Posted by
Mostly Genius – September 30, 2009
From the recent discussion about hand loading carry ammo, there is something that I think is being missed: equipment choices are cumulative in the minds of the jury.
Lets take an extreme hypothetical situation:
1. Subject exits his car and proceeds to cross the parking lot to enter a grocery store.
2. Subject is attacked by a known, violent, felon in a manner that clearly poses a lethal threat.
3. Subject responds appropriately with deadly force, shooting the attacker with his licensed, concealed, handgun (this is clearly a “good shoot”, with lots of witnesses.)
4. Police respond and investigate.
So taken at face value this is triumph for law abiding citizens, concealed carry, and the 2nd amendment. Now let me start adding a bunch of strange equipment and behavior to our hero:
- His (primary) handgun is Desert Eagle .50AE with a laser and a flashlight.
- He has 5 magazines for his primary handgun.
- All of his ammunition is hand loaded and he made his own jacketed bullets to some exotic specification.
- He is carrying secondary and tertiary handguns, with reloads for each of them.
- He is carrying 4 folding knives (of legal length in the jurisdiction), of a type originally designed for sentry removal and issued to the navy SEAL teams.
- He is wearing hard body with rifle plates and a ballistic helmet.
- “Born to Kill” and “I am justice” are written on his helmet.
Admittedly, this is hyperbolically weird, but all of this gear is legal (at least for the sake of this argument.) In the eyes of the extremely paranoid he is “well prepared” to buy a pack of hot dogs at the grocery store, but a lot of people would say he is “looking for trouble.” Some of the people in the “too much gear for a shopping trip” camp are very likely to be the witnesses, responding officers, prosecutor, the jury, the media, and the general population.
Posted by
Mostly Genius – September 9, 2009
According to this article they are discouraging Boy Scouts from carrying pocket knives. Apparently the criminal “knife culture” of Britain trumps the “Scout Culture.”
A Boy Scout without a pocket knife is just wrong. I started carrying a pocket knife (even to school) when I was about six or seven years old. Every Cub Scout I knew had a pocket knife. When we were full fledged boy scouts we graduated to fixed blade knives, hatchets, and machetes.
So much of the great tradition of Scouting has been pansyfied to the point that it is no wonder that kids would rather play video games than go to the woods. If all of the scouting adventure is going to be nerf, they might as well just stay home.
Posted by
Mostly Genius – December 30, 2008
I am a big fan of knives for self defense purposes, but I cannot figure out when and how a neck-knife is going to get used in this role. Unless you get it out before the physical fight starts it’s probably not going to end up in your hands.
Because the knife is suspended like a pendulum by neck cord, it is always going to be in a different place. As soon as you start moving the knife is going to begin to swing. If you are taken to the ground there is a good chance that the knife is going to end up in your armpit.
Most neck knives are suspended from a break-away chain (to prevent you from getting choked with the cord) but if grabbed you stand a fair chance of loosing the knife because of the breakaway chain.
If the neck knife is worn concealed (under a shirt) I don’t think there is much chance of getting to it once the fight starts. If the assailant gets any sort of “mount” (what was once called the “Schoolboy pin”) It’s going to be a challenge to get that knife working. If the knife isn’t concealed it is pretty inviting for the assailant to grab, especially since it is pre-positioned over your vitals.
Posted by
Mostly Genius – December 22, 2008
The gun vs. knife thing
To my mind there is no more a “gun vs. knife” debate anymore than there is a “hammer vs. screwdriver debate.” A knife fills a different role than firearm does. As I have previous explained here, there are a lot of things that knives do much better than firearms. This does not make knives a firearm replacement.
Fighting at contact distance you can certainly use your firearm, but once it becomes a wrestling match getting the firearm into play becomes a lot more difficult:
- The typical handgun requires a lot more motion to draw from the holster than a normal folding knife or short fixed blade.
- It is very hard to draw a firearm with the opposite hand in the event that your primary shooting hand is pinned, locked up or disabled.
- Most semi-autos end up being single shot weapons because a change in grip angle causes “limp wristing” or slide bumps into something and interrupts it’s cycling.
- It is pretty easy to become your own backstop when entangled on the ground.
Because knives are so easy to conceal a lot of the Tueller drill/21 foot rule thinking doesn’t always apply: an unarmed subject approaching from 21′ doesn’t normally justify drawing a firearm. Tueller demonstrated that you need 21′ to draw a firearm if you want to remain flat-footed and shoot the person who stabs you.
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