Everywhere you turn, these days, you see tactical pens.
These are large, metal, often very pointy and knurled pens that are intended to pass as “everyday carry” items…
…when in fact they are impact weapons.
Now, most people, even those at security checkpoints, will know what these are for.
Some are more aggressive than others.
Some even have gun company logos on them, or other dead-giveaways.
Still, in a lot of cases you can carry a pen where you can’t carry anything else.
And, honestly, I use my tactical pen for writing more than anything else.
But there are some things you need to know if you do carry a tactical pen… and the time comes actually to use it.
Okay, so, the question we naturally have to ask is, HOW do we use a tactical pen?
A lot of people will just tell you to buy one, carry it, and, uh, just kind of… poke them with it?
It turns out there’s more to it than that.
There are specific techniques for using the tactical pen.
The thing is, those techniques aren’t terribly complicated…
…but there is a right way and a wrong way to do them.
1. Hammer Grip Or Pointer Grip
You can hold your tactical pen in your fist in sort of a classic hammer grip, projecting from the top of the hand, or sticking out in sort of a pointer grip.
You can smash with your hammer hand with your pen coming out of the bottom of your hand, or you can poke with the pen coming out of the top of your hand in that pointer grip.
You can extend your index finger along the length of the pen, as if you’re pointing with your finger but you’re really pointing with the pen itself.
These different grips have different amounts of control versus power.
The hammer fist grip with the pen is the most powerful.
- Make your fist.
- Your pen projects from the bottom of your hand.
- You smash, as if you’re trying to hit something on a table top.
2. A Downward Motion Is Most Powerful
The downward motion with the tactical pen is the most powerful technique you can use.
It’s a lot more powerful than just jabbing or poking in a straight line.
Picture an angry Soviet premier pounding the table and going, “We will bury you!”
When you pound with the bottom of your fist, that’s a very powerful motion.
The hammer fist is a very useful natural weapon because when you pound with the bottom of your fist, you’re less likely to injure your hand, even when striking a hard surface.
Well now, shove a pen in there.
You can drive that pen downward with a great deal of force.
You can really stab that pen into whatever you’re attacking.
3. You Don’t Actually Have To Break The Skin
I should stress that when you’re striking with the tactical pen, whether or not you actually penetrate the enemy, whether or not the pen actually enters his body, is not important.
If I stab at you with the pen and the pen pokes you really hard and doesn’t break your skin, it’s still very painful.
Picture being jabbed in the gut with somebody’s fingers.
Most people’s fingers aren’t going to pierce your skin.
But if I take two fingers and I poke you really hard in the stomach, it’s probably going to hurt.
It’s because I’m compressing your body as I’m poking at you.
Well, do that with a rigid implement that can’t feel pain, and is much less likely to break than the bones of your hand, and you’ve got a tactical pen.
It really hurts.
Tactical Pen Tip BONUS: How You Grip It Determines How You Use It
Here’s a fourth, bonus tip in our “trilogy.”
The grips for the tactical pen dictate its use, therefore.
You have your hammer grip, which is where the pen projects beneath your hand and you smash with it.
You have your pointer grip, which is where you sort of poke the pen in front of you as if you’re holding a magic wand, and drive that tip forward.
The pointer grip is useful when attacking the eyes or a target of precision because you want better control over the point of the pen.
When smashing with your hammer fist, you don’t have a whole lot of control over the point.
That’s a very blunt kind of approach.
When poking in a pointer grip it’s much more easy for you to control where the tip of the pen goes, and you can more accurately target something like your opponent’s eyes.
Remember, this isn’t easy even at the best of times because he’s moving around.
He’s not just standing there waiting for you to find his eyeball.
Then there’s the reinforced grip, which takes advantage of your body’s natural neural pathways.
If I take my pen and I hold it in my pen, and I extend my index finger down along the barrel of the pen, such that I’m pointing at you with both my index finger and the pen, my body remembers what it’s like to point and gesture with my index finger.
So wherever I point with my index finger I’m also pointing with the pen.
If it sticks out a little farther than my finger, when I stab with my finger I’m stabbing with the pen.
That is one way of taking advantage of your body’s natural memory for pointing at things, in order to reinforce your accuracy in pointing and sticking with the pen.
