StephentheHeathen's Blog

After my wife and I watched the report on self-defense by Loren Halifax, my wife has asked me to write this post, which I totally agree with.

I applaud and am grateful for what the Kemp and Smith families and foundations are doing.

My wife, many years ago, worked at a stop-and-shop and was robbed at gun point. In about this same time frame she was a "victim" of an attempted rape. The quote "victim" is because she learned a valuable lesson and will not allow herself to be a victim again.

What Greg Smith is doing is exactly on track. AWARENESS. Not putting yourself in the position of being a victim is 90% of not being a victim. It's a sad and sorry time that we live in that we have to take the added concerns and stress to keep safe, but it has to be done.

One of the common threads to both stories is that these girls were alone. Our suggestion to to go somewere with someone. If someone is with you then the odds of being attacked are greatly reduced.

Another common thread is that they both thought that they were in a safe environment. Sorry to say that there isn't too many places that you can consider as being safe, including your own house sometimes.

If someone can't go with you then you have to prepare and be alert. Have your keys out and ready before you leave a building or car, heads up - scout out an area before you enter it, if you are alone in a building then check out the entrances before you are alone. I'm sure that Mr. Smith on Kelsey's website has many more tips.

Mr. Kemps' heart and motives are in the right place, but in our opinions, Bob and Jill Leiker are going to get many women seriously hurt.

Wailing on a dummy for 7 - 12 seconds looks impressive, and probably made the women feel good, but did you notice something was missing?

THE DUMMIES DIDN'T HIT THEM BACK.

Smack a man a couple of times and you better be prepared to get hit back, it's reflex, and especially if he intended doing you harm in the first place.

The comment that my wife made was 'could you see someone my size hitting someone your size for that long?' She's 5'6" and about 130 lbs., I'm 6'4" and about 250 lbs. She answered her own question with 'get real'. And before you ask it, yes I've been racked before, but give me two good breaths and you had better be gone, the fights I have been in have lasted an average of about 15 seconds - win or lose.

That's reality.

Stomp your heel onto his instep,

Hit him in groin with, well, anything you can,

If you have long fingernails or keys in your hands, go for the eyes and face.

These have been taught in many, many self-defense classes.

Let us also add this. After you have stunned your attacker with one or all of the above methods then;

TURN AROUND AND RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN AND SCREAM AS LOUD AS YOU CAN FOR HELP.

Don't stand there and try to duke it out with him, you will be one of the 99% that don't survive if you do.

I'm sure that the Leiker's are "champions" in a controlled fight setting, but in reality the rest of the world isn't.

Don't let them get you hurt.

One of the reasons that I started a blog here is that on my other blog(s) I keep bringing up subjects that concern the KC area and I quess that I wanted to keep local issues local.

Another reason that I wanted to blog here is the fact that I think that the TV news here......well......sucks. Sorry Fox4, but every chance I get to vilify you I will. But if it makes you feel any better the phrase "here" means ALL of the TV news in KC sucks.

I'm not a journalist, as a matter of fact, I now regret falling asleep in English and history class so much in high school. I also don't have a lot of time to write as much as I would like and the fact that I'm keyboard challenged means that things will be slow in coming.

I look forward to the interaction!