May 29

John Carlton’s Best Ads: World Famous Street-Fighter Will Give You A FREE GUN

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This piece has mailed as a letter and run as a magazine ad for over seven years. It’s a prime example of ”in your face’ muscle writing– it literally  asks you to find a large friend, and have him point the gun at you and squeeze the trigger.

It’s not a “nice” ad. You will not be the same person after reading it.  It will open all sorts of doors in your brain you never suspected were even there.

The gun in question is a training tool, not an actual weapon.  Military people recognize the specs– all the tolerances are identical right down to the feel, heft and balance of a real automatic pistol.  You train with it to learn how to disarm an assailant.

My clients thought long and hard about this product… and were moved to market it when several respected retired military brass insisted the information was not just worthwhile, but necessary.  Too many idiots with no actual combat experience were casually teaching people in store-front dojos disarming tactics that would get them killed. The info offered in this ad was not new training — this was setting the record straight on bad training that was already all over the country.

Like most writers, I am a First Amendment nut. There are many democracies on the planet…but what sets the United States apart from everyone else is our right of free speech and a free press. A lot of people don’t think information like this should be made public.  A lot of good people sincerely believe that if everyone agreed to not own a gun, and to never introduce violence to get what they want… well, it might be a much better world.

And information like this freaks them out.

I was a young idealist once.  In college, I felt estranged from my own culture.  I’d grown up believing we always had been and always would be at war.  In the third grade–during the Cuban missile crisis– I was taught to hide under my desk when the Ruskies dropped the Big One on us.  (Not “if” they nuked us, but “when”).  Kids I knew started arriving home in body bags from Viet Nam while I was still in high school. Everyone served in my family– my father’s first experience with deep snow occurred in Belgium as he dug a foxhole during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII.  My brother served in West Germany during the Cold War.

Like everyone else in my working class town, I expected to be drafted and sent to Southeast Asia.

It didn’t happen.  Through a series of administrative quirks I never got the call.  At eighteen, I was ready to join up anyway.  My father asked me to wait, and give college a try.  No one in my family had ever made it past a few classes in junior college.  In the first school I attended, I hung out with veterans slacking on the GI plan. I was sure I was going to be a soldier, too, right up until the day Nixon ended the draft in 1973.

But I would only go kicking and screaming.  My idealism had been allowed to fester out of control when I entered the university. I was angry that the world was not the way it “should” be… and no one in academia offered me another view.  I was offended that war seemed to be as constant as the planned conflicts in George Orwell’s novel “1984”.  I dropped out of society for a time, part of the new Lost Generation. I had never expected to live to be 25… and when that birthday came and went, I was one lost puppy.

For my entire life to that point, everyone I knew was resigned to the idea the planet was doomed to go up in an apocalyptic fireball.

Then, suddenly, it’s the mid-seventies, the war is over, Jimmy Carter gets elected and everybody’s boogying to disco music without a care in the world.  Things can change on a dime, and nobody gets advance notice.

Why am I telling you all this?  Because I think it’s a crime to let a young person’s idealism go unchallenged. We need idealists, the same as we need the right wing and the left wing in this country to keep each other in check.  People can lose sight of ways to make the world better, just as they can lose sight of what is practical.

But there’s a point where idealism gets ridiculous.

Like it or not…in this world, you need to know how to defend yourself.  Even Renaissance men learned to handle a sword along with their studies of science and philosophy.  Having a smart mouth and an attitude is not good self-defense.  Learning a few practical skills will change your life.  My clients here are on a mission to make America stronger.

I learned combat handgun skills under the direct tutelage of a DELTA special operations officer -who forced me to clear houses and do combat reloads under stress, at night, using live ammunition.  People got shot.  I learned a few hand-to-hand tricks from a Navy SEAL who almost crippled me during training.  I spent a week in a remote Michigan “safe house” in the dead of winter learning streetfighting techniques from one of the most dangerous men in America.

And I’m proud of these skills.  They mean something to me.  Learning them has altered the way I move through the world…I’m no expert, by any stretch, and I don’t look for trouble.  But what I have learned has convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that these skills do not make the world more·dangerous — instead they help people become more confident, and less likely to engage in senseless violence.  A lot of trouble comes from feelings of powerlessness, and people lash out.

The discipline of martial arts can calm you down.

I am convinced it is NOT practical to go through life without a clue how to defend yourself or your loved ones.  If I ran the world, I would insist that self-defense be taught right along with the 3 R’s in every class for both the boys and the girls.

I know people whose worldview has been shaped by getting the crap consistently beat out of them by punks in school. They never learned even the basics of se1f-defense. I’ve met men who walk around in a complete “white zone” daze…oblivious of the dangers in the street.  And women who stubbornly ignore the reality of their vulnerability.  (These are the people who are shocked speechless when crime touches them.  It’s not supposed to happen to you.  It’s not the way !he world should be.)                      ·

I also know what kind of people respond to these ads. The client offered a “bootcamp” to their customers a few years ago where they could train with experts in weapons and bare-handed combat for a long weekend.

Who do you think came?

It wasn’t the ragged crowd of brawlers and bikers you might expect.  Instead, this civilian bootcamp was overflowing with bankers, dentists, lawyers, vice presidents of major corporations, small business owners, and representatives from every strata of mainstream America.  These were not paranoid gun nuts or military fetishists.  Normal people craved this information.and were relieved to finally get some useful instruction from teachers with real life combat experience.

Keep that in mind as you read this and other ads for self-defense in this collection.  The market is well read, educated, sensible people…who want to learn practical skills that will enhance their life.  Variations of these ads have run in big city newspapers, Investors Business Daily, Men’s Journal, even on television.  Next time you’re visiting your neighbors, check their video collection.  And don’t be surprised if you see one of these tapes sitting there.


Click here to see “The World Famous Street-Fighter” ad.

Click here to see the magazine version of “The World Famous Street-Fighter” ad.

(It will open in a new window or tab, so you can toggle between the ad and Carlton’s commentary.)


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