One Punch Kills

How many one-punch kills does a community suffer before they start to make posters? Seems sucker punches have become quite common in Australia, sometimes with devastating results.

Things are apparently bad enough down there that the public health authorities in Australia have now vaulted into action.

In fact, they’ve launched a website and created a whole slew of PSA posters and videos all built around the message that one punch can kill.

How does one defend against this sort of attack? Fortunately, it’s not that hard. Aside from avoiding stupid people and stupid places, learning proactive steps helps. Specifically, take some empty-hand defense coursework such as Krav Maga.

Krav teaches practical techniques that work, along with the proper mindset. Even a few fundamental skills can help to recognize and react to these incidents. Indeed, if you read some of those cases from down under — where armed self defense isn’t an option — learning “The Fence” and situational awareness might just save your life.

Check out the video below on using “The Fence” and its utility in self-defense. Most importantly, stay safe out there!

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

62 COMMENTS

  1. This is something anyone trained to fight knows and it’s a major reason why most of them avoid fights whenever possible. They don’t have to be a really skilled fighter to kill you. A lucky blow or just you tripping over a curb and hitting your head could be the end of you life.

    It’s also an excellent reason to work on chokes and strangles which don’t generally come with the risks associated with actually hitting someone.

    Unless you absolutely cannot avoid the fight (‘the fight chooses you”) there is no reason to engage in one.

    • +1 (except for your comment on choke and strangle holds … never, ever intentionally put yourself in contact distance with an adversary unless you absolutely have no other choice)

      • Well, since you’re already avoiding fights I’d assume if you’re at contact distance it’s not by your choosing and at that point grappling, even while standing, is extremely effective if you know how to do it.

        If nothing else some people can absorb a lot of punches and kicks before they go down. No one stays in the fight when a proper choke or strangle is applied because they’re too busy taking a nap. It’s safer for both of you physically and legally (from your point of view) provided you don’t just rage out and kill them with it. If possible to apply, it’s the safer route to go because you don’t have to explain why you broke parts of the other person/crippled/killed them.

        Explaining to some idiot attorney who has no experience past a food fight in grade school why you throat-punched some guy isn’t going to be a great day.

        Again, I come at this from the point of view that by the time you would do anything you don’t have a choice.

        • absolutely agree. I have two brothers and we all know how to fight, kind of came with the territory growing up in Montana. I don’t like to fight. It’s not fun. However, when we (brothers) all get together and drink, conversation can descend into argument which spirals into a fist fight pretty quick. i don’t like to punch my brother, and I really dislike it when he punches me, but the way that fight ends quickly with as little damage is closing the distance and choking him out. Properly applied, you can end a fight quickly and maintain control of your adversary until you take the fight out of him. But the key is properly applying the right amount of force, cause you can kill a person if you don’t know what your doing.

  2. And we will still hear leftists worldwide say it’s wrong to shoot someone if they don’t have a weapon. “Unarmed” is a relative term. I mean really we’ve all seen the “he/she didn’t even have a weapon” when someone is talking about a ventilated friend or family member that broke in or attacked an armed citizen.

    • Worse, they consider themselves morraly justified in assaulting random people because they decided that everyone who disagrees with them is a “Nazi”… then they play the victim when one of their masked thugs gets ventilated.

      • Yeah pretty much. One of the saddest things about that whole theater of emotion is that they are generally the fascists and the socialists. Obviously they don’t understand history very well.

  3. Two things.

    1. Most people don’t realize that a single punch can easily kill a human being. They are used to seeing MMA fighters and boxers whail the piss out of each other and forget that both parties are wearing protective equipment. I’ve been in a few fist fights over the years and can show you the results in an MRI. I’ve had almost a half dozen concussions in less a decade.

    2. #1 is why I consider any attempt to punch someone attempted murder. The charge may not stand up in a court of law, but it’s more than enough justification for me to put a bullet in someone’s ass. That’s why my response to antifa’s #punchanazi campaign is #shootacommie.

    • @Serge:

      “it’s more than enough justification for me to put a bullet in someone’s ass“…

      Unless I’ve been wiping the wrong place all these years, the ass is hardly center mass!

      /joke

    • There’s actually an argument in MMA these days to make it bare knuckle because it would be safer.

      That’s due to people fearing destroying their hands when not using gloves and therefore pulling their punches/not throwing crazy flurries of punches. The intended result is less head trauma due to less shots to the head.

      Joe Rogan loves the idea, and with his experience in martial arts I’ll take his advice, but I’d put the idea in the “ain’t gonna happen” column.

      • Boxing gloves actually made boxing much more dangerous because head trauma happens due to the quick acceleration and deceleration that the brain goes through when getting punched. The gloves protect the hands at the cost of making it harder to knock someone out which means they take more punches/head trauma before they are finally knocked out.

        I haven’t researched MMA gloves but boxing would absolutely be safer if they outlawed the big gloves and went to something smaller like MMA gloves or even back to bare fisted fighting.

      • It’s been done. Kyokushinkai Karate has always been bare-knuckles, if I remember correctly.

    • Your first sentence is why the vast majority of situations in which someone punching someone is not attempted murder. Attempted murder requires a specific intent finding. That is that the actor intended the act for which they are charged to result in the death of the victim (not to mention transferred intent).

      The rest of point 1 does go to you reasonably believing you were faced with imminent grievous bodily harm or death.

  4. Aussies are killers man, kind of metro looking, but killers. That’s why they don’t need guns down there. They do a different kind of gun show. Suns out, guns out, beat up a kangaroo. Hope they never invade, or we drop the MOAB on ’em, like in Afghanistan. Are we still blowing sh!t up in Afghanistan? Wonder what that cost?

    • Dawg, that shit was so yesterday. We got more ordinance to drop on new and exciting (and Korean) places. Try to keep up. And also don’t punch anyone. I heard somewhere you could kill someone like that…

  6. I’ve had enough concussions to know all to well how fragile the human dome is. And because of this, I’ve adopted the policy of a punch, attempted or successful is met with a bullet. If someone even makes a move to swing at me I’m drawing. I’ve had enough head injuries to know that it’s worth legal risk when compared to death or coma.

    • Have you and Mr. Serge ever considered using the ancient, secret technique called “Kicking them in the nutsack?”

      You know, then you won’t have to shoot someone because you two goof-asses have brain damage.

      (Totally in jest, ya homos.)

    • Actually, hands and feet.

      But you are on the right track. Last year murderers killed more people with their hands and feet than they did with rifles and shotguns.

  8. Well, the solution is quite obvious; ban hands. Just because someone wants hands doesn’t mean they should be allowed to have them.
    From now on, if you want hands in Australia, you should have to go through a multitude of hoops, including proving a need, time-consuming classes, fees out the @ss, etc.
    Just think, with these common sense measures in place, we could start to see a dramatic decrease in hand violence (that will really just follow the curve it was before the common sense hand control).

  9. He didn’t kill me with one punch, but mike Tyson put me on my ass with a single hit in punch out!

  10. Well i think what they obviously need are a few pallets of “punch free zone” signs. Should solve the problem right quick.

  11. In the 70’s, in Pawtucket, RI, on Mineral Spring Avenue, in a dive bar that is no longer there, a guy who’s last name was Plante, punched another guy because the guy pinched Plant’s wife in the rear end. It was just one punch. The guy fell to the floor and died. Plante went to trial in the Superior Court and was found guilty by a jury. He received a lengthy jail sentence.

  12. 2 of my friends got in a drunken fist fight in a fastfood parking lot after the bar closed. My one friend hit the other, he fell back and hit the curb, his head swelled up like a basketball, and died. My buddy did 3 years in jail over killing his best friend over an arguement that the dead guy started. Very sad, and can happen.

  13. This is known as a “King Hit” down under. We call it a sucker punch. It is and has been a thing for some time, now. The guys who do this see it as some sort of game and they do it just for laughs. The random victims, who did nothing wrong, are often permanently damaged and sometimes even killed. It has nothing to do with being around stupid people in stupid places: it can happen at a McDonalds on a Thursday evening. Drunk young men alone or in groups should be considered a red flag. Situational awareness is your only defense, avoid tunnel vision. Try to keep your guard up, always. Poop happens.

    • Always copying the US. This was a big thing in the US couple years ago with the permanently aggrieved hyphenated Americans hive dwellers. Sucker punching little old ladies in the back of the head.

  14. How is it that (some) Aussies do not even know their own culture? Like a PSA is going to stop a bunch of blokes in OZ from going to the pub, getting buzzed (if not piss drunk), and getting in fights. It will happen. In fact, THAT IS HOW OZ GOT STARTED! Not too long ago a bunch of out of work Irish dudes in London got drunk, then in a fight, and before they knew it they were off to the land where every animal has venom.

    Piss meet wind. Your best bet is sending the lads off to Bali or Thailand before they turn 18. Cuz if you ruin their futures they will ruin yours.

    “We don’t think it’s hot when you fight” said every girl ever to every guy ever since there has been an ever and it has never worked . . . and not just in OZ. I am sure chicks in Russia, Canada, Nigeria, China, Flanders, and even the Crusader State tried that and it did not work.

  15. Persons who commit unprovoked vicious violence upon other humans should be lobotomized upon conviction.

    • And then what do you do with them?

      Warehouse them for the rest of their blank stare and catatonic lives?

      • Send them home to the parents who did such a poor job of raising them.
        And not one penny of financial assistance from the taxpayers.
        Making parents truly responsible for Negligent Parenting would solve most of our excessive violence problems.

        • Persons who commit unprovoked vicious violence upon other humans should be sodomized upon conviction.

    • Persons who commit unprovoked vicious violence upon other humans should be sodomized upon conviction.

  16. Government and now media are trying to get rid of “king hit” as a term. Too many people being hit in back of head by idiots or drunks often with fatal results.

    The idea of showing your “skills” by hitting someone without warning from behind has crept in young male culture over the last few years.

  17. I am curious if Australia is putting out PSA ads for the roving groups of Somalians who are attacking people or muslims who keep making plans to do mass beheadings? No, of course not. Drinks sucker punching people is obviously a much greater threat to their national security. What was I thinking?

  18. Funny Australia should mention it. I mean, this is what I say when anti-gunners act like one should defend onesself with hands or let someone pound on you rather than use a gun. Or before using a gun, like to be sure the assailent is serious. Getting punched can be lethal or cause permanent disability. One shouldn’t have to put up with it, and unless a martial artist in a controlled setting it’s pretty nuts to put up with it.

    That’s just if the assailent doesn’t intend to kill. If they do intend to kill, once they land a first blow the risk of a victim losing control of the situation is naturally way higher. One can be dazed, knocked down, not in a position to regain control.

  19. It’s unusual but I’ve seen it. And people don’t expect it.

    So how much is TTAG getting paid by the author of “The Fence” for all this ‘go learn krav maga’ stuff in the past couple months ?

  22. Says the lefty prog…
    “OMG!!! OMG!!! PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS/EPIDEMIC!!! BAN FISTS!!!!”

    Followed directly by the realization…
    “Oh wait I have fists, so I’d be banning something I have, inconveniencing myself, and I KNOW I’m a good person.”

    Then followed directly by the statement,
    “OMG!!! OMG!!! BAN BARS!!!

  23. Local middle school kid got killed several years ago when I was in college because some dumbass sucker punched him in the chest in the restroom. That single punch sent the kid into cardiac arrest. I can’t imagine the bully was nearly as strong as the average adult male.

  25. Man, this push toward “please take krav maga classes” is really starting to pick up steam. Yo RF, how about starting a “the truth about krav maga” website? I bet you there’s money to be made.

  26. This all well and good but a “Sucker Punch” by definition is unexpected. All the videos I’ve watched the assailant either came from behind or unexpectedly from the side with no indication of what was to come. The only way to defend against that is to not be there.

  27. This has to be true. I read about it in a Jack Reacher novel, where he punched a guy so hard in the chest his heart stopped working. Or something.

    I still don’t understand why Reacher doesn’t just keep one of the guns he gets from the myriad bad guys he takes down. Would save him a bit of bother in the next book.

  28. No amount of hand-to-hand training is going to stop a sucker punch. It’s a surprise attack by definition.

    Situational awareness to avoid such a scenario is the key.

  29. yeah, learn from the “bouncer”. most of the bouncers I’ve seen are masters at sucker punches, cheap shots, dry gulching etc. So yeah, they’ll teach you best. They’ll also teach you that five on one is bouncer fun.

Comments are closed.