I've always thought Sal Glesser has the best perspective on knife locks and his theory is evident in their design. Paraphrasing here but it is something like: in the end does it really matter whether the lock can hold 300 vs. 600 foot pounds of torque? Even in unreasonable use you get past a threshold where the lock just won't fail unless you are trying to make it fail (like in these CS tests). Lock strength is good but just as important as strength is lock reliability and ease of use.
For reliability it would be far easier to injure yourself if the lock simply did not engage when you thought it had vs. it failing when you are trying to use your knife to lift an engine block (because if you try this and injure yourself we'd just call it natural selection). Finally we just had an example on this subforum that shows the importance of ease of use beyond just the practical reasons. If the lock is hard to operate there is a high potential for injury while manipulating the lock (pocket bushman...).
So while I'd bet the American lawman is a stronger knife than the paramilitary 2 the compression lock is stronger than any reasonable person needs and in my opinion much easier to operate. Both the tri-ad lock and the compression lock are very reliable since they are simple by design. In contrast I would argue that the axis lock is an example of a strong, easy to use but unreliable lock because of the temperamental omega springs, which I've personally had fail on me causing the lock to not engage.
