Large Fierce Mammal

I recently came across an article published a couple days ago on a Gizmodo blog called Indefinitly Wild, and more specifically, one by Wes Siler titled What Knives You Can Carry Where In The United States. I don’t live in the United States, but notwithstanding that I found it to be a pretty good article with wide application, well written and with a lot of insights that are far too rarely understood in today’s world. For example:

“A knife is a tool. As evolved apes with opposable thumbs, we’re pretty good at grabbing stuff, pretty good at pushing stuff and even pretty good at twisting or pulling stuff. The thing we aren’t really good at is cutting stuff. At least not without putting it in our mouthes (sic), which leads to all sorts of other problems. A knife gives you the ability to cut stuff and carrying one with you gives you that ability in a package that’s accessible almost instantly and with a single hand. Carrying one is just an essential part of being a capable human (Emphasis added).” ~ Wes Siler

A capable human – AH! There it is! – by concise definition meaning (at least to my mind) not one who would rather tear their lunch open with their teeth or the tip of a Bic pen than be in the same room with a sharp blade, regardless of size. Well said Mr. Siler. we are indeed on the same wavelength.

Now if I am to be honest, and with no disrespect intended, this otherwise good article falls afoul of an iteration of a widely espoused misconception that for some reason seems impossible to exorcise. One that I would like to highlight now, and not in the spirit of taking Mr. Siler to task. Nay! Rather in thanks for giving me this most splendid opportunity for public education.

“But, yes anything can be a weapon. Here’s instructions on how to fold a newspaper into a weapon. A ballpoint pen can make a fairly effective impact weapon. But in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone, knives aren’t really high up there. Not if you know what you’re doing (Emphasis added). The trouble is that, while they are capable of inflicting fatal injury, they aren’t capable of stopping someone quickly; the fatality tends to come later. That’s a bad combination for any weapon, potentially exposing you to much liability and doing so without saving your own butt.” ~ Wes Siler

Let me repeat that sentence I highlighted above just to cut it out of the herd so we all can take a look at it – “… in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone, knives aren’t really high up there. Not if you know what you’re doing ….”

Now, at this point, people who don’t know me “in that way”, and possibly even a few who do, are thinking that my problem with the sentiments expressed in that excerpt lie in its discounting the knife as a candidate, “… in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone …”, and most particularly with the implication that the knife would never really even be considered for the purpose, “… if you know what you’re doing ….” . To those I would say you are only partially right.

I’ve addressed the efficacy of the knife as a tool of conflict resolution, even by those who do, in fact, know what they’re doing, in previous articles, and I would direct your attention to two in particular:

• Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 6: Cold Steel; and
• Forsooth, Is’t Better to be Shot or Stabbed? THAT is the Question!

But I would particularly like to highlight that there is a particle of accuracy to Mr. Siler’s reference to the knife not necessarily being the first choice of those who know what they’re doing. Let me illustrate with a fictional scenario.

It’s a beautiful spring day, and I’m standing at my ironing board, hot iron in hand, getting the wrinkles out of my kilt. So I’m probably bare assed but what of it? Nearby, on the sideboard (lacking a laundry room I’ve set up the ironing board in the kitchen don’t you know), lies the chef’s knife I was just recently using to slice the onions that are now fragrantly frying in my weighty cast iron frying pan, on my belt (which I’m wearing in spite of being bare assed) is my 10 inch hand forged Bowie knife that I have trained with daily for years and moves like an extension of my body, and opposite that, the equally familiar .44 calibre hand cannon that my concealed carry permit allows me to take everywhere with me. As to that last bit about the hand cannon and the carry permit, we don’t have that sort of thing here in Canada unless you’re a REAL good friend of the Prime Minister, which I am not, but this is an illustrative fictional story intended for educational purposes, so just shut up and listen.

All of a sudden, the kitchen door bursts open as two miscreants charge through in a cloud of profanity, bent on robbery and who knows what else. In a room full of options for the inflicting of fear, pain, and even death, what do I do?

Sad statistics show that many people who train with a particular defensive weapon – like a gun – will abandon more immediately available defensive options in favour of a delay inducing reversion to what they hold in their minds as their go to option. In this I find similarity to the way people die in theater, night club, and restaurant fires because they trample one another trying to evacuate using the same door they entered through, routinely ignoring much nearer alternative exits.

So speaking for myself, I’d start braining those motherfuckers with the hot iron before they had a chance to take a second breath, and work out organically from there. Thus endeth the lesson, and thanks again Mr. Siler.