I call my knives "knives." It's kind of obvious on sight whether I'm referring to a steak knife or a pocket knife.
That said... as a female, I am always in some danger of being targeted for something unpleasant, from verbal harassment to rape/murder. Or so I have to assume; the alternative is a situational complacency that could get me, well, rape/murdered. A zero-tolerance event if ever there was one. So I don't walk around scared but I walk around alert to the possibilities.
I was also given, in high school in gym class, a rather decent little course in self-defense. Nothing comprehensive, but not bad for a public-school course that all the girls got put through, so it had to be geared for those with no inherent interest or abilities but still teach us something. It did. And I have used its teachings many times to evade many situations that I am sure would have gone bad if I had not evaded them and with them the need to find out just how bad they would have gotten.
First principle was to avoid situations rather than have to escape them, second was that if the first failed, to escape situations rather than stay and fight, third was if the second failed, how to fight effectively to secure opportunity to escape. For the third scenario -- which things actually progressed to once when one and two failed me -- we were taught how to use surprise to weaponize things like car keys and pens. The assumption, a fair one I think, was that we would be targeted for many reasons, one of which was being presumptively unarmed.
Now if I actually had the knife I carry now at the time I was attacked (as above), I think it would have spared me being dumped off my bicycle onto the ground. (I got away anyway because I was already fleeing; but it was scarier than I would have liked; and I scraped my palms.) I call it a knife -- calling it a "tactical" knife would feel silly because I have no intention of getting into a physical fight, period; though for sure I would use it rather than my car keys, if I had no choice in the matter. If pressed further, I call it a Kershaw Blur, as the manufacturer does. Does it have any tactical use? No doubt, in the right hands. A weapon does not wield itself. A pocket knife in the right hands is more dangerous than a .45 in the wrong ones. Would it have had any tactical use in the bike-attack scenario? Yes, I am guessing so -- I was assumed to be unarmed, and was; if I had had my Blur then and deployed it, I really do not think I would have had to use it nor been tipped off my bike -- my assailant was not cornered and I would not have moved to attack him, just have made a thought-provoking statement that there were many easier alternative targets all around, and he would probably be better off going after any that were actually unarmed, than me, who was not going to attack but not going to suffer being attacked without first using all the defensive options afford me by 3.5" inches of shaving-sharp, .5"-deep-bellied steel, with a very firm grip that I would have had a firm grip on. As it was, the guy ran away when he failed to keep me down after taking me down. So I am pretty sure he would have retreated at the sight of a knife without ever taking me down. I would have been ready to use it, and if pressed would have used it, if not skillfully as a SEAL, then as well as someone mortally afraid but not incapacitatingly afraid and determined to kill rather than be killed, and aware of basic anatomy, and jacked faster and stronger on survival-response hormones than I could have been on PCP. That is to say, if he had attacked unarmed as he was, I would have killed him, if necessary; but he would not have attacked. He was not looking for a fight but easy prey. We would have looked at each other and understood what the other was and he would have retreated and I would have let him -- i would not have wanted to scare him mortally, either; even normally cowardly creatures are very dangerous then.
That would have been a tactical situation, and a knife is certainly weaponizable if car keys are, and the Kershaw Blur more so than traditional slip-joint, and if less so than a Fairbairn-Sykes, I don't think the difference would have been great enough to have registered -- he would have retreated from either. That would have been the smart thing, and predators are smart.
My weapon was not the knife; it was the recognition of my situation and the choice I had made long before it arose about what I would do if it ever arose and the gift of the body's profoundest fear short of panic, which would have made a fine tactical knife of any knife I had. That one time when I could not avoid a fight, but did make it a very short one even unarmed. And got away, which is to say I won. I suppose that was a tactical situation; anything I had would have been a weapon; my brain and survival instincts and situational awareness and flight response were what I had that time and they did suffice alone, so anything else would have only made things easier, but was not strictly necessary. Armed with alert human wits and fear of death but not to paralysis, one is pretty well armed, against a stronger and faster but more foolish and less afraid foe.
Situations are tactical. Knives are knives. I keep my knives reasonably sharp; I can only be grateful I was born with sharp wits and keen instincts, and when I am afraid am afraid enough but not too much, which is a fine edge too.
