Knife Attacks

So, here is a startling statistic that nobody will believe because it detracts from the gun control agenda: according to the Centers for Disease Control, which tracks emergency room visits, over 134,000 patients were admitted to US emergency departments for edged weapon wounds received in violent crimes in the year 2016.  Most of these are domestic violence or known party altercations rather than random stabbings, but it is still a huge number.  The FBI does not track these statistics, because over 90% of knife wounds are non-fatal, and the FBI only publishes knife attacks that contribute to the homicide rates.  The 134,000 number does not include fatal edged weapon attacks, as the CDC statistic is for emergency room admissions, not morgues.  The 134,000 plus number sorts out all self-inflicted and accidental wounds; it only includes non-fatal violent crimes committed with edged weapons.

Why is a firearms instructor telling you this?  Because I don’t want to get stabbed, even if I have a ninety percent chance of survival, which is the liberal argument in the UK against guns that somehow being stabbed is so much better than being shot.  No thanks!  The mass stabbings in the UK and Paris make the news, as do the spectacular fatalities like the poor lady in DC last week, but the vast majority of non-fatal stabbings never make the headlines.  If it is happening over 134,000 times in America in a single year, it probably is not very news worthy, to be fair to the news industry.  But it is epidemic from the perspective of the self-protection industry.  To answer my question more thoroughly, a firearms instructor is telling you about knife attacks because I don’t want you getting stabbed either, and the best way to not get stabbed is to shoot the guy with the knife.

Many honest martial artists will tell you that in a knife attack there is no way to prevent getting cut or stabbed.  What they are training you to do is minimize the damage caused by those knife wounds.  Deflecting a blade away from the torso and getting a cut across the outside forearm muscle is success according to honest martial artists.  I won’t even belittle the (honest) martial arts community in this edition, because I agree a cut forearm is better than a punctured lung, liver or diaphragm muscle.  But isn’t it better to have neither?  Which is not a guarantee that I can make with a gun, but then there are no guarantees at all in an interpersonal combat situation (self-protection incident).  But there are ways of improving your odds; to prove this point I will relate a true story.  One dark and stormy night in the Diyala Province of Iraq in 2006, a guy jumped out and emptied his AK-47 magazine right in front of my buddy Chris.  The only problem the guy had was that Chris was in an M1 Abrams Tank, and he simply swiveled the coaxial machine gun at the guy and let off a half-second burst before running him over.  One can’t discredit the bravery of the insurgent, just his judgment and gambling ability.

Here’s my point: Always take a gun to a knife fight.  Do not trust any martial arts instructor that says they can prevent you from getting cut or stabbed in a knife encounter.  Don’t trust a firearms instructor that says that either.  I can’t guarantee you win with a gun against a knife; but I can increase your chances.  It’s better to have the tank than the AK-47 in Chris’ story.  It’s better to have the gun in a knife fight.

An annoying irony is that cops are allowed to shoot guys with knives, but citizens are only allowed to in certain jurisdictions.  Some crazy jurisdictions like my former state would prosecute a person who shot somebody trying to stab them.  They have a proportionality self-defense law that says you can’t use a more powerful weapon on an assailant for self-defense.  If you live in those kinds of jurisdictions, you really, really need to move.  The state is jeopardizing your safety and life because of an absurd concept of fairness towards psychopathic predators.  The reason cops are justified in shooting guys with knives is because it is a lethal force situation.  The infamous “21 foot rule” comes from a case where an officer shot a guy with a knife twenty-one feet away, because he proved in court that the guy could close that distance at a sprint in less time than it takes to draw a handgun and engage.  That is therefore a lethal threat.  No knife attacks start as far back as twenty-one feet against civilians, by the way.  Which means, up close and personal, you have to train to draw and fire at hand-to-hand combat range.  You have to train it over and over and over again, because it is very possible you’ll have a knife wound before you fire, and if you train your reptilian brain to just draw and squeeze that trigger, even wounded, you will complete that ingrained task.  But you still got stabbed, which is why you continue to squeeze the trigger until the knife wielder is no longer a threat.  Don’t try to disarm him, don’t try to wrestle for the knife, just pull out your gun and squeeze the trigger until he is no longer a threat.

If, for some reason that escapes my understanding, you still live in a jurisdiction that punishes you for defending yourself with a firearm, then you should get real good with whatever tools you are allowed to carry.  The principle is the same.  Do not attack the knife.  Do not go for the weapon.  Use your tool, improvised or otherwise, to eliminate the threat behind the knife.  Shut down the predator’s central nervous system and you won’t have to worry about the knife.  There are experts out there that teach this, I always recommend Tim Larkin’s Target Focus Training system, but even they would say the best solution to a guy with a knife is to shoot him.  The worst case scenario in a knife attack is to be just a helpless victim who gets stabbed, but only slightly better than that is to be a not-so-helpless victim who gets stabbed but manages to crush the guy’s trachea or snap his neck.  The best case scenario is to not get stabbed, either because you escaped, or because you shot the prick before he had a chance to stab you.

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