Best Weapons for Self Defense

[Moe Bedard]

The best weapons for self defense are those that are convenient to carry, easy to use, and are effective at forcing back an attacker. However, there is no single weapon that will work best for all kinds of situations.



Some will be more effective for self defense while you are outside your home while others would be better when you are at home. It would be up to you to take into account the advantages and disadvantages of each weapon and decide which to buy.

• Firearms

This is a good weapon when you are inside your home or outside. This may not be suitable for defense when you are in public because you can only carry it legally if you have a special permit. There is also a need to take some courses on firearms safety. Nevertheless, a firearm is an effective and powerful weapon that requires minimal strength and training.

One gun is good, several are better. A combination handgun, carbine, rifle and shotgun would be the ultimate arsenal for self defense.Once you decide the type of gun is best for you, it is a relatively straightforward process to choose a caliber or gauge of ammunition that will fulfill your needs for protection.

+ YouTube Video

Make sure you are aware of federal and state gun laws before you purchase a weapon.

• Small knife & Big Knife

A small knife may be a good weapon for use outside the home and a big knife for inside. A small knife is easier to conceal it and it is convenient to carry. However, you need to make sure that your knife is easy to open in case of an emergency. It could be used as a quick weapon that can surprise your attacker. This will allow you to escape while he is temporarily stunned. However, this will require some training for you to effectively use this kind of self defense weapon.

Also most all states have laws for concealed weapons. Please be aware of the federal and state laws.

+ YouTube Video

• Mace and pepper spray

These are non-lethal weapons for self defense but you will also need to get some training to ensure that they are effective. The chemicals must get to the eyes of your attacker to allow you to escape. Some practice may be needed to ensure that you can aim the spray properly. You will also need to hold the spray bottle in your hand while you are in a neighborhood that could be dangerous.

+ YouTube Video

[Moe Bedard]

Shooting prone can save your life by lessoning the target area (YOU) as you protect your life while firing at your attacker.

Todd Jarrett continues his series of practical and tactical shooting lessons sponsored by Blackhawk. This time Todd's teaching the right technique for going prone.

+ YouTube Video

Reloading and speed can make the difference between life and death if there are multip[le attackers. Travis shows you how to speed up your magazine reloads for competition or combat.

+ YouTube Video

Two members of the Army Marksmanship Unit show you two ways to speed load your shotgun for three gun competition or combat.

+ YouTube Video

[Moe Bedard]

Knife self defense tactics.

+ YouTube Video

+ YouTube Video

+ YouTube Video

[davephx]

Oh great that is all we need more violence and nut cakes like in Ft Hood and Fl office building running around with guns.

No one in America needs an assault rifle.

You need drivers education, license and insurance to drive a car. There should be at least those requirements to own a gun.

[Moe Bedard]

Did you write the constitution Dave? Well, I am sure glad you didn't and I am sure millions of gun owners and experts would disagree with you and give you enough facts to dispute your feeling facts.

In terms of reducing crime, the bans in DC and Chicago have been a complete failure--violent crime involving guns is higher now than it was when the bans passed (simply because the bans shift the balance of power to those that will ignore the law and own/carry guns REGARDLESS of the law)

What you fail to realize in your nut case references make no sense.

Hey Dave, if we made it illegal to carry money, we could reduce the supply of cash to muggers. If we outlawed cars, we could reduce the supply of cars to car thieves. If we made it illegal to walk after dark, we could reduce the number of people assaulted.

First we have one who is paid to carry guns and kill by our government and the next is random. Maybe if the victims that were shot by these killers were properly armed, they would have stopped the attackers well before most of the people were shot.

It has been proven time and time again that gun bans do not lesson violence and the killing of people by guns. It INCREASES it.

Both sides say Chicago?s gun ban did'nt?t work, but agreement ends there

Gun bans do not work dude. They only disarm the good people who will get shot by the criminals.

“The violence, and the crime problem in Chicago, is happening in spite of them having one of the strictest gun laws in the nation,” said Dave Workman, senior editor of Gun Week.

Workman said overturning the ban “will at least level the playing field and give the law-abiding citizens the chance to fight back.”

“It’s not as though these people wouldn’t have committed a violent act if they didn’t have a gun,” he said, adding that street murders are up close and personal. “They’re going to get each other no matter what. If they can’t get their hands on a gun they’re going to use a knife, or they’ll use a club."

Stricter penalties on gun crimes and prosecuting gun crimes to the fullest extent of the law will help decrease crime, said Rachel Parsons, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association. She said that gun bans do not work.

“If handgun bans worked, then Chicago would be the safest city in the country but it’s not,” Parsons said. “Any time that gun bans are enacted, crime goes up.”

I am sorry to inform you, but there were some great men who fonded our AWESOME country and others who have fought for our rights to bear arms as American citizens that we the people should listen to. We should NOT listen to a person who is defined by the news and propganda that he injests in todays world of fakery and lies in the Matrix now known as the USA.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764
-- Thomas Jefferson

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"[A] string of amendments were presented to the lower House; these altogether respected personal liberty." -- Letter to Patrick Henry, June 12, 1789, referring to the introduction of what became the Bill of Rights
-- William Grayson

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -- The Federalist, No. 46
- James Madison

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens." -- The Federalist, No. 29
- Alexander Hamilton

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775
- Thomas Paine

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins." -- Debate, U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789
- Elbridge Gerry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The great object is, that every man be armed."
- Patrick Henry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State..."
- George Mason

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possesion and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
- Patrick Henry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers."
- George Mason

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Gaurd with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!"
- Patrick Henry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen."
- State Gazette (Charleston), September 8, 1788

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny."
- Rev. Nicholas Collin, Fayetteville Gazette (N.C.), October 12, 1789

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The powers of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sward are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress have no right to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American.... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."
- Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that axists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
- Noah Webster An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them" - Tench Coxe, An American Citizen IV, October 21, 1787
"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American . . . . The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." -- The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788
"As the military forces which must occasionally be raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article (of amendment) in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -- Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789

[davephx]

We don't have or need or have any militia today. This is not the 1700's.

Many will argue these Constitutional issues do not apply to reasonable gun regs. We don't need to fight the British .. or Indians...or government.

[davephx]

This is so silly. Militia refers to the organized military not individual citizens and Bear Arms refers to military service.

The military has the right to arms not Citizens.

The term "well regulated" in the Second Amendment has been interpreted as a usage of the term "regulated" to mean "disciplined" or "trained".[133] On what constitutes a well regulated militia, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 29:

If a well regulated militia be the most natural defence of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security....A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss.[45]

Some scholars, such as Saul Cornell, have contended that modern militia movements are not what could be considered "well regulated", since they often lack fixed leadership and may have unstructured training regimes.

Meaning of "to keep and bear arms"

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the phrase To bear arms as "to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight." The OED dates this use to 1795.[116][117][118] Garry Wills, an author and history professor at Northwestern University, has written of the origin of the term bear arms:

By legal and other channels, the Latin "arma ferre" entered deeply into the European language of war. Bearing arms is such a synonym for waging war that Shakespeare can call a just war " 'justborne arms" and a civil war "self-borne arms." Even outside the special phrase "bear arms," much of the noun's use echoes Latin phrases: to be under arms (sub armis), the call to arms (ad arma), to follow arms (arma sequi), to take arms (arma capere), to lay down arms (arma pœnere). "Arms" is a profession that one brother chooses the way another choose law or the church. An issue undergoes the arbitrament of arms." ... "One does not bear arms against a rabbit...[119]

Garry Wills also cites Greek and Latin etymology:

... "Bear Arms" refers to military service, which is why the plural is used (based on Greek 'hopla pherein' and Latin 'arma ferre') – one does not bear arm, or bear an arm. The word means, etymologically, 'equipment' (from the root ar-* in verbs like 'ararisko', to fit out). It refers to the 'equipage' of war. Thus 'bear arms' can be used of naval as well as artillery warfare, since the "profession of arms" refers to all military callings.[120]

In late-eighteenth-century parlance, bearing arms was a term of art with an obvious military and legal connotation. ... As a review of the Library of Congress's data base of congressional proceedings in the revolutionary and early national periods reveals, the thirty uses of 'bear arms' and 'bearing arms' in bills, statutes, and debates of the Continental, Confederation, and United States' Congresses between 1774 and 1821 invariably occur in a context exclusively focused on the army or the militia.[128]

[Moe Bedard]

My post stands and one should always question who they listen to.

Some guy they do not know on a forum, some website owner like me or the founding fathers of our country. I tend to think that the smart people who read this will side with the founding fathers of America who signed the Declaration of Independence and the bill of rights knew what they were doing and saying when they gave us our independence from the evil rule of the King of England and these rights to fight back against injustice.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764 --- Thomas Jefferson

"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens." -- The Federalist, No. 29
- Alexander Hamilton


Now, Mr. Dave says it is quite alright to have our government take our rights away and you also support the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which the majority of American citizens do not. Dave, who are you and who do you work for?