What about starting from ourselves - like stopping talking here on forum about knives as weapons?
Knives might be only as positive as their owners are. If the owner carries a knife "for self-defense" (not actually having any self-defense skills), shows it off with no regard for others and the knife image - because the knife makes him so much cooler than all the "shiple" around... what positive image are we talking about. And there are people like that here in the forum - feeling very OK.
Until we are successful in promoting this positive image for knives here in Bladeforums any dreams about going any further are just dreams and wasted breath. And I do not see it happening here any time soon - too many users see the knives as "combative/defensive instrument" mainly.
Should we show them some main-stream movie or some documentary?
And that sums it it up perfectly!:thumbup:
As long as young knife buyers keep the manufactures in business pumping out more and more weapon looking wonder knives of the month, you're fighting a lost cause. The people most at fault for the anti knife feelings are the makers and the people right here. Add in Hollyweird and the media, and I sometimes think we will end up like England.
I grew up in an era where if a man had pants on, there was a pocket knife in a pocket. It was just expected. Many women carried a little pearl handled pen knife in their purse. But this was a very long time ago, and I admit I'm an old fart. It was a different era then. But I don't understand why the knives changed. Back then, Americans lived a more rural life, with people actually working on the farm. Now, most people seem to be cubicle office workers in a far more rural environment, where to be honest, you don't really need much knife. Yet, I see more and more young show off knife guys flipping their black mall ninja knives in public. They have become the James Dean of the modern age, like it or not. The rest of the citizens look at them as a threat, and rightfully so. The say presentation is everything, like first impressions. If people are down on knives, many of you have to go look in a mirror.
Knife enthusiasts make up less than one percent of the populace at large. We're a the tiny minority, and you'd better grasp that fact. Not to mention that the sheeple as you call them, vote. Keep flashing the knives in front of the sheeple and all it's going to take is one little old lady to call her senator who may be another Estes Kefauver looking for a cause to run a re-election campain around. Police yourselves before the law does it for you.
Most of Europe used be be pretty open for knives. Automatics were seen as a handy way to open a knife. When I was stationed in Germany, it was legal to carry them. It was so cool to be sitting in a outdoor pub drinking a good German brew, and hearing a snick, and seeing the guy at the next table with a nice Boker automatic slicing off a piece of sausage for his dog sitting under the table. But things changed. Crime, and juvinile violence made strict new knife laws, and now I understand it's much like England. Blade size restrctions, no atuos or assisted openers, no one handed opening, and so one. Think it can't happen here?
Add to that, that, manufacturers pay for product placement in movies. Car's, gun's, booze, KNIVES. They know what is seen on TV or the movies will sell big in the market place. And they are right. Just let a new knife appear on a TV show, and the next day right here it will be raved over and people saying they are getting one just like it. Heck, look at the knives of NCIS thread. Young and very impressionable viewers will buy what ever Gibbs and Denozzo cut thier steak with.
Want to change the knife image? Start thinking for yourselves, and stop bying into the hype of the knife magazines and the knife manufacturers they represent. Start taking a good look at your life, and figure how much and what kind of knife do you really need? For most of us, that's a far cry from what they would have us carry. This ain't the wild west, and no wild injuns are coming over the hill, we're not buffalo hunters or mountain men, and we're not members of a seal team.
I turned 70 years of age this year, and I've carried a knife for most of that since I was 10ish. Yet I've never, ever, had the bad experience using it in public that many of you have. I just don't carry the same kind of knife as most of you. Just a traditional pocket knife with a couple of blades. I've helped out young college guys who didn't have a knife, middle age people, older church ladies at a church lunch social. I've even had compliments on what " a pretty little knife" it was that I was carrying. In one instance it was a old Hen and Rooster stockman. Not a real small knife, about 4 inches long closed, with a 3 1/4 inch pointy clip blade. The lady was interested in the india stag handles, and thought it very beautiful. Another more recent case, I opened a box of books for the gray haired lady librarian. She was greatly interested in my knife. She called it a pretty piece of pocket jewelery. The knife in question was a Case peanut with Devin Thomas damascus blades and jigged amber bone scales. She was captivated by the texture of the damascus blades.
Most people operate on the duck principle. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. Same for knives. I've been using my knives in public for all my life, and have never got a bad comment. Yet I read here that time and time again, some "sheeple" as you like to call them react in a bad way to your knife. Maybe it's both the presentation and the knife itself. What do you look like and what does your knife look like? If you look or act outside of societies norm, you're going to get the hairy eyeball. Get over it. If you don't like it, then maybe consider conforming a little. It will help you in many ways. It wasn't ever socially acceptable in my day to pull an overly large knife in public. Most men carried a small two blade jack. some carried something a little bigger, but not much. Then James Dean hit and it was never the same again. In my day, a knife was a cutting tool. Pure and simple. It wasn't for self defense, it wasn't a weapon. A knife was seen even back then as a punk's weapon. If a man wanted to defend himself, he carried a gun, or if he didn't have a gun, a butt of a pool que, cut off piece of pickax handle under the car seat, or something like that. I don't think things have changed much. Now with the vast majority of states giving CCW's out, a gun is still the defense item. Some people carry pepper spray. Most of you will never need a knife for defense. But a knife is still a mandatory piece of gear for your pocket. I am of the opinion that every man over the mid teens should have a sharp cutting tool in his pocket. But it's just that, a tool. Treat it as tool, use it like a tool, and most people won't think otherwise. Go flipping out some mall ninja manufacturers idea of a Hollywood bad ass knife, and you're making us all look bad.
A knife is not cool. It does not give you some kind of cool aura just because you carry a knife of the month. Start behaving like a grown up, treat the knife like a simple tool, and use it like such, and people will see it and you in a different light. Change the image by changing yourselves. People respect the man, not the tool.
Carl.
