Here’s a video I shot of Robert Bussey’s opening remarks during a recent open seminar that discusses this idea, among others:

So far we’ve produced 16 videos, and we’re about to begin another phase of production which should see at least another dozen videos completed in the next several weeks. You can see them all here.

Here are a couple of clips that should give you an idea of how this “un-style” differs from traditional eastern martial arts, and why I recommend this kind of combatives instruction as a crucial part of preparedness:

Now, on the kinds of combatives training that’s out there along these lines, there are four I’d like to suggest, and they all come with caveats. Again, please note that I’m not trying to start a flame war between different martial arts schools. There’s more than enough of that out there, on hundreds of discussion boards. What we’re doing here is talking to the people who live suburban lives - they take their kids to school and to soccer practice, they work in offices, they vacation at the beach - but who understand the thin line of civility than separates their comfortable suburban lives from danger and mayhem in the event of a crisis that results in some breakdown, large or small, of civil order.

Obviously if you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, you should drop Robert Bussey a line. If you live in the Jackson, MS area, you should give Mario Gonzalez a call. (FYI: I’m not an instructor in Bussey Combatives, and I get no financial consideration for mentioning them here, or for new students that may result from my promotion of it).

The four other types of training I want to mention for your consideration are:

  • Tony Blauer Tactical Systems. This is real-world training that’s very similar to what Bussey has been developing for years. If I weren’t able to train in Bussey’s system, this is the one I would seek out. Blauer is a tough guy, but he’s also a thinker, as his many clips on YouTube prove. The caveat is that Blauer Tactical Systems is designed principally for law enforcement and military. That’s not to say it isn’t suitable for civilians and basic protection, just that if you decide to pursue it, you need to do so with the understanding that there is a heavy emphasis on law enforcement and military applications. I believe Blauer has a more civilian-oriented course; you should investigate this if you decide to get serious in his system.
  • Krav Maga. This is the famous system used by the Israeli Defense Forces, and, like Bussey’s and Blauer’s systems, is not concerned with belts and trophies but with real-world scenarios. I don’t have the links at my fingertips, but the caveat with Krav Maga is that, due to its recent rise in popularity, there are now three strains of krav maga offered: The real style, which is highly effective, the “mall ninja” style, which is not, and the “fitness” style, which has about as much to do with real Krav Maga as Tae-Bo has to do with tae kwon do and boxing, and is likely to get you killed should you try to use it against an attacker. This About.Com entry mentions the fitness style, which you should avoid at all costs, and some more research on the web will turn up things to watch for to make sure you’re not getting the “mall ninja” style. Hopefully some commenters with experience in the real thing will show up and offer some advice.
  • Military training, particularly the unarmed combat training the Marines receive. This can’t really be called a “popular” style in the sense that there are schools in every town in America, like there are karate and tae kwon do, but they are out there if you look for them and ask around.
  • Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu/Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Anyone who follows mixed martial arts at all knows that no one wins in the UFC or any other the other MMA fight leagues without being proficient in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It is perhaps the most comprehensive ground/grappling system in existence today, and if you’re good at BJJ, you can inflict some serious pain on your opponent. The caveats here are several: The first is that the explosion in popularity in the last several years has resulted in thousands of schools popping up, and the quality of instruction is all over the map. The individual members of the Gracie family endorse and oversee a lot of the schools, but it’s no guarantee of quality. Great practitioners of Gracie Jiu Jitsu do not necessarily make great instructors (and vice-versa). Many schools offer a free introductory period - some just one class, others a week, others a full month. Take advantage of them. Go in as often as you can. Talk to the instructors, talk to other students. Another caveat is that, since BJJ is mainly about ground fighting, you’re not likely to receive a lot of instruction on stand-up fighting, and for that reason, the most effective emerging combination in the mixed martial arts world is boxing plus BJJ. Yet another caveat regarding BJJ is that you’re unlikely ever to receive any instruction on gun and knife defense, sticks and found weapons, third-party defense and rescue, or dealing with multiple opponents, all of which are critical to well-rounded combatives training in a preparedness mindset. That said, though, if you want to be prepared for the most common confrontations you’re likely to encounter - which is somebody who wants to get into an old-fashioned fistfight with you - then BJJ is a great option, since it does include stand-up instruction that is, on the whole, sufficient, and of course includes devastating ground techniques. And in the real world, fights do go to the ground.

Again, I am not an expert in martial arts, and I don’t want to start a war between people who train in different styles. However, I do have some training and, as William F. Buckley put it, “an active intelligence,“ and my point in this post is to make the very simple case that martial arts encompasses two broad kinds of instruction: Formal styles meant for sport and competition; and other styles meant purely for protection through inflicting severe pain and damage on your opponent.

It also rests on the premise that not all conflicts you’re likely to encounter will be the kind that you can resolve with a firearm. My personal turning point, as with so many things related to preparedness, came a couple of days after Katrina hit. We needed some supplies from the grocery store, and I knew that a nearby Kroger was one of the few stores open in the area. My four-year-old daughter had a bad case of cabin fever, so I took her with me to the store. When I got there, it was packed, and mainly with people who were in a very surly mood. A large number of them were refugees from the poorer and rougher sections of New Orleans. There was a lot of shouldering through the crowds, a lot of barely-contained competition for certain items. It struck me right there, with my baby daughter in the little grocery-cart seat, that I didn’t trust my abilities against at least half a dozen of the big guys in my immediate vicinity, and she would be defenseless in the middle of all of it. If you think you’re going to respond to situations like that by pulling your sidearm and blasting away, you’re just not being realistic. I resolved then and there to make the leap into combatives training, and I am a different person because of it.

If you’ve never done any combatives training, it’s likely you’ll have to make a similar leap. For me it was easy, because I had the motivation put before me, up close and personal. But without a single event to spur you into action, you’re likely to resist making the leap for the same reason you might have once resisted storing food and water: Because the realization that things might get bad, combined with the realization of just how ill-prepared you are for it, combines to make you want to avoid the conclusion that you need to make some serious changes. As I wrote in the James Kim post, the first rule of being a daddy is that you’re the only line of defense you can count on between your children and spouse on one side, and danger, injury and death on the other. This includes hand-to-hand combat every bit as much as it does being lost in the cold wilderness.