January 1, 2026

Self Defense or Assault? What Are You Really Training?

What good does it do to defend yourself against an attacker but later end up in jail?

Or, to defend yourself in “the street” but end up blowing through your life’s savings defending yourself in court? Lawyers are sort of expensive in case you didn’t know. They have to pay for all that law school. 

The thing is, a good many self-defense schools never touch this subject. As in not once. As in never. You can go from white to black belt and yet avoid any reference at all to legality, self-defense law, Castle Doctrine, Stand Your Ground (SYG), Duty to Retreat, and, indeed, Civil Immunity. (Of course, if you’re reading this and live in Europe this is futile because we all know you can’t defend yourself at all over there…just take your beating and hope you aren’t seriously injured). 

This is a curious omission. A martial arts school is ostensibly a self-defense school, right? But it’s here that the brutal truth is revealed. 

They are not, in fact, schools of self-defense!

What are they instead? Sport combat schools. Historical clubs reenacting ancient combat training. Fitness clubs. 

I know this sounds harsh but, truth be told, your life and liberty really do depend on this. 

A good many “practical” schools these days (read that: MMA-based) boast about how theirs is the only stuff that works. They deride and mock traditional systems. There’s a local MMA school in here in my hometown, Greenville, South Carolina. A student there was in a fight on Main Street one very early morning. Under pressure he did what he was trained to do. He shot a double-leg, executed the takedown, achieved the mount, then rained down some glorious “ground-and-pound” on the now hapless opponent. 

Total domination.

Success.

He won. 

Well, not so fast. 

He wasn’t on a mat. He didn’t have gloves on. Oh…and his opponent didn’t tap. 

He died. 

Yes, died. Right there on Main Street in beautiful downtown Greenville over what, no one remembers. What we do know (and remember) is that a 50-something year old man no longer walks the earth and the “victorious” MMA-trained fighter, at the time in his mid-20’s, is in jail for manslaughter. Do you think the local school has a photo of his mugshot on the wall along with their trophies? Do you think they ever even mention it in their free trial classes? 

Lest you think this is harsh, consider the bleak reality of a young man losing his liberty and all that entails due in large part because he literally did what he was trained to do. Imagine what his family has had to endure! Sure, you might say that maybe he would have killed someone even without the MMA training. But even if that were true it doesn’t change the fact that his training made him a better murderer. 

This isn’t to say that traditional schools are immune from such barbarism (and, yes, to train people to fight rather than defend is savagery sold in monthly memberships). Any institution that trains the use of force without the moral and legal foundation for self-defense is a gang. The whole idea of the Department of Motor Vehicles is so that society at large has the reasonable expectation that someone hurtling through space at high speeds in a two ton machine on wheels is aware of safety laws. Likewise, a concealed carry course is concerned with both our safe handling of a firearm and our basic understanding of the legal use of it. Learning to fire a handgun while being ignorant or indifferent to the moral and legal premises of self-defense is an appalling contradiction. 

A martial artist is, at least in theory, a human weapon. Like any weapon, it must be “carried” with due diligence. At Greenville Academy of Martial Arts, we take this seriously. A self-defense student should be exactly that. If they’re training here at our school in Greenville, it’s our responsibility to, well…you know…not unleash a volatile weapon upon the city we love.

We can carry the analogy further. A person taking a basic self-defense course is akin to someone getting a concealed carry permit. A black belt (or expert) is akin to a professional, i.e., police, military, private security. Can you imagine a police officer who has no training whatsoever in the lawful use of his/her firearm? To this end, and to switch the analogy a bit, a martial art school devoid of self-defense moral law and its legal realities is a malpractice suit waiting to happen. 

To be clear, in light of all that, a martial artist is trained in self-defense. Self-defense is the art and science of keeping oneself as safe as possible in the event of unavoidable violence. Self-defense violence is, therefore, morally and legally justified insofar as it protects the defender from attack. The amount of force used by the defender must be commensurate with the threat at hand and once the threat is over, so must the counterattack. 

In every state in America (including here in Greenville, South Carolina) this is the philosophical basis of self-defense law. Of course, states vary in the legal application of this philosophical theory and, life being messy at times, there are always contextual issues at hand. A self-defense instructor is morally obligated to teach all this parallel to the physical training. The teaching and training of the techniques of violence must only be taught in the moral light of self-defense law. 

For example, I can’t claim self-defense if I instigate the confrontation in some way. And this is where we need to be appraised of our legal responsibilities. The knuckle-headed saying “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by six” is generally used in lieu of objective reasoning. It’s often the bluster of ill-formed intellects trying to sound tough. No thinking person would ever utter such a statement devoid of all context. Especially to students to whom the landscape of self-defense law is badly lit, lying mostly in shadows.

Many states have “stand your ground” laws. This means you don’t have a duty to retreat from a threat in any place you’re legally allowed to be. As of this writing, 30 states recognize this by statute and another eight either by case law or jury instruction. Do you know your state’s law? 

I used to live in New York where there is a duty to retreat even within one’s own home if possible. This is “qualified” by this: unless you were not the initial aggressor. Naturally, any lawyer could tell you that there could easily be a dispute over that qualifier. And that confusion could lead to your incarceration. 

This article could grow to thousands of pages if we were to painstakingly sift through state variances and case law as it pertains to things like “fighting words” and burden of proof. More still, the reality of civil immunity! In some states the self-defender, if justified by law, is immune from a civil suit filed by the attacker or the attacker’s family. Do you know your state’s law or, for that matter, have you even heard this subject brought up in your martial art class? A civil suit doesn’t need proof beyond a reasonable doubt to succeed. The standard of a criminal conviction can be said to be the need to score a touchdown whereas the standard in a civil suit is more like having to get into the opponent’s territory. You don’t even need to kick a field goal…just crossing midfield can suffice. 

In all, this is the sort of thing that’s not being talked about in so-called martial art schools. Be warned and learn the difference.