- Joined
- May 23, 2004
- Messages
- 1,496
Gotta study the psychology of proselytizing to understand. Logic and having something better to do is low on the priority scale.
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
I agree that most folks, including me, have no clue what a defensive or so-called tactical usage of a knife really entails. See brother Mercop's first hand accounts and decades of training in this regard. He pretty much poo poo's the knife as a defensive weapon, especially when the bad guy is smashing your head against the wall.
Even with that knowledge, I still would rather carry a knife that is theoretically capable of usage in a defensive scenario. And I carry a firearm all day, every day. Consider the Bladeforum member who defended his son against a cougar attack about a year or two ago, using a Caly 3.5. Or a dog attack is not an unrealistic possibility. If a dog clamps down on my forearm, do I want to start cracking off rounds with the other hand? Not really.
Additionally, there are those like Brother CM, who is barred by operation of law from carrying a firearm. Would his best defensive weapon be his hands, a hammer or a baton? Maybe. Probably. Thats another discussion.
A while back, someone posted a video of about 4 armed Mexican police trying to subdue a knife-wielding maniac. The police ran like little girls, and not all got away. It was a sick and frightening demonstration of what a true life and death struggle entails, which few of us - me included - can really wrap our brains around. Instead, we read and participate in threads where some 17 year old kid is asking about which is the best knife for "knife fights".
So if I'm understanding your thesis correctly, I largely agree with it. That is, knives are not good means of protecting ourselves or others, and we largely have no clue what it would be like to try to use a knife in the midst of a real threat of imminent serious bodily harm or death - which it the only scenario in which a defensive usage of a knife is justified.
At the end of the day, what should be done? Is tactical a long-lasting but passing fad? Will people ever grow out of the tactical aesthetic? If not, will it continue to influence and negatively impact knife designs?
I carry a slipjoints. They just cut the type of stuff I cut better.
I collect all types of knives from daggers around to balisongs and just about anything in between. I am glad we have the plethora of choices that we have.
Old and new by Darrel Ralph
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2012 Blade Show Best Folder by Ken Erickson.
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A fantastic dagger by Vince Evans
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EDC tray:
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Right, before the 1980's daggers did not exist, nor did push daggers, karambits, or WW1 trench knives...oh wait...hmmm...
And switchblades, they didn't exist before 1980, right?
There are some good features in tactical knives. It's been driving the industry for over twenty years. We've basically turned it into a golden age of knives simply because we're no longer shackled by designs based in the early 20th century. Even more could be done - I don't yet see a G10 scaled multiblade locking service knife like a Victorinox. I did just pick up a carbon fiber scaled bolster liner lock. Traditional, yet tactical. Spear point hollow grind, with a well fitted match at the curve in the bolsters.
On the other hand, it's not the "tacticool" that is the problem. It's who buys them, how they get promoted, and what they are touted to be useful for. That focus comes from young males jockeying for social position in a group. They grab on to tactical as a concept to promote themselves as a significant role model, to become the group alpha. Which is why you see all the overblown hype and testosterone surrounding them. Makers cater to it to sell them, buyers eat it up to adorn themselves and elevate their self image. They could get by with a simple stockman like their grandpa did. Likely, grandpa didn't need to preen his self image as much - he knew his role and place in society, and it wasn't questioned or trash talked as much as in todays.
Follow the tactical buyer down the rabbit hole of their interests, you find tacticool watches over $400, the knives, special sights and accessories for guns and rifles, enormously powerful flashlights, expensive cell phones that can survive a nuclear holocaust even if the towers don't. And they can still play games on them until the batteries run out.
It's not about tactical in knives as much as knives just reflect what's happening in society. Might have something to do with young men running around with no fathers and trying to find their place in life.
Paranoid?
Guess the bad guys are looking for you.... LOL
My point is that there wasn't anywhere near the same level of marketing of "tactical" designs or features to the general public before the 1980's.
My point is that there wasn't anywhere near the same level of marketing of "tactical" designs or features to the general public before the 1980's.
In my experience, it is that some may percieve you as "paranoid" for carrying a gun, knife, whatever. When the situation arises that you need that piece of equipment you are then "prepared". I, personally, believe in preparation.
I resent the idea that if I don't want some thin-bladed traditional that I'm somehow caught up in a desire to be "tactical".
I resent the idea that if I don't want some thin-bladed traditional that I'm somehow caught up in a desire to be "tactical". It's kind of insulting to assume everyone who buys a knife that others see as "tactical" didn't buy it for features they liked instead of the percieved image it gives them. If a person wants a thick blade, maybe they don't need to worry about slicing stuff too much and use their knife as a pry-bar more often. If a person wants jimping maybe they just like jimping? Rough scales for people that like extra grip? I don't see how people's preferences turns them into "tacticool" wannabes when all they're doing is buying a knife they like for their style of use.
To me it sounds like someone trying to tell another what the best tool for a job is despite what the person's preferences may be. So meanwhile, say I buy an ESEE knife... Is that because I want to be "tacticool" or because I've seen a thousand and one guys raving about what good woods knives they make?
I could argue that people obsessed over traditional designs are trying to be nostalgiac or resistant to new concepts and changes. Kind of like the VHS hold-overs when DVD came out. The "Hate everything that's new" type of people.