Reply #186: I'd recommend reading Gavin de Becker's "The Gift of Fear" [View All]

[Euromutt]

I do have to acknowledge that I found the tone of his observations about firearms to be more than a little annoying, and they do appear to be rather strongly colored by the fact that his mother fatally shot an abusive boyfriend when he a small boy, and he and his sister were in the house, leaving him rather averse to firearms. But that doesn't invalidate the lessons you can learn from the main body of the book.

One important one, as GreenStormCloud rightly notes, is that you shouldn't be afraid of hurting someone's feelings. Assailants are well practiced at exploiting our social conditioning to be polite, with techniques like "loan sharking" (doing you a favor you didn't ask for, and then pretending you owe them), "forced teaming" (referring to "we" when it really means "you") and others. If you're familiar with the list, it's actually remarkable how many you encounter in other predatory situations, like people trying to recruit you into Amway. That happened to my wife and me, and she counted every single technique on de Becker's list.

And I can't adequately express how correct GreenStormCloud's point is that, once you're aware that you are in fact being attacked, the time for non-violent alternatives is over. And I would add, not only in a practical sense, but also in a moral sense: once you are being aggressed against, your assailant has broken the social contract, and you do not owe it to him--or anybody else--to respond in a "civilized" manner before resorting to countervailing force. You don't owe it to anybody to fight "clean" or "fair" either; you didn't ask for this fight, and are therefore under no obligation to behave according to rules imposed by someone else.