Notice we haven't heard from the original poster?
At any rate, I heartily agree: in a last ditch, survival situation, having a knife beats hell out of a fist, and can save a life. Only a fool would disagree.
What worried me about the original post is that he might feel more confident with a knife, even if he didn't know how to use it, and hence wind up in situations he may have avoided.
Three examples of what I'm talking about, in chronological order:
1) When I was in college, some girls we knew took martial arts courses. While that was a good move, they had only learned the minimum, yet felt they could now go to bars in bad neighborhoods, where they never would have gone before, and handle themselves if they got into trouble. My roomates and I explained reality to them.
2) When I was in grad school I quit smoking (three packs a day) and took up jogging to clear my lungs, eventually doing several miles a day. I told friends that because of my new abilities, in a bad situation, even though I was slow as hell, I could outrun the rough guys. Friends told me how insane an idea that was.
3) When I played airsoft as an adult, young guys who planned to enter the military occassionally claimed they expected to do well there, on the grounds that they had played airsoft. In one case, a vet who was also playing took the kid aside, and told him that if he ever, EVER told a d.i. that, he would wind up in a world of hurt for a long time.
As others have noted, a ccw trumps most everything. And having a brain. I lived in NYC during the bad days of the high crime seventies. What got me through it was having good street sense, and knowing how and when to avoid trouble. If that fails, your chances of having to use that knife as a means of survival go up a lot. And that was all I was worried about.
At any rate, I heartily agree: in a last ditch, survival situation, having a knife beats hell out of a fist, and can save a life. Only a fool would disagree.
What worried me about the original post is that he might feel more confident with a knife, even if he didn't know how to use it, and hence wind up in situations he may have avoided.
Three examples of what I'm talking about, in chronological order:
1) When I was in college, some girls we knew took martial arts courses. While that was a good move, they had only learned the minimum, yet felt they could now go to bars in bad neighborhoods, where they never would have gone before, and handle themselves if they got into trouble. My roomates and I explained reality to them.
2) When I was in grad school I quit smoking (three packs a day) and took up jogging to clear my lungs, eventually doing several miles a day. I told friends that because of my new abilities, in a bad situation, even though I was slow as hell, I could outrun the rough guys. Friends told me how insane an idea that was.
3) When I played airsoft as an adult, young guys who planned to enter the military occassionally claimed they expected to do well there, on the grounds that they had played airsoft. In one case, a vet who was also playing took the kid aside, and told him that if he ever, EVER told a d.i. that, he would wind up in a world of hurt for a long time.
As others have noted, a ccw trumps most everything. And having a brain. I lived in NYC during the bad days of the high crime seventies. What got me through it was having good street sense, and knowing how and when to avoid trouble. If that fails, your chances of having to use that knife as a means of survival go up a lot. And that was all I was worried about.
