When I’m going out to someplace sketchy I carry a five foot long walking stick with a steel point on the end.
They hope to catch you before you have time to react. Their punch comes out of the dark and lands you on the ground with a cracked scull. If you are conscious, you might be able to spear them with your pointed walking stick. If you are blurry eyed, you might miss and have that stick grabbed from you. With your wallet as their goal, that stick gives them extra incentive to use against you. I am sure they know the best place to poke it.
With that thought, Michael Brown had succeeded in jamming Officer Darren Wilson’s gun into his hip. Had that gun gone off, it had a good chance of severing Wilson’s Femoral Artery. Death would occur within one minute if untreated. I wonder if Michael Brown knew this was the place to shoot off Wilson’s gun?