What do you need all those weapons for?

T

TGR.Shadow

Joined
Jan 31, 2010
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127
So today before our annual x-mas eve family dinner my pup and I headed out into our local forest service area for a quick hike. We got up to the parking lot and there were a few cars and a family of 5 or so playing in the snow. I put the pack on my dog an let him roam around to do his business while I loaded up. While in the process of putting my RC-6/Rat Pack kit and Junglas (newest family member needed some love :D) onto my bet an older woman from the family wandered over an began to ask me a few questions about the trails and asked me how far we were going. I told her a few miles at most mabey 1 in 1 out or so. Then from out of left field I was shocked when she asked "What do you need all those weapons for?"..... It sort of caught me off guard because I dont usually think of my knives as weapons (only under extreme circumstances) but rather as tools for survival. I told her this and she seemed as blow away with my answer. I told about how a few weeks ago we had a hiker get lost on these same trails over the weekend during a snow storm and they still can not find his body. She just gave me a deer in the headlights look and I just said "Hey you never know"

That was my first true sheeple encounter aside form the dirty looks I get. Just wanted to share that with all the people who know I'm not a crazy horror film villain who chops up innocent hikers in the woods.
 
Must have been someone from a big city. Here in the city I wouldn't be surprised by that sort of reaction. (Neither the 6 or the Junglas would be legal to carry here in the city, though an open carry hand gun would be...). Once you get away from the urban centers, and especially when you get "up north" in Wisconsin (basically the upper 2/3 of the state) a belt knife, even a big one, doesn't get noticed. But then, I'm talking about an area where gun racks in the back windows of pickup trucks are common...
 
Its hard being a knife/gun guy nowadays. At least you tried explaining the reason as to why you had a knife on you. *shaking my head
 
as I pulled out my junglas and admired the edge as the light glimmered off of it, I'd say "this isn't a weapon until I make it one", I'd stare back at her with the 'deer in the headlights look' and watch as she shimmered away, whispering sweet-nothings into her hubby's ear.. :p

btw, lived in Reno when I was 7-9 loved the truckee trout, watch them build circus circus,we used to ride our bikes down the parking structure.. threw the Reno Gazette, fun times.. I tell ya..
 
It happens to me quite often I must say and each I try to explain like you did I get the coucou look...so now I go with the " you know they're coming, who's coming, you know them from above..." they usually get off after that...:) knifefreak!!!
 
I get those questions all the time. More so when I came here from Texas.

'Why do you need a knife?'

'Why do you have a knife?'

'Are those legal to have on you?'

That's referring to a Spyderco clipped to my right front pocket or even a Leatherman or SAK on my belt!

Sheep people...
 
I guess it really just depends on the type of people and community in where you live. I live in Lodi, CA and it's a major farming/ag community. Almost every guy and a lot of women I know carries a knife and everyone owns guns.
 
Personally i like to answer with a random cryptic message... try to work in the word crimson. maybe compliment a random body part such as a elbow, cock my head and grin.

that usually gets rid of um.
 
Just smile and keep walking.

Perhaps you were "over-knifed"...but you were probably no more "over-knifed" than the people you talked to were "over-mouthed"...it is a shame that "over-mouthed" rarely makes up for being "under-prepared".

Johnnie Walker...keep walking;)
 
Better to turn it around and ask why they don't have a knife.

Every responsible human being should have a knife.
 
Whenever someone I know says something like that to me I just say "This should be the least of your worries..." with a smile on my face, just to mess with them. If most of the time I just ask people why they should care, I never do any harm with my tools so its really none of their business.
 
Hey mvb i live up in that upper 2/3 your talking about and we dont have that many gun racks... although i do almost daily carry my rc-3 and ive never been hassled about it yet. ;)
 
People tend to see what they want to see, but its up to us to show them the other side of their thought coin. If we act like asses or make up a smartass remark, that is how they "see" the knife owners community. Most of the kids (18-22yrs) that I work with and teach knives too, are amazed that a knife can be anything but a weapon.

Show me where in our modern "tv" society, where a guy or gal uses a knife in a mundane manner on a mainstream tv show. You don't see it, or maybe they do, I don't watch tv.

2 weeks ago, I taught 3 people how to use just a knife and some paracord to make a bow drill kit, and a fire. Until that point, none of them, and I do mean none, had any idea that a knife can be used to MAKE OTHER TOOLS. It was a weapon, to use against people. Now, they view it as an essential tool that they must have on them, at all times. Nice to see how they view skill over gear too. One of them went home and showed his dad what he had learned. Then he taught the old man. I got a phone call from his dad, asking me where I learned that "trick" from. I told him years in the woods with a knife.

Now, they have a hike planned where they are BOTH taking new outdoors knives, and some knowledge, and going to have fun. Oh, the best part? This is the first knife the kids dad has ever owned, until his boy showed him how to make a bow drill kit, they were evil, life taking steel demons from hell.

Pay the knowledge back, don't smart off to sheeple asking silly questions, teach them, and show them the other side of the coin.

Moose
 
the Junglas is for spreading peanut butter and cutting pizza. duh! :rolleyes:

you didn't mention a CCW, so i'll suggest getting one, as long as you're not bouncing back and forth over the border.

as always, "it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it".

in the office it's always funnt to see someone scurry and hunt when they need a knife to cut something siimple. they should have an EDC knife on them for that stuff. they scurry around and find something dull or scissors. they wouldn't make good Boy Scouts.
 
Were I worked at for many years my job needed me to open boxes that were taped shut. It also had to deliver empty boxes that were banded in stacks of ten. The right tool for the job seemed to be a small pocket knife. While it did not take very long before I was in my mangers office getting a new one chewed out. A knife was a weapon and nothing else. I explained that I could not do my job with out cutting. After a few knifeless days she gave me a putty knife and said that would have to do.
 
I ask "What weapons? Where?"
When they say it's my knives, I bore them to tears with a gigantic spiel about how useful they are, all the intricate details, the wonders of a proper heat treat, blah blah blah.

Or you can curl up your fingers, look at the tips intently, and ask "do you ever dream that you have claws?" (I don't use that one though:D).

We must not have so many idiots here though. No one has ever thought it was weird for me to have knives in the woods.
At work, it can be different. Then they get to be bored to death when I won't shut up.:)
 
moosez45 said:
Pay the knowledge back, don't smart off to sheeple asking silly questions, teach them, and show them the other side of the coin.

Moose
Click to expand...

Yeah, if you can. Generally speaking, if they are aggressive enough to ask that stupid question, you're not going to get anywhere with them.
 
Moose, good on you. Spread the love, buddy. :thumbup:

I usually just smile nostalgically and say, "Where I grew up, everyone carries a knife."

It's true.
 
Don Rearic said:
Yeah, if you can. Generally speaking, if they are aggressive enough to ask that stupid question, you're not going to get anywhere with them.
Click to expand...

True enough, thats the worst part, I suppose. I used to be a smartassed person, but I have changed alot of my ways. Especially when it comes to people that know little of true self defense (not the Hollywood version) and outdoors skills. We have to compete with tv, and tv is kickin' our ass. They have flashy, special effects and stuntmen, we have real deal, real world legacy.

I spent alot of my life learning what "real" is in a very real manner. Most would say abuse. Eh, whatever. What I have come to learn, is that sometimes, people don't learn "right there on the spot" it takes time for them to see, and by that point, I have already moved on, but on that one chance that someone remembers something I said, or something I did, acts on it, well, by being a smartass, that just wouldn't have happened.

I figure, if people see me toting a Colt 1911 on my hip, and a knife on my belt, and they have the sand to come up and ask me about any of it, and I act like a smart ass4ole, then it falls right into what they think I am, but if I am courteous, informed, calm, cool, and generally a nice guy, maybe it will make them think. If they think, well, it may just be the coal to start a tinder bundle in alot more thinking. Or at least I hope so. They may go back and bury their head in the sand, with their rusty sheriff's badge sticking straight up, who knows, at least I did my part.

Moose
 
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