Carrying a knife . . . .

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Aren't they?

 

Excepting when you see them chewing through packaging and other such silliness.

"Be Prepared" isn't a motto for only Boy Scouts. Now-a-days it seems most are more prepared to ask others to do for them what they should be able to do for themselves.

But most men in their 50s don't carry a knife these days.

Most cell phones have adequate lights for most people's need to always have a flashlight.

 

Being a hillbilly from WV, I honestly can't remember a time I didn't carry a knife. Sometimes two. I'm 63 and can remember carrying one to school. Nobody said anything about it. A knife was and is considered a tool.

 

I do the jumper cable thing as well. Used to rotate the cables between the vehicle I was driving. Got to be a pain in the butt and something I forget to do. That changed the first time I needed them to help someone out way out in the boonies and couldn't. Same thing with a tow strap, rope, or chain.

I have carried a pocket knife all my life of some sort. I feel naked without a pocket knife. I could become accustomed to a smaller knife for an edc if I wanted to. But for now, I mostly carry something that the handle is about as long as my closed fist.

Being somewhat prepared for normal "emergencies" is important to me. I don't carry a set of hand tools in my vehicles any more like I used to. Always have a flashlight, but I don't care to have one as an edc on my person.

 

Roger's point is that on this planet we often come upon materials that need to be split apart, and sometimes that need is both time-sensitive and severe, therefore even minimal forethought and consideration would lead the reasonable man or woman to at the very least secure a $12 blade to his keychain or clip one inside her purse.

A tool so simple, but that has saved life, limb, and property everyday during crises and emergencies around the globe over the past several thousand years -- one might even think of carrying a knife as a civic duty. Roger is finding that his society doesn't embrace tools for their utility, rather it villifies the knife, even making it taboo to carry one outside the home.

I blame Bambi. Sure, the published version left out the gut-and-drag and the butchering scenes, but kids know that venison steak doesn't slice itself!

 

It's veering off topic but clearly we've exchanged some amount of liberty for safety. I personally wouldn't have so much of a problem with this idea, except that the safety we perceive is largely illusory.

Case in point: count the number of "security features" associated with your debit card. Card number, expiry date, chip, PIN, hologram, magnetic stripe, CVV number, signature, possibly cardholder photo. What will next years' security feature be? All this and your bank account gets hit with fraudulent charges anyway.

Stabbings will unfortunately occur. It's no reason to force everyone to abandon basic tools. If we didn't need to use knives there wouldn't be a market for them.

It's always interesting to me when these types of threads pop up on a knife forum. We could ride donkey carts to work but we have cars. Along the same lines, I don't need to use my car keys to open a box because I have a really nice folding knife.

I work in an office building and I pull my knife out several times a week for something or another. I could stab at it with scissors and eat my lunch with a little plastic knife but I have my knife. How funny it is to watch otherwise civilized people chew at packaging like barbarians?

 

Most everyone I know who carries daily are men under 40 or over 60 and those under 40 are far from the majority of their age bracket however for those over 60 it does seem a greater majority carry. I know very few if any men, or women, between 40 and 60 who carry at all. I think for those over 60 it probably isn't the majority for those between 60 and 70.

 

The ones I know are.

Some people carry knives. Some don't. No point in getting all triggered about it.

 

By who? The vast "sheeple" conspiracy?

Or by knife makes and customers falling all over themselves to buy knives with names like Brous Blades uses? Threat. Triple Threat. The Coroner. Or TOPS? Grim Ripper. Or Cold Steel?

For a bunch of "free thinking sheepdogs" sure do seem to resort to clamorous whining in our "safe space" a lot due to those sheeple.

 

You might want to run that past management...

"Spark (Site Admin.) does occasionally authorize solicitations for carefully selected causes. Persons seeking such an exemption MUST apply to Spark and MUST wait to receive that authorization before making any such posts."

 

I have carried a knife most of my life, I am currently 42. I received my first pocket knife from my paternal grandmother for Christmas the year I turned 6, she was the wife of a farmer and thought it made sense. I off and on carried as a schoolboy and around 12/13 it became constant habit. I am currently in a hospital waiting room feeling more uncomfortable about being absent my EDC items than that I am in a room full of strangers waiting to see my wife. I carry a lighter,flashlight,pen and at least one knife. I was not taught to feel better than other people because I am more prepared, I prefer to feel helpful to people who have other priorities.

 

http://appalachianmagazine.com/2018/10/24/the-kind-of-men-who-carry-pocketknives/

I'm in my early 30s. I have had old school slip joint pocketknives for as long as I can remember...but I never carried one, unless I was going fishing or something. Always got in the way when trying to fish my keys out.

10yrs ago I got a Kershaw as a gift from my father in law, it had a pocket clip. I didn't carry it either, until 2yrs ago when I was working full time in my own little shop and constantly opening boxes and other packaging. The pocket clip keeps it in the same spot for easy access, and it says out of the way when reaching for my keys. I'm not in the shop any more, but I still carry a small folder, 'cause I've found just how convenient it is. I don't use it for food tho...I've never washed it haha. I've seen my father in law cut the head off a 'Georgia Thumper' (~3" long black grasshopper), then 20mins later cut his steak with the same knife hahahaha.

Flashlight, pen, nah, I don't carry either. My phone has a flashlight, and I can take notes on it too.

 

I carry a knife. I find knives useful and I like them.

All the people I know who do NOT carry a knife are thoughtful, considerate, intelligent, civic-minded folks who have a million better things top worry about than what's in my pants.

I have encountered many people who DO carry knives...most of them through BF. And plenty of them were/are overcompensating whackos with fetishized tactical "killing junkie terrorists" bents. By far not the majority, but we all have met them.

Point being, stop being like the "snowflakes" you complain about. Nobody's out to get you other than our kind who cannot seem to act like a well adjusted adult with their knives. They are the ones who make people think we are stab happy nutjubs getting off on whipping big stabinators out of our pants.

And if you really want to be a sheepdog, step it up and educate people about knives and knife users....it's more constructive than coming here to preach to the choir.

 

If people are indeed being taught to see knives as weapons, the knife community has no one to blame but themselves.

Paid Hollywood product placement of the popular name brand knives AS weapons in both TV shows and movies. The ads themselves of the knife companies catering to the armchair commando crowd. Tacticool dressed punks at the Mall trying their best to be the local bad boy of the week. A fat guy knife company owner showing how his products can chop off the head of a pig.

Lets face it boy and girls, the knife companies in search of expanding the market for the sake of sales have convinced a couple whole generations now of the ability of even the most skinny mommies boy with hot pocket in hand, that he's a genuine bad a$$ with the right tacticool knife clipping on him. That they need a knife on them to feel "safe" in case "Someone gets on them". Exact words I've seen on this very forum.

Want to make a neutral person feel a bit anxious about knives? Just go flip that big tacticool out like a character in a James Dean movie with a 'switchblade.' Oh my gosh, there's a very good example of the public perception of a knife; the 1950's ad the switchblade craze got them banned for like 50 years. And don't forget all the punks waving their balisongs around in the 1980's got them banned too. I've seen it happen myself in public in broad daylight. Over impressionable young guys with no judgment does more damage to all of us than any liberal. It's no wonder that society at large is getting anti knife. Just look at this forum and how some people act.

To quote the political satire comic strip; "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

We've come a very long way from the days that a pocket knife was in every mans pocket. And it hasn't been in a good direction.

 

Since long before retiring from the military I’ve always carried a knife and a flashlight. Nowadays, I always have a flashlight, a knife/SAK, a wad of gorilla tape in my wallet, bandaids and the like. Having raised 3 kids I’ve found a use for all these things many times over the years, esp the flashlight. Looking for lost items became a daily thing over the years.

 

I'm a knife hobbyist who is registered on a knife forum, so yeah, I tend to carry a pocket knife, even if somedays it is just a Victorinox Mini Champ on my key ring. For many years the only cutting implement I ever carried was a multi-tool, primarily for the needle-nose pliers and small screwdrivers it provided, and the blade on it did not get used often. It was rarely on my person. I usually left it in a laptop bag with other tools.

I rarely have any actual need for a pocket knife when away from home. It's a convenience, not a necessity. I leave a decent size locking folder, a multi-tool, and a multi-function Victorinox knife in my car console in case something comes up. Never does, but they are there anyway.

I agree that the societal shift into viewing something as simple as a small pocket knife or multi-tool with a blade on it as inherently bad, is a foolish thing. However, it's quite possible to go about one's daily affairs and not need to have a cutting tool on them at all times. I functioned that way for 20 years, and could easily continue to do so.

 

Traveling for Christmas....kept thinking 'put a knife in the checked bag that you wouldn't fuss over too badly if TSA took it...'...couldn't decide which one I'd want to sacrifice and went without for the week. Felt naked the entire trip...and uselessly fumbling with a dull pair of scissors trying to open up all the gifts.

Putting a routine knife carrier without a knife and then putting him into a scenario where they need a knife = hell.

Solution : Get a duplicate knife to take on next trip so if it is lost, you still have the backup...or buy a knife when you get there and risk bring it back. New trip = new knife?! Can't wait for the next trip!

 

Exactly. How many

"I whipped out my Stabinator XXXXL at the family reunion and my grandma looked at me funny! Sheeple. "

thread over the years have we seen?

And we have "...come a very long way from the days that a pocket knife was in every mans pocket." A pocket knife should in in every adult male or female's pocket. The problem....and it is our own....is not the the number of knives in pockets....it's whose pockets they are in.

And I will say it again.

Grandma wasn't looking at you funny because she was scared of your knife. Grandpa carried a Case stockman and only brought it out to get a job done, fought in the war, and they raised 6 kids and are happily married. Never needed to pull out a big knife. That's why she looked at you like that.

 

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I suspect those folks that don't carry a knife daily feel they don't need them and can usually find a scissors, kitchen knife, or utility knife at work should the need arise there.

So the media is to blame for the perception of most knives being something other than tools? Likely. They are selling a product too. What goes around comes around. Don't worry about it.