Useful weapons you'll get away with carrying?

[Ihe]

I'm not being divisive, I think. My premise is simple: in a street fight you shouldn't kick, use broad movements, go to ground, or grapple, as a general rule. You should punch and run. Now, anyone can punch, I'm not saying boxers are the only ones who can do it, but punches are boxing's speciality, and no other martial arts does it better, IMO. As such, it's logical to me a boxer is trained and is better equipped for this particular approach in these particular street circumstances--I'm not saying boxing is better than any other martial arts. This is a contextual thing. I will repeat: any martial artist can throw a punch, so I'm not diminishing any other style. I'm just defending punching over any other martial artist's tools in the streets.

If you place a UFC practitioner in an unpredictable street fight--maybe against an armed thug, or more than one opponent--I doubt he/she will do anything else other than punch. Same goes for those who practice karate, muay thai, etc. It's compact, quick, and the safest way to approach street situations.

 

[HareBrain]

If you reach blindly into your instinctual/mental toolbox, it is better to only have a hammer there, and not a nail, a saw, a screw, pliers, tape measure, and 20 different-sized spanners.

Mine has only the tape measure. Is that bad?

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Yeah I'm also on my jollies, but let me answer the question: Whenever I answer a question about either UK law or combat I consult with my SO, a former police officer, practitioner of several martial arts, and experienced security specialist.

I have also had this conversation with an MMA international champion and watched her - a 5ft4in scrap of a woman - literally run up a man who had a whole foot and fifty pounds on her to apply a chokehold to him.

TL;DR: I'm not talking out of my arse here.

 

[Ihe]

Mine has only the tape measure. Is that bad?

Maybe you can choke out the thug with it and then tie him up for the police. Or you can whip him. You have to MacGyver it.

 

[Danny McG]

A steel comb in your back pocket?
Could do some serious facial damage when whipped out and raked at somebody's eyes.

Wouldn't work for a baldie or a skinhead, no legit reason to be carrying one.

 

[Lumens]

I think think is an interesting discussion, because I hardly have any first hand experience and I don't train for the sake of learning self defence. But that does not mean I don't understand a thing.

I run a cafe/bar/night club often open till 4am. I pride myself on not having a single incident where we have had the police turn up once in the whole time I have been there, 14 years now. We handle the door ourselves, no huge mean looking guys treating people badly. We are always on our guard, trying to spot trouble before it starts and treating everybody with respect.

Because of this experience, and some incidences out on the street, not connected to us, I tend to believe that if you think in a way which leads to escalation, you will naturally end up in a fight. If you do the opposite, no matter how much it bruises your ego, you can avoid it. As a general rule.

 

[Mirannan]

I think think is an interesting discussion, because I hardly have any first hand experience and I don't train for the sake of learning self defence. But that does not mean I don't understand a thing.

I run a cafe/bar/night club often open till 4am. I pride myself on not having a single incident where we have had the police turn up once in the whole time I have been there, 14 years now. We handle the door ourselves, no huge mean looking guys treating people badly. We are always on our guard, trying to spot trouble before it starts and treating everybody with respect.

Because of this experience, and some incidences out on the street, not connected to us, I tend to believe that if you think in a way which leads to escalation, you will naturally end up in a fight. If you do the opposite, no matter how much it bruises your ego, you can avoid it. As a general rule.

Reputation helps quite a lot. There's a pub in my town that was shut down by the police several times for various reasons; drug dealing, selling stolen goods, serious bar fights, people screaming at each other outside at 3AM - the place was a real dive.

After one of the shut down periods, it re-opened under new management, narrowingly escaping the police stopping their licence approval. There is now just about no trouble and it is a successful ethnic restaurant.

The reason for the turnaround might just be the ethnicity of the people who took it over. Gurkhas.

 

[Phyrebrat]

There’s the infamous Millwall Brick, invented by, er, “resourceful” South London thugs, consisting of just a newspaper.

Ah yes, and it’s recent cousin; the Ash Pipe, invented by - er - ‘resourceful’ Weyland Yutani synthetics, consisting of just a rolled sexymag.

When I moved to this part of London two young men tried to mug me after midnight for my iPod in 2005;

‘What you got for me?’
Me: ‘Huh?’
‘What you sayin, nice ipod.’
Me: <backing away>
‘Let me see it,’ (other one grabs the headphones which luckily came out of the iPod).
Me: ‘I’m HIV+. I’ll bite you if you try anything.’
<they run off calling me all sorts of names.>

Full disclosure: it wasn’t as cool as it might sound. I was v scared.

Also, in these days of PREP, ‘undetectable’ viral loads and massive progress in HIV/AIDS research, the use of bio weapons as outlined above might not be successful.

pH

 

[Danny McG]

Reading back through this thread and it seems there are few, if any, legitimate weapons you can carry.

Maybe women have an advantage if they have a heavy bag on a shoulder strap, at least one good swing might stun your assailant for long enough to get to safety.

I was strolling back from a local shop one day with a plastic carrier bag containing two large and heavy tins of catfood. I espied a near neighbour who I've had serious friction with over the years.

He was stood chatting to one of his beastly ilk. As I passed I had to really, really fight the temptation to swing viciously at the side of his head with my burden.
No doubt it would have floored this loathsome creature, perhaps with bad concussion or permanent damage.

(Sighs at missed opportunity to make our planet just a little nicer )

 

[Lumens]

Now that you mention it... There are weapons that you can buy online which are disguised as pens, umbrellas and so on.

Searching for "Disguised weapons UK" will probably get up on some list somewhere, but it will give you an idea.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

I wouldn't like to swing a heavy bag on a shoulder strap as a weapon. It's unwieldy, with uneven weight distribution, and it'd be a bugger to recover from once you've swung it (i.e. recall to you and ready for another swing swiftly). I'd rather ditch it so that it can't be used to drag me around.

 

[Phyrebrat]

^psycho...

amirite? Amelia knows far too much language in the old tongue of violence.

pH

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

'S a good ole fashun Lundun stabbin' educashun innit!

 

[Ihe]

'S a good ole fashun Lundun stabbin' educashun innit!

...Guv'nor.

 

[The Big Peat]

On the topic...

You've got to think anyone that paranoid is carrying a real weapon and hoping never to get caught.

However, a few gems I've heard over the years from various people

- Broken CD. Maybe not so easily explainable these days, but plenty still have a CD or two in their car. If one's broken, so what? Still don't want to get cut by one. Must be hell to wield though.

- Any of a wide number of tools that a workman might carry. Even just getting hit by a metal ruler doesn't sound fun.

- Throwing change in people's faces

- Not so much a weapon, but such a person probably avoids having any jewellery that people can use against them

- Really heavy pocket watch that you don't like very much

On the tangent of martial arts and street fights...

My main exposure to martial arts came through a friend who taught me some Kali and other things; he is slightly out of practice these days but he has a lot of MA experience and has been taught by a lot of fairly famous people. His advice to me on a street fight - and his own preferred strategy if it came to it - was do something to slow them down (punch, push, whatever) and then run away.

Which is where Ihe is coming from. A normal person, in a street fight, is best served by knowing how to throw an alright punch, not get hit, and a good sprinting technique. Boxing covers 2 out of 3.

If you actually want to beat someone up, then maybe boxing isn't your man. I am not knowledgeable enough to say what style you'd want if you really wanted to win street fights other than maybe all of them, a lot of experience, and some decent time in the gym. But wanting to beat people up and wanting to avoid being beaten up are two very different things.

 

[Danny McG]

I know they are proposing to ban this (maybe it has been by now) but there isn't a law against carrying acid on the streets.

Throwing a flask of that into an assailant's face would likely let you prevail in a scrap.

That's why it's so popular recently amongst the UK drug gangs

Edit: I could be too late and it's maybe illegal now

 

[Dan Jones]

Also, in these days of PREP, ‘undetectable’ viral loads and massive progress in HIV/AIDS research, the use of bio weapons as outlined above might not be successful.

pH

Surely depends on how moronic the attacker is. Awesome story. Reminds me of when I picked a fight with four drunken members of the rugby team at uni and "talked" my way out of it by screaming and pounding the front door until somebody in the hall let me out. V cool.

And have an extra 'like' for the Ash Pipe. Fried eggs all round.

 

[Dan Jones]

My main exposure to martial arts came through a friend who taught me some Kali and other things; he is slightly out of practice these days but he has a lot of MA experience and has been taught by a lot of fairly famous people. His advice to me on a street fight - and his own preferred strategy if it came to it - was do something to slow them down (punch, push, whatever) and then run away.

Which is where Ihe is coming from. A normal person, in a street fight, is best served by knowing how to throw an alright punch, not get hit, and a good sprinting technique. Boxing covers 2 out of 3.

Just so. In a one-on-one situation between the trained martial artist and the nutso thug armed with a skinful of cheap imported lager and a pool cue, Mr Nutso wins every time, because it's so far removed from "training conditions". But if you have the wherewithal to get out, that's where the smart money is. When I did kickboxing, the best way of getting some breathing space was a push kick to the midriff, not designed to hurt but to create time and distance.

Oh, and...

- Broken CD. Maybe not so easily explainable these days, but plenty still have a CD or two in their car. If one's broken, so what? Still don't want to get cut by one. Must be hell to wield though.

ETA: apologies for double post.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

I got taught Tai Chi by Dave Gibbons. Which was pretty damn random

 

[The Big Peat]

Just so. In a one-on-one situation between the trained martial artist and the nutso thug armed with a skinful of cheap imported lager and a pool cue, Mr Nutso wins every time, because it's so far removed from "training conditions". But if you have the wherewithal to get out, that's where the smart money is. When I did kickboxing, the best way of getting some breathing space was a push kick to the midriff, not designed to hurt but to create time and distance.

Oh, and...

This assumes the trained martial artist isn't a nutter who picked up a pool cue himself. One of my friend's teachers used to be a gangland enforcer in the Philippines. Being a nutter and being a trained martial artist are not mutually exclusive, particularly as you get higher and into the people who really, really love that stuff.

Also, depending on what the martial artist likes, the guy with the pool cue maybe only gets a couple of shots. I know that in a lot of Kali full contact stick competitions, its not unusual for someone to simply throw their stick away and go straight for a takedown move and proceed a fight on the floor. If someone can take a hit, then realistically you're probably not taking them down with a single blow from a wooden stick. Obviously plenty of people can't take that hit, but then again they're not the people you're worrying about.

To link it back to the OP, this is why I believe a character who feels naked without a weapon has an illegal weapon rather than a disguised one most of the time. I guess maybe sometimes that's simply not acceptable and you need a substitute, at which point yeah, a walking stick or umbrella is probably tops. But its not as useful.

ETA: apologies for double post.