“I wish our world worked that way, but unfortunately it doesn’t. It’s a fantasy perpetuated by way too many bad self-defense classes. In the real world, I have learned that blocking, countering, “using his energy against him,” and a whole host of other martial-arts-based techniques are all dangerous conceits that do little more than make us feel good about our relationship to violence—we feel prepared but we still get to wear the white hat—while doing almost nothing to solve the essential problem. They do nothing to shut down the attacker and degrade his ability to function. At best,”