Criminals aren’t fair fighters. Their nature as lawbreakers guarantees that they will tip the balance so that they make it as uneven for their victim as possible. Craig Douglas likes to call this the criminal assault paradigm. When people train to fight criminals, it is almost always done with equal initiative, meaning both sides are on an even playing field and they know what to expect. What happens in the real world is an unequal initiative event, where we are not given any indication of an attack or confrontation. Because of this, we are usually not equally armed and sometimes we’re outnumbered. This is a situation that is difficult to predict and is typically not trained for.