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At the Tournament for Christ this past Saturday I ran into a top tournament promoter. Didn’t hurt him much, but we were talking about ‘live’ weapons after my students had (again!) scandalized judges by showing up with kukri and katana that were ‘real’.
This gentleman said that it is fast becoming law that live weapons will not be allowed in tournaments. His reasoning is that a live ninja-to could easily kill a number of people in the hands of some crazed terrorist-type person, and that tournaments, by their nature, involved hundreds of innocent people in the stands.
I understand that point of view, but I disagree with it. Don’t talk to me about removing my right to carry or use a weapon based on the idea that a) I’m likely to loose my mind and start killing people or b) I am incompetent about preventing someone else from taking my weapon from me and doing likewise. As a bystander, please don’t assume that I am unable to protect myself or others from someone else who is crazed and has a weapon. And anything can be used as a weapon: someone could pick up a trophy and bash a couple of skulls and those folks would be just as dead.
These objections aside, what are the practical steps to accomplish this anti-terrorism threat? A judge does not know if a weapon is live until he or she inspects it at the ring. So how do we prevent live weapons from coming in? Will we soon have to endure a search at the door before we enter the tournament area?
If the powers-that-be want to ban these weapons, here are the only possible reasons:
1. A competitor can accidentally slip in the ring, loose his weapon and hurt a bystander.
2. A valuable weapon worth thousands of dollars could be stolen, and its owner could sue the promoter.
Okay, that I can kind of understand, but not this ‘terrorism’ idea. I am so tired of the government trying to protect me by making me helpless that I am ready to pack my bags and move into the mountains and live in a cave! The only people that really believe that a population can be made safer by making it softer are the ones wanting to form a new kind of KGB. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but think about the ramifications. If we can’t have edged blades at a tournament, how soon do you think it will be before we are unable to teach with them? Or even to have them anywhere? If not in class, then also not in the car to and from class, or perhaps even not in our own homes? When does the ban on kitchen knives happen? Will a father not be able to give his son a pocket knife and teach him how to use it?
And don’t forget the gardening tools! Better just go ahead and turn in the shears, pitchforks, axes and, oh yeah, the chainsaws!
We are encouraged to live in fear and weakness. We can’t know how to take care of ourselves, we have to do what the doctor says because authority knows what to do. We can’t know what to eat because we need the FDA to tell us that insecticide, antibiotic and hormone laden foods are safe but watch out for ‘natural’ things that people have eaten for thousands of years.
When did we, as a population, become so stupid? Why do we need authority to tell us how to live?
It's easier to have someone else take care of us. But I do not believe that these folks in authority can do so. I think if someone was bent on murder and went into a tournament, there are no police around that can stop them. That is something we, as citizens, must be prepared to do. And we can’t do it with an imitation weapon. If we are deprived of real weapons, guess who will end up having them? We simply cannot be made safe by taking away our own abilities: we have to, instead, concentrate on making our population stronger and more capable of keeping ourselves safe.
If we want to continue to do weapons competition at tournaments, we are going to be faced soon with the choice of using fake ones, or not competing. Is it a tragedy in itself? No, its really not any trouble for us to use useless weapons. But if we do this, like we do in class, to improve our mental discipline, train our muscles and our reflexes to operate properly in stressful conditions, it will lose that meaning in competition. We might get careless because we know we can be, and that isn’t a good thing for us to get used to.
Learning a live weapon in class is to develop the skills that would allow us to use anything in our environment to survive an attack. It fine-tunes our body, keeps us alert and focused, reduces our fear and extends our versatility. Performing kata at a tournament increases and heightens these abilities under stress in the same way we would need abilities extended under attack. We’ve never competed for the metal and plastic, and always for the learning experience. I wonder how we will learn to apply the same lessons with a fake weapon. Perhaps I have turned into one of those old martial artists that just don’t want to change. But I doubt it. Rinkiohen
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