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Why Are Some Folks Scared of Choppers?

I remember when those outrageous Cold Steel Vaquero folders came out. The ones with the wicked 6" serrated blades. My gun dealer had some in his display case. A cop customer of his said, "If I saw somebody open that knife, I'd just shoot them right there". But I must admit, that is a scary knife that is more of a weapon than most folders. Big knives just scare the heck out of some folks.
 
I refuse to hide my knives. I think the more people see a knife on someones belt, the more they will get accustomed to it and not fear it. Its just an object, it takes HUMAN intent to turn it into a weapon.

wear your knives proudly.
 
Horn Dog said:
I remember when those outrageous Cold Steel Vaquero folders came out. The ones with the wicked 6" serrated blades. My gun dealer had some in his display case. A cop customer of his said, "If I saw somebody open that knife, I'd just shoot them right there". But I must admit, that is a scary knife that is more of a weapon than most folders. Big knives just scare the heck out of some folks.
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My favorite Vaquero Grande story:

We have a nature trail along the old abandoned railroad tracks and it leads down to a municipal park with woods around a boating and fishing lake.

When I first moved here, I got into the habit of bringing a strong folder and cutting back thorn bushes and vines. The Vaquero Grande was ideal for this but I was careful not to wave it around the local suburbanites. :)

One day I was clearing thorns from a section of trail that was part of a shortcut used by kids coming home from school. As I was finishing up, the knife in my hand, a young girl came by and saw the thorns gone and gave me a big smile. The knife didn't bother her at all.
 
Haha. The girl had some sense. A friend of mine uses his Vaquero for a mini-machete in his yard all the time.
 
I do a fair amount of camping. I have hiked all over the Florida Trail, and the AT. I don't recall anyone at any time paying any attention to what I was using to cut, chop or hack stuff with.

People I run into on the trail, or at the camp ground, are too busy using their own knives, axes and saws to worry about mine.
 
^ interesting.

people here are utterly freaked out by hikers with knives. I really don't understand being afraid of people that are prepared.
 
In my area I saw a guy in hunting gear making a deposit at the bank with a machete on his hip. No one batted an eye. I love Maine! :D
 
I was delivering workout equiptment to a gym in Washington state. Some things needed to be cut so I took out the Sog Trident folder I carried at the time. Nobody else had a knife and all these muscleheads jumped back and called me Rambo because I did. What they would have used I don't know but they were scared to death of my little folder.
 
Good Stuff Mentor, Good Stuff.


A success story.... I was carrying a CRKT Hissatsu in my waistband, and a young guy at church saw it and asked me if I was gonna stab him with it. Paint me flabber-gasted.... So, I asked him if his mom had ever stabbed him. Paint him flabber-gasted... But, then I rescued him by explaining that just the same as his mother was capable of cooking a meal with a sharp tool in her hand, I was capable of being a normal person, with a sharp tool in my waitband. I actually saw the light go on in his eyes.

Marion
 
Bushman5 said:
I refuse to hide my knives. I think the more people see a knife on someones belt, the more they will get accustomed to it and not fear it. Its just an object, it takes HUMAN intent to turn it into a weapon.

wear your knives proudly.
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AMEN!

Which leads to.. .. ..

Mannlicher said:
I do a fair amount of camping. I have hiked all over the Florida Trail, and the AT. I don't recall anyone at any time paying any attention to what I was using to cut, chop or hack stuff with.

People I run into on the trail, or at the camp ground, are too busy using their own knives, axes and saws to worry about mine.
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Also living in FL, it's not uncommon to see people walking about, even in the city, with a fixed blade, or large folder carried openly (both legal here). Seems the constant exposure to knives has people not afraid of them.


One funny story though is one from church.
More than once, I'd taken out my Ka-Bar Mule to cut things and no one said anything. One day, the ladies (!) were comparing their multitools (!!), and I pulled out my Gerber 600 to join in, and one of them exclaims "That's a weapon!" LOL, not a word about the fairly large knives I carry, but my multitool was a weapon!
 
About 123 million people died due to car accidents during 2008 in America.


firearms:
* 16,750 suicides (56% of all U.S. gun deaths)
* 11,624 homicides (40%)
* 649 unintentional shootings, 311 from legal intervention and 235 from undetermined intent (4%).

not sure about blades. Still looking it up.

Sure hope she didn't take them camping in a vehicle.
 
About 123 million people died due to car accidents during 2008 in America.


firearms in 2004:
* 16,750 suicides (56% of all U.S. gun deaths)
* 11,624 homicides (40%)
* 649 unintentional shootings, 311 from legal intervention and 235 from undetermined intent (4%).

not sure about blades. Still looking it up.

Sure hope she didn't take them camping in a vehicle.
 
123 million car deaths?

I suspect there's a missing decimal in there somewhere! ;)
 
People are afraid of my Scraper 5 on my hip, let alone a real chopper. They are just ignorant. Good people are scared for no reason, or media bias. They just need patience and education....well, at least some of them will respond I believe. It is up to us to show them the way!:D
 
Some people cannot stand knives, swords, bayonets, anything sharp; psychiatrists have a word for it: aichmophobia. Idiots who drive cars a hundred miles an hour on fifty-mile-an-hour roads will nevertheless panic at the sight of a bare blade.

Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein
 
Esav Benyamin said:
I know you're referring to a general fear of knives among many, mostly urbanized people these days, but choppers like machetes, goloks, khukuris, and axes are inherently hazardous. They take some care to use safely, which is why the Himalayan Imports forum has a sticky on safety.
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This sounds pretty reasonable.

All the usual whining about knife-fearing sheeple aside, it needs to be kept in mind that as knife nuts, we are the nuts, not everyone else. There is no erasing the very long and bloody history of knives and choppers being used to inflict harm, even if you've never hurt so much as a fly.

ROCK6 said:
My comment to my wife's co-workers and friends regarding my carrying of guns or use of large blades is that they are afraid of a large penis (said to both males and females)...that usually shuts them up pretty quick
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wtf?

I guess that's a good way of putting people at ease. :rolleyes:

I have to say, if someone came up to me wielding a very large penis, I'd be pretty damn scared, too.
 
Mentor said:
123 million car deaths?

I suspect there's a missing decimal in there somewhere! ;)
Click to expand...

Indeed. That's a pretty... strange number. That's, like, a third of the population in the US lost in car accidents in 2008.

eta, there seems to have been close to 40,000 automobile fatalities in 2008, give or take a few thousand depending on who you ask. And FWIW, it seems to a record low since 1961!
 
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Bushman5 said:
you should see the looks of people when i walk down the trails with my SOD strapped to my pack and my riflemans hawk in my hand.
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I have to say this would freak me out a bit as well. I don't see to many guys carrying a hawk on the trails I hike. On the pack, I probably wouldn't notice, but if you're truckin along with a hawk in hand, I'm thinking you're looking to chop something!

An axe or even a hatchet probably wouldn't get a second glance from me, btw, but out here in the central plains, my first association with a hawk is as a weapon.
 
The government makes laws against things like carrying guns or knives in public, the media creates the illusion of public consent, and like sheep people believe that the laws are right and just and guns and knives are bad, because they believe they are going along with the crowd....like sheep. Instead of fearing guns and knives and learning to distrust their fellow man, people should be fearing the government and the media.
Read history, it's happened before.
Off my soapbox now.
 
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