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MechAg94 wrote:They only thing I can add is that if confronted with a group, distance is your friend. Most of us are not highly trained to deal with this stuff so we need time to see and react. I don't want to get in a wrestling match with anyone.

It's not just a group. If you've ever watched any MMA and seen the ground-fighting, the tricks and techniques borrowed from judo, apkido, jiu jistu, and others, it's fairly apparent just how quickly a completely unarmed opponent can subdue, even kill, another healthy, fit human being. Having a knife or a gun in one hand doesn't necessarily improve your odds, not if you're the one being attacked and ground-pounded. A wrestler who knows what he's doing can relieve you of that weapon rather quickly, if he's within grappling distance, and once you've lost the weapon (even if he throws it away!), unless you are a fighter of equal or greater skill and strength, your chances of winning, or even surviving, approach zero.

Thugs do practice wrestling, ground fighting, and the like. Do you? Can you fight back successfully against an 18-30 year old punk in the best physical shape of his life?

Hands can kill, even empty ones.

longtooth wrote:

JSThane wrote:I wish I could take credit for the term, but sadly, it's not original to me. I forget exactly where I picked it up, but I've been using it for quite a while.

Did you ever read much that Jeff Cooper wrote. Seems I remember him using goblins for the BGs.

No, not directly. I probably swiped it from someone who borrowed it from someone else who copied it from Cooper.

I wish I could take credit for the term, but sadly, it's not original to me. I forget exactly where I picked it up, but I've been using it for quite a while.

txglock21 wrote:My only question is, how do you know they are "unarmed"? Just because they are not waving around a knife or holding a gun doesn't mean they can't pull one out at anytime. Yes, you may catch some heck after the fact, but if I feel my life is at threat....

Bingo!!!

Remember, if -we- are able to conceal a weapon, so are the goblins! Empty hands can rather quickly be filled! If a group of thugs is in "attack mode," even if they are "unarmed," they don't act like the believe they are, and so they are not. The mind is the ultimate weapon; bare hands can and have killed, and if a thug is acting confident in his ability to deal damage with his hands, he can probably back that confidence up with actions.