There was discussion of a tae kwon doe instructor being a registered “lethal weapon”.
I don’t get it. Is this only in certain states? What’s the point? Is one required to register oneself when one gets to a certain point in one’s martial arts career? Do the cops come and say “You’re too good, you must register yourself as a lethal weapon”. If someone carries you do they have to keep you concealed? Are you not allowed to fight anyone because it would be “assault with a deadly weapon”? Do you have to show your card to someone if they attack you to warn them? I always thought this was just an urban legend, or something people made up so they can say they’re THAT good. Are you not allowed to carry yourself across state lines without applying to be a deadly weapon in the other state?
During the course of a trial to award damages as a result of a physical confrontation, one’s skill as a martial artist can be seen as necessitating a greater responsibility on the part of the one in possession of the skill. Even in situations where a skilled martial artist is honestly defending himself from attack, the skilled fighter might end up paying damages to the attacker if he successfully employs his skill without taking adequate steps to protect the attacker from the full effect of the confrontation.
I believe you’re correct. This holds true for most self-defense situations, from what I’ve heard. Take guns, for instance: unless you shoot “out of instinct, to try and STOP the attacker”, you’re in trouble. Trying to kill the attacker=murder, while trying to, say, shoot them in the leg so as to wound them=assault.
And keep your mouth shut, as Bernie Goetz learned, when he told one of his attackers, “you don’t look too bad,” before shooting him.
It’s one of those sucky things in the law and even stretches further. If someone breaks into your house and you blow then away with a shotgun YOU, the VICTIM, can get busted for excessive force. Basically, if the intruder is armed with a gun you can respond with a gun. If they are armed with a knife or nothing at all you can wave a gun at them and tell them to go away but shooting them might get you in trouble.
Likewise with martial arts. My stupid pansy-ass flailing would not be considered by anyone to be a serious threat but a trained martial artist is supposed to have the responsibility to restrain themselves to appropriate measures when kicking someone’s ass. It’s the ‘appropriate’ part that you’ll spend most of your time in court defending.
FWIW: Someone once told me the best person to pick a fight with is a high level (black belt n[sup]th[/sup] degree) fighter. They’re so good they can and hopefully will subdue you with a minimum of effort and damage. The dangerous ones are mid-level fighters (orange/red belts) who know enough to be dangerous to the uninitiated and are itching to try their skills for real. It’s these people who will break your knee/elbow/face. Partly just to see their stuff in action and partly that they don’t have the full restraint and confidence in their skills a higher level fighter possesses and so may overreact. Any truth to this?
Quite the opposite, keeping you concealed requires a special license, which is difficult to obtain in most municipalities. You must be worn in a holster on the hip.
As my instructors said: “Restraint lies in arrogance.” More simply, they said that they weren’t good enough to risk a limited response to someone trying to kill or seriously injure them. FTR, I’m one of those mid-ranked martial artists, and I hate violence. I’m more likely to try to avoid or minimize a confrontation than my instructors (one of whom is arguably the best knife-fighter I’ve ever seen). As a result, I’m more likely than they are to get myself killed while trying not to hurt someone. Sucks to be a nice guy, doesn’t it?
In my experience, though, less-experienced martial artists (particularly young ones) are usually more inclined to get in fights.
I hear what you’re saying. I dabbled in martial arts years ago and while I retain precisely zero actual fighting skill I do remember some of the intellectual lessons. Among them being a ‘one punch/kick’ rule. I.e. Don’t screw around, drop your opponent immediately (if possible) to the extent you’re positive he/she can’t get back up in the near future if ever.
That said make the difference between someone actually trying to kill you and a stupid bar brawl where someone just wants to pummel you a bit. Hopefully you or your instructors would decide that permanently injuring or even killing your opponent in that situation might be excessive.
Of course, avoiding the fight altogether is always the preferred method. My instructor said he would avoid a fight if at all possible and would cease instruction to any students that got into a fight he felt was avoidable.
I have been unable to find any laws in any of the 50 States that refer to “registering” a person as a weapon. It seems to be nothing more than the typical assembly-line strip-mall-martial-arts-graduate banter.
If the black belt learned anything in his/her training, you shouldn’t be able to pick a fight with one at all. The first thing they learn (in good karate courses, at least) is not to fight if they don’t have to, for precisely the reasons outlined above.
Note that the guy she was talking about as a “registered lethal weapon” is 17.
I have trained for several years with guys who gravitate towards streetfighting, full contact stick fighting, NHB-type competitions, and the like. I’ve gotten used to a lot of these guys saying some pretty stupid stuff. Like “Bruce Lee could kick Rickson Gracie’s ass.” And a lot of more traditional martial artists will get into that “my art is better than your art”, bullshit. And people talk out their asses about secret guaranteed lethal techniques. But I have never heard anyone say anything as stupid as that they were registered as a lethal weapon and had a card to prove it.
I’m gonna cut that one out and paste it on a few boards. Should be good for a laugh.
And as far as “picking a fight with a black belt” goes, it might be relatively safer to the extent that most accomplished fighters have nothing to gain and much to lose by unnecessarily beating up a weaker opponent. Heck, he might even let you get in a free shot before he walks/runs away. With less accomplished fighters, there is a point when someone trains a fighting art that they naturally wonder, “How well would this work if the shit hit the fan?” And on some level they wouild welcome an opportunity to try it out. That stage passes.
[witty response]Well if Mr.Durden tells you to do it you had better do it.[/witty response]
On the OP,
I have only attended one studio that used a belt system of recognition. And I too had heard of becoming registered as a “lethal weapon”, but immidiately saw an error in this as all the stories I heard about it were certain belt levels having to be registered. This made little to no sense to me because for one not all belt rankings are equal to one another in each martial art. A red belt in certain arts is higher in a black belt in that same art (what you have to do to become a red belt is a matter of much debate and cryptic b/s), also some martial arts are not all that lethal even at high levels while some arts train lethality at an early level. For example a middle level Tai-Chi Chuan student is a beutiful mover but someone with similar ranking in TKD will likely have a shattering combination of kicks and punches. In some arts the nature of the form is completely passive, i.e.: Judo. You don’t attack with Judo, you re-direct energy or move aside.
The last two studios I have attended involved an audition of sorts where I would demonstrate my prowess to the primary instructor or in once case his assistant and be assigned training that meshed with my skill.
One of my ex’s was a member of American States Karate (strip mall dojo) and she purchased a “belt package” which included unlimited calss time up to her black belt. She was under regular pressure to submit for higher ranking and advancement. I have always felt that places like that want you to hurry up and get out since they allready have your money. IMHO a black belt from such an academy is only good for holding your nice pretty gi with the academy’s big giant logo on the back closed.
I don’t know of any registration requirements, and I seriously doubt that there are any. However, y’all should be aware that assaults with no more than one’s fists, under certain circumstances, can be considered “assault with a deadly weapon”. Any object that (as it is used in the assault) can inflict serious bodily injury or death, including a fist, is a “deadly weapon”. Boxers fall under this provision of the law quite a lot, although evidence that someone is or was a boxer does not automatically make their fists “deadly weapons”.
Well I guess since nobody’s come forward claming to be a “registered lethal weapon” that it’s pretty safe to say there’s no such thing.
I started taking Tiger Schulmann’s Karate a few months ago (I guess you could call it a strip-mall dojo, but there’s no guaranteed advancement and we pay on a per-class basis) and sometimes I wonder if some of the close-combat moves would actually work (the person I’m working with always falls down before I even try to take them down), so I could see how the lower level people might overdo it in an actual situation, thinking they need to use more force than they actually have to. The good thing is that most of them concentrate on disabling an attacker ASAP, not prolonging an ass-kicking session, so I think excessive force would be hard to do accidentally. I’m not eager to try out any of them though.
I think this UL got a lot of mileage in the 70’s & 80’s, with Shaft, Seagal, et al.
The grain of truth in the sea of chaff may be that the law could look upon someone with extensive physical training differently than the average shmo. For a really bad example, check out the opening couple of scenes in “ConAir.”
My brother, a US Army Ranger, is very leery of bar fights and other situations, for the very reason that he is an excellent fighter, very well trained, and could really hurt or maim somebody, if not kill them outright. The concern would be that a judge would feel that such a person should be held to a higher standard of self-restraint than an average brawler.
True or not, it makes for spirited bar conversation…
{quote]In some arts the nature of the form is completely passive, i.e.: Judo. You don’t
attack with Judo, you re-direct energy or move aside.
[/quote]
Nope, not true.
Also not true that anyone has to register with the police as a deadly weapon. What is true is that using martial arts skills in a physical confrontation can get the charges against you upgraded from simple assault to ADW. Same for a professional boxer, at least in New York State.
My experience is that most martial artists go thru the stage of getting into a fight to see if it works around brown belt or its equivalent. The mix is that of late adolescence (often), overconfidence in one’s skills, and lack of responsibility. It passes, for most people.
Yeah, Shodan. Them passive judo players are fun to roll with, huh? On more than one occasion I’ve had the pleasure of seeing loudmouthed BJJ boys being handed their lunch by a judoka friend.
Naturally. That’s why I specified “trying to kill or seriously injure”. A bar brawl suddenly takes on new meaning when someone smashes a bottle and comes after you. The best option is to leave before that happens.
An excellent point, Zen–my particular style of arnis begins training for knife strip-and-counter (as opposed to cane) at the second belt rank. Clearly, training someone to take away an attacker’s knife and cut him repeatedly with it is very different from your Tai Chi and Judo examples. Note, however, that my style involves actual weapons from day one, which limits its relevance to this topic.
“Academies” like that bug the crap out of me. Even if the students do somehow learn some decent defensive skills, do they really learn the proper attitude and discipline to go with them?
On-topic at last: Most martial artists I know in Texas generally consider themselves vulnerable to AWD charges if they wind up fighting someone who isn’t better armed than they are (e.g. unarmed MA vs. a guy with a knife is unlikely to get charged, but unarmed MA vs. unarmed punk may). I’m not sure of the actual legal situation here–it may hinge on how much the DA likes or dislikes martial arts. It’s stupid, but that’s the way it is.
I bet the person got his “Registered Deadly Weapon ID” at the same online store that sells “International Drivers Licenses” and authentic “Area 51 ID tags”!!
:rolleyes:
