Violentization & Self Defense

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 30th Apr 2018

Violent crime is a process. An aggressor, regardless of their motivation, needs to go through a series of identifiable steps to commit an act of violence e.g. they must select – or find themselves in – a location, they must select a victim, assess them, etc. But before they orchestrate (or find themselves in) such a situation, they must go through another process: they must become comfortable with the idea of using violence, or, as the criminologist Lonnie Athens would put it; they must go through the “Process of Violentization”. Just as a predatory criminal must come to accept using...Click To Read More

Moral Panics & Folk Devils

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 23rd Apr 2018

Occasionally, when I’m conducting corporate training sessions and I mention that we’re living in the safest times ever, somebody will make a comment/question, asking me if I ever watch the news and that somehow, I must be misinformed about the state of the world. Whilst I acknowledge that there are locales (and regions), that have seen raising rates of certain crimes, “street crime” in general has been falling in the U.S. and despite having experienced some major terrorist incidents (9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Boston Marathon Bombings), it has not yet had to endure any long-lasting and coordinated terror...Click To Read More

Labeling And Situational Awareness

Gershon Ben Keren

Tue 17th Apr 2018

There are many definitions of what situational awareness is, but if we were to boil it right down, it would basically involve, knowing what is going on around you – and from a self-protection perspective, if any of it involves potential or actual harm/danger. Most people lack good situational awareness, because they lack an interest and a curiosity, about their surroundings and the people in their environment. This was true, even before the mobile phone began to compete for our attention e.g. people would get lost in our own thoughts, daydream, and space out, etc. As society became safer, and...Click To Read More

London Calling - Lessons We Can Learn From London's Knife Attacks

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 9th Apr 2018

I recently read a headline that claimed the murder rate in London, UK, has overtaken that of New York. Whilst this is true on a month-by-month basis, for February and March, it is not true as a trend, over 2018, or 2017. What it indicates is that London has experienced a surge in murders, in these two months, and although they may remain statistical outliers, they highlight an underlying problem that London and the UK has always had to deal with, which is knife crime/violence. This is not a new phenomenon, and knife attacks have always been relatively common, even...Click To Read More

Recreational Violence - When Not Alone

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 2nd Apr 2018

One of the lines I’m always saying when teaching physical self-defense solutions is, “Armed, Assisted and Able.” They are three assumptions that you should always make when confronted with an aggressor i.e. that they have a weapon (even if you can’t see it, or have already disarmed them of one), that there are third parties in the environment that can assist them, and that they are technically, physically and skillfully able to respond to anything you do; this doesn’t necessarily mean they are “better” than you, rather that you shouldn’t assume that a punch you throw will have the desired...Click To Read More