Voices About the Hall
I have learned knifefighting from a number of highly experienced combat veterans, including Willem (Uncle Bill) de Thouars. I have fenced since 1972, including SCA 15th century Spanish re-creation fencing with daggers, capes, sticks, frying pans and breadboards. I have also been fortunate never to have been in a knife fight.
I carry a very innocuous looking "gentleman"s" knife, an old Schrade folder with scrimshaw on walrus ivory, which I have practiced with so I can open it one handed with a simple snap of my arm. There is no doubt in my mind that I can win any fight that involves close distance and a knife. The problem is to win the court case and the lawsuit.
I shun any weapon that smacks in any way of fighting, martial arts, Asian countries, survivalism, or any kind of machismo. If I could get a decent blade in lipstick pink I would consider that.
Prosecuting attorneys LOVE fighting knives. Nothing says "dangerous kook" to a jury like the Rambo Survival Killer Deathblade Mark Nine found in your car or home. Even if you didn't use it, guess what will have the starring role on the five o'clock news.
If you know what you are doing, you can kill with a can opener. You can also kill somebody just as dead with your .22 plinker as with your Dirty Harry 44. Granted the .44 is more powerful; which one would you rather see presented to the jury as Exhibit D?
Random thoughts presented pretty disjointedly.
All in all I prefer the weapon of opportunity approach unless I am operating in a known hostile environment. It's far less hassel than trying to remember what you can and can't carry where and what enterence you had to check your (insert weapon of preference.) Many years ago a little old man taught me that every weapon has a range at which it is most effective and outside of that range other tools are preferable. The exception that makes the rule is the clear mind. As long as we have it, we are still in the fight and if it is taken away we are lost already. Everything else is just a tool.
William sends
Gentlemen:
Those are very practical and understandable responses, so let me give a practical reply to them.
Our society needs men to return to the open wearing of arms, and by arms I mean arms, things which are obviously weapons. For too long we have let ourselves be intimidated out of doing that which is perfectly legal, and an American birthright, by just such tactics as you mention. DAs who don't approve of armed citizens use dishonorable tactics; city governments pass innumerable ordinances, which make it a lot of trouble.
For those perfectly understandable reasons, a lot of good men like yourselves have become cautious of exercising these natural rights. In doing so, you gain some personal safety.
We lose something important as a society, however. The vanishing of weapons from the hands of honest men has made it possible for those who fear them to portray weapons as evil, and thereby to weaken our society. Consider this post from 2005, in which the family of a deployed Marine found that their local schools wouldn't allow his photograph -- because he was carrying arms in the performance of his duty. "What message am I sending to my students if I post that picture?" asked the principal.
There is only one way to reverse this trend in the long term, and that is for us to return to the open wearing of arms. While doing so, we must of course be certain to abide by the law. More, we must be certain to do nothing discourteous or impolite -- so that, if we are forced to defend our actions in court, the witness statements and the fact that we have obeyed every particular in the law will be our chief defense.
There is a chance this may expose you to such bad behavior by public officials as you mention. Even so, we need to do it. Our sons need us to do it, so that they will not inherit a world in which they are taught to be ashamed of being men. Our society needs us to do it, so that it will not quietly disarm itself, mentally as well as physically, learning from birth that arms are evil in themselves.
We need to continue to produce that breed of American man which is both certain of himself and capable of the defense of his and the common liberty. Nothing is more critical to the future of the country than that. It is up to us to buy our sons the space to learn to be men -- by not letting bad actors intimidate us into laying aside our perfectly legal knives, our perfectly legal conduct, which they cannot ban by law even though they do not approve.
It is a small way in which we can each serve our country. In an hour and on a day when we remember the need for such men, here is a way to help make them.
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