Knife for the wife to carry

From what I can tell, the biggest problem with weapons for self defense is the actual fear of using them. If you pull a knife to defend yourself, you'd better be serious about cutting someone, or yeah, of course it'll get taken away.

But who cares? Woman gets stabbed with her own knife to death (a), woman gets beaten to death/strangled, whatever you like (b).

With a knife and a survival mind set, the knife gives her a fighting chance.

Also, you'll have to teach her that in places that look unsavory, it's not a good idea to leave your (gun, knife, pepperspray) in your purse. You need to have your weapon ready to be drawn, in your hand. Personally, I pull my knife in such places, and hold it (blade closed, of course) in my pocket the way I will draw it and just walk with my hands in my pockets. Very few people find hands in the pockets threatening so I'm not going to start anything, but an M16 or minigrip takes probably only a half second to draw and open from this position.

Girls have a lot of self defense issues in America. Virtually every girl I know is absolutely convinced she can take down any man. I hear this really often "they'd better not mess with me, I had brothers and I could beat them up," or "I'd just kick him in the balls." Of course, neither of these things are true, and their delusional martial arts self esteem, derived no doubt from TV, puts them in a really bad situation. I'd doubt the average girls could even move to run in a bad situation.

Uh oh. Was I just un PC?

That said, my observation about girls and knives.

Girls have tremendous difficulty opening flipper based knives. My girls take maybe a week of practice to learn how to open a knife with the flipper, and even then it's only successful every few times. Elizabeth is simply unable to open my M16. Maybe she's missing something physically, I can't say.
Axis locks are great and the girls seem just as addicted as I am to flipping those in and out all the time, so this way, she'll actually get used to holding and opening the knife. Good motion to get memorized. A grip, minigrip are good here.

But you can take away the difficulty of opening it altogether with an assisted opener. Elizabeth uses her scallion, though that would not make a good self defense knife. Maybe a Benchmade apparition or one of the larger Onions. And I can only imagine that there'd be a psychological affect if it looks like the girl was prepared for the situation enough to bring a "switchblade." It's really small, but I'll bet your woman would love it, the Benchmade Benchmyte is really beautiful and fun to use. Not a self defense tool, but get it for her anyway.

Girls seem to love butterfly knives, too. Illegal to carry, but outside of security restricted areas, I can't see the ladies being weapon searched. Of course, these are quite a bit harder to learn.

As for the idea of someone not being able to cut you. Pleasseeeeee. I've briefly studied knife combat and have studied martial arts for years. And trust me, I do NOT want to be on the other side of any knife. My best case scenario (in reality, not in my ninja movies) is to take a few light cuts and dissarm. That's my best case. You'd have to be some kind of a baffoon to take the huge lunging stabs that are so hard to recover from that everyone trains for. Maybe you can throw\tackle them if they take the knife out of the way between you and them (probably not abnormal among n00bs, but that'd take mad guts in real life).

I'm ready to be flamed.
 
4 Ranges said:
Actually, we do the "magic marker" drill with full grown, combat athletes on a regular basis at my school. If the "unarmed" individual is allowed to respond FREELY, without limits, in any way possible, the "armed" individual (armed with an aluminum knife with red-marked felt) is often injured and subdued, with little to no scratches for the unarmed individual. This is often very eye-opening to my students.

These are TRAINED athletes, who are well-conditioned and are on a regular training regimen.
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Bwahahahaaaa...not even worth replying to, just one point: are you saying that highly trained "combat athletes" (whatever that means) armed with knives are actually less dangerous than your highly trained trained "combat athletes" without knives? Nah wait, the unarmed guys are ninjas, right? :yawn:

I guess they can also deflect bullets with their bare hands, at least if their Chi or karma or some such crap is flowing the way it should, huh? :rolleyes:

4 Ranges said:
LOL!! I love this quote, because here we are (freddy 1, et al) saying "get her good training before you give her a knife", and here you are saying "I want to discuss realistic self-defense"...but at the same time saying "oh just give her the knife, who cares about training???" LOL!!
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Your reading comprehension skills seem to be pretty bad. Where exactly did I say that training isn't important? I said that very little training and a knife is better than no training and no knife. Seems like you disagree.

This is my last post in this thread.
 
4 Ranges said:
Actually, we do the "magic marker" drill with full grown, combat athletes on a regular basis at my school. If the "unarmed" individual is allowed to respond FREELY, without limits, in any way possible, the "armed" individual (armed with an aluminum knife with red-marked felt) is often injured and subdued, with little to no scratches for the unarmed individual. This is often very eye-opening to my students.

These are TRAINED athletes, who are well-conditioned and are on a regular training regimen.

Your 12 year old would be destroyed. So would your woman.

I'd really hate to think of how a smaller, untrained, unconditioned person, male or female, armed with a small folding knife, would fare against a much bigger, stronger, and totally unintimidated opponent.

Now, if you give that smaller person, male or female, the proper training and proper conditioning, a knife would be a GREAT equalizer in a a self-defense scenario.

"Man, I should really keep in mind that BFC is just not the right place to discuss realistic self-defense."

LOL!! I love this quote, because here we are (freddy 1, et al) saying "get her good training before you give her a knife", and here you are saying "I want to discuss realistic self-defense"...but at the same time saying "oh just give her the knife, who cares about training???" LOL!!
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But also on the other hand, you state that your men are trained, that being the operative word. Most street muggers are not trained. If they were, they would have moved on to another more lucritive life of crime. Most street trash is not looking for a fight which is why they look for women, whom they percive to be weak prey,or someone simlular. I would rather have my girlfreind with a knife in that situation then without. Besides, any trained person knows the element of surprise is a most effective secondary defense. I'm not really disagreeing, because you definetly don't want to give a person a false sense of security, just my perspective based on my experiences here. P.S. looks like this will get moved to prac-tac in a minute!
 
"Bwahahahaaaa...not even worth replying to, just one point: are you saying that highly trained "combat athletes" (whatever that means) armed with knives are actually less dangerous than your highly trained trained "combat athletes" without knives? Nah wait, the unarmed guys are ninjas, right?"

Nope. They're MMA athletes. Of course they get cut, but the cuts are in low-risk areas like the upper pec or the delt. Now, if they were cuts to the eyes, throat, jugular, groin, brachial artery, femoral artery, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

"I guess they can also deflect bullets with their bare hands, at least if their Chi or karma or some such crap is flowing the way it should, huh?"

They're MMA athletes. They wouldn't know the first thing about chi, karma, etc.

"Where exactly did I say that training isn't important?"

Where exactly did you say that it was?

"This is my last post in this thread."

Good. :)

Artfully:

"My best case scenario (in reality, not in my ninja movies) is to take a few light cuts and dissarm. That's my best case."

This statement gets to the heart of my concern and my point. A determined criminal will take these cuts, and look to disarm or worse. I'd hate to think what a determined criminal would do if he was actually armed.

But if a person is trained, and a criminal decided to "take" those cuts and hopes to disarm, the trained person has a very good chance of making those cuts count.
 
Some animals, drug users and drunk people are pretty much immune against pepper spray. And guess what, it's not unlikely that violent criminals happen to be intoxicated.

After an adrenaline dump, you're not gonna know you've been cut, either. Unless she knows where and how to cut, any drunk or amped up animal has an excellent chance to wade right through her defense just like a cloud of pepper spray.
 
Samhain:

You make a good point that my students are trained athletes, which is why I make the point that a person, before acquiring a knife for SD purposes, must be trained to do so. Training is all-important.

I'll give you that the criminal element is often untrained, but there are other qualities that they posses that make them just as dangerous, if not more so:

1) They're deranged and psychotic

2) They're on drugs

3) They have nothing to lose

A person, in this type of mindstate, can overlook a few cuts from a smaller, untrained woman, even if she's carrying a knife (a spyderco ladybug no less) in order to get drug money, or to satisfy their psychotic needs.

To top it off...most criminals are ARMED. The reason why I emphasize training is so that the person carrying a knife will be trained to deal with armed assaults (knive vs. bat, knive vs. crowbar, knife vs. knife, etc.).

Self-defense takes time, and the only way to get that peace of mind is to invest your time in good self-defense training. Invest in the knife later.
 
What "system" of MMA? Most MMA schools I've seen didn't do weapons training (armed or disarming). My own school was very unusual in this aspect, in retrospect, to have spent as much time on it as we did.
 
Artfully:

Not many of us around in the MA community. We're JKD/MMA. JKD for the self-defense applications, so we do a lot of scenario training that you won't find in most MMA schools (2 on 1, 3 on 1, weapons, etc.); MMA for conditioning. One of my old classmates is actually fighting in NJ in Nov.

You're right though that most MMA schools don't teach self-defense or weaponry. I think this is a mistake.
 
EpO said:
I would have searched on this but it isn't working with my Internet connection for some reason. But as the title says I'm looking for something to give to my wife to carry. I've thought of Benchmade, Spyderco, or SOG. It needs to be small enough for her to want to carry, but big enough so its easy to find and use. I appreciate your suggestions.
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Okay warrior-ninja types. Lets reread the question. It says he is looking for a knife to give to his sweetie to carry that is easy to find and use (for routine daily tasks), not to fight off all the nut-cases of the world.

For that I would suggest taking a concealed weapons course and a getting a great deal of self defense training. Best defense is never to put yourself in a situation where you need to defend yourself or can't flee, IMHO. Most (I'm not saying all) "ordinary" (not doped up) people I know have an instinctive fear of being cut by a knife (or a razor which is carried by many women).
 
4 Ranges, I have to respectfully disagree with you.

I believe that the average adult female (say ages 16 to 60) is plenty capable of defending herself while using a knife (with a decent blade-length, not something like a Chive) with no specialized training whatsoever.

Something that really bugs me is the insistance by the "self-defence/martial arts" community that, without training, you will probably have your weapon used against you.
I feel that they are only "selling" their schools/courses.


I don't know what kind of training goes on in your school, but I don't see any possible way that your trained unarmed students can disarm your trained armed students without suffering what would be serious wounds.

In the prisons and in the streets of America, it is not unheard of for a trained martial artist to be stabbed to death by an untrained person.

I wonder, are you instructing the "armed" students to NOT also use kicks and strikes, but to JUST use the knife alone?

Allen.
 
Well I didn't mean to stir up the hornets nest that I did, but I guess I need to clarify a few things. First let me say that I appreciate everyone's comments. I do not expect my wife to become a proficient knife fighter, but I do understand the need for training with appropriate equipment. Now my wife is not some little princess, she use to work in EMS and is no stranger to highly stressful and potentially dangerous situations, and she has had some self defense training. Actually she kicks my butt on a regular basis :) . So with that frame of mind the school of thought is don't intentially put yourself in dangerous situations, be aware of your surroundings, and use common sense. She knows if there is a bad or potentially bad situation to avoid it or get away from it if at all possible. When I mentioned self defense I probably was too general, more of what I meant was a weapon of last resort, not primary defense. I was also just wondering if anyone had any recommendations based on experiences and preferences. Again thanks for all the comments and discussion.
 
allenC said:
4 Ranges, I have to respectfully disagree with you.

I believe that the average adult female (say ages 16 to 60) is plenty capable of defending herself while using a knife (with a decent blade-length, not something like a Chive) with no specialized training whatsoever.

Something that really bugs me is the insistance by the "self-defence/martial arts" community that, without training, you will probably have your weapon used against you.
I feel that they are only "selling" their schools/courses.


I don't know what kind of training goes on in your school, but I don't see any possible way that your trained unarmed students can disarm your trained armed students without suffering what would be serious wounds.

In the prisons and in the streets of America, it is not unheard of for a trained martial artist to be stabbed to death by an untrained person.

I wonder, are you instructing the "armed" students to NOT also use kicks and strikes, but to JUST use the knife alone?

Allen.
Click to expand...


AllenC:

My unarmed students don't look to "disarm" their armed trained partners.

They're instructed to HURT their opponent. I don't believe in disarming an unhurt opponent.

The results were just as shocking to me. I thought the armed students with slice my unarmed boys to ribbons. But this was not the case.

Now, mind you, the unarmed students STILL got cut, but they weren't DANGEROUS cuts to the throat, eyes, arteries, etc. They were in fleshy areas like the delts, lats, and upper chest. Stabs were not experienced. The average number of cuts was 4.

I instructed my students to go all out, but the armed students chose to use the knife primarily. Once the armed student ate a really hard cross, it was a disaster from there for the armed student. They either dropped the knife, or bowed out of the drill, knowing that they'd get slammed hard to the ground.

There's a very famous story of MMA athlete Carlos Newton and how he survived a stabbing. I'd recommend an internet search.

As for "selling", no I don't sell my course. My training group is small and select. Not open to the public. I don't even have a website or business cards. My students are through referrals.

As for an untrained woman being able to defend herself with a knife against a bigger, stronger, deranged attacker...I don't want to get into a long discussion about it because to me, it's clear. If that's your opinion, that's cool with me. Personally, I wouldn't stake the life of my wife on such a belief that all she needs is a big knife and no training to defend herself. I've seen too many instances in my own school and in my own training to know that this is not the case.
 
Well, like I said, I think most martial artists would not feel okay on the sharp end of a knife, no matter how well trained. What we're working with is how can you give yourself a higher likelyhood of surviving the attack (how long will it take to dissarm them and of course, can you live long enough to do that?). We would use wooden tantos, the knife wielder would wear full sparring gear, and the guy without the knife. There is nothing off limits, no dirty fighting rules (which are really surprisingly ineffective anyway). And we didn't "sell" the attacks. No big unecessary knife lunges--the knife wielder wanted to "kill" the defender, and obviously, vice versa. I mean, with training, you could pretty consistantly take several slashes and eventually wrestle it away, (I couldn't), but every few times someone got "stabbed" and I assume, for most folks (me?) this would be the end of it. The slashing, I can feasably see people fighting through. Point being, we take some abuse if we have to for an uncertain likelyhood of disarming them--we train to have the real chance. Of course, a lot of our school studied knife fighting also, which might have made them somewhat more "dangerous." Being that it would be hard for me to tell if this is some drunk guy or a person who has been in several knife fights (and won, obviously) I will prefer to stay on the conservative side of my statistics from class and play it safe.

Fortunately, I also have knives, so this may not be an important situation for me. In the sense of me being unarmed, anyway.

Give her the knife. Her attacker probably won't be unarmed anyway. Women don't have to worry so much about escalating attacks, in my mind (if you have statistics to disagree with me here, by all means, believe them. This is just my speculation). If two guys are going to fight, one pulls out a knife, then the other guy is going to take out his. I imagine that if a guy has the real intent to cause harm to a woman, he'll have the knife out anyway, I just don't see her outcome getting much worse for utilizing the knife.

The BEST way to avoid the situation is just smart living. You all know what I'm talking about. Don't go to places you know are dangerous alone, or at all unless you have to. Talk to an ELO for tips.
 
DGG said:
Okay warrior-ninja types. Lets reread the question. It says he is looking for a knife to give to his sweetie to carry that is easy to find and use (for routine daily tasks), not to fight off all the nut-cases of the world.
Click to expand...

Typical use would be primarily used for defense and my piece of mind. She doesn't need one for work, but could use it for various things like opening boxes, light utility work, etc... Nothing that would require a real work horse of a knife. Hadn't thought about a swiss army knife, great from the utility aspect, not to sure about accessing it in a self defense situation.

I don't think anyone was terribly off base discussing the SD aspects, since this was his stated desire for it.
 
4 Ranges,

I find it very interesting that your armed students did'nt stab much.
I wonder...you mentioned that they receive weapons training, right?
Would that include training with knives?

Maybe the problem was the type of knife training they have received?


I say this because, from my experience, most untrained folks, when given a knife to defend themselves with, will invaribly use stabs about 90% of the time and hardly use any slices.
Stabbing just seems more instinctive for untrained folks.


I'm also surprised that your students would drop the knife or bow out after receiving a hard cross.
They were fighting as if their life depended upon it, right?
And besides, anyone who is close enough to deliver a hard cross is also close enough to be gutted or castrated.
I can see using kicks against an opponent armed with a knife, or using chairs and what-ever-else you can find, but to close the distance within punching (and stabbing) range is rather odd.

I wonder if the unarmed students were willing to take such a risk only because they knew that they were in no real danger of being stabbed to death?

I also noticed that, while you're not selling your own personal training, you're still selling the whole "self defense/martial arts" industry:

"Rather than spending money on a knife, and wasting time trying to figure out which one would be good for her...spend the money getting her QUALITY self-defense TRAINING, so that she can defend herself and make smart decisions, knife or no knife."

You stated that as if an untrained woman of average intelligence can't defend herself or make smart decisions.

Anyway, I'm sorry to de-rail the thread so much, I just can't stand silent when someone says that an untrained person will probably have their weapon taken and used against them.

EpO,
It sounds like your wife is a very capable person.
If weight is an issue (the knife's weight, not your wife's weight), then a Delica or Salt I would be great, maybe even an Endura.
They have terrific blade-steel, they open very easily, they're very light weight, and they're very affordable too.

Good luck,
Allen.
 
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet. For self defense:

Take some firearms training classes with your wife. Get your wife a permit to carry concealed. Have her try out a bunch of guns and decide on the one that feels best for her. Practice, practice, practice.
 
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