Knife Advice

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Makes interesting bloody, serried bruises and marks.

[Troubleshooter]

Makes a slightly more whispery sound while in motion too.

[Ruminator]

Let me say up front that I hate violence.
But I learned long ago the hard way that someone else may decide for you that you have to deal it.

There's been some very good advice offered here for you.

If I can add a couple considerations also:

- in fights there are things like pace, timing, distances, that all affect its outcome.
- any swinging weapon has to be pulled back before it can be swung again
- in that time you are pulling back you are off the offense and on the defense, and in the process likely creating openings that your opponent can take advantage of. I would rush in, changing the distance to my advantage while the attacker drew back his bat.
- most fights end up as very close range deals that often go the floor
- bats clubs, etc. are for a longer range and don't do well in close quarter combat
- clubs and the like were discarded for bladed weapons for some very good reasons, one example- my brother was attacked by a guy with a baseball bat who hit him very hard with it. My brother turned his back to the blow allowing the guy to initiate the fight and when my brother was driven to his knees by the blow- he reached up and pushed a knife into the guys gut.
It took months for my brother's bruise to heal, but the bat swinging attacker did his healing in a hospital, and was lucky to at that!

Someone posted about not seeing the knife until too late... very true! (like in my brother's case) Don't tip your hand by showing your weapon in advance.

Last, buy a gun legally, and take classes to learn to use it properly.
Buy a revolver, not the cool semi-automatic which can jam on you and leave you with something to throw at your attacker.

So, dont take a club to a knife fight; and don't take a knife or rock(semi-auto) to a gun fight IMHO.

Your local sheriff will tell you that a shotgun is best for home defense, mine did.
In the rush and chaos of that moment, a shotgun won't be nearly as likely to miss if not well aimed. And should you totally miss(unlikely in close quarters) its far more intimidating, being able to blow someone into pieces.

Don't buy new, buy a used one in good working condition; one that you won't mind losing to the police as evidence should the undesired event ever occur.

I hope this can be of some help to you.

- Rumi

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Mostly good advice there, Ruminator -- welcome to the Cellar, btw!

But allow me to insert a few modifications, for instance about handguns jamming. Semiauto designs more recent than say circa 1911 are a lot better about reliability, because basically they've had nine decades of experience now in arranging semiauto actions to make jams less likely.

It is possible, though not at all easy, to jam a revolver.

With a semiauto, jamming can usually be cleared immediately, like about a second, without tools. Some designs are not prone to the stoppages others may suffer, such as the 1911-type "stovepipe jam," which you clear by swiping the stuck, vertical standing cartridge case out of the ejection port with the heel of your left hand. Jack the slide and you're ready for battle again. Most semiauto jams get cured by "tap/rack/bang" drill. If the slide didn't go into battery -- not all the way in -- bump it with the heel of your hand. If it won't go, grab the slide and rack it back, ejecting the cartridge it didn't feed, and let it run forward again to pick up the next. Unless something's very wrong, it'll feed this cartridge the way it's supposed to, and you can go bang bang again.

A bad primer isn't a jam, but is alarming in time of trouble. Cure is still the same: rack the slide to eject the offender, and chamber the next round. The work of a mere moment.

Jam a revolver, though, and you've probably got something so messed up it's going to take some time on a workbench with armorers' tools to sort things out. You'll likely have to take the gun apart to get at what's wrong, like something down in the lockwork that revolves the cylinder and actuates the hammer.

Modern semiautos like the Glock operate so simply it's like picking up a double-action revolver anyway, and Glocks and similar actions (Smith & Wesson makes one) benefit from those nine decades of experience and are designed very jam resistant from the start.

It is also easier to shoot a semiauto rapidly and accurately. Revolvers necessarily put their chamber up high, so there's a lot of leverage when you touch a round off and it cranks the piece around in your hand. This effect is marked with large magnums, unless these have a very long and heavy barrel fitted -- the difference in behavior between an 8" barrel and a 10" silhouette shooting barrel on a .44 Mag is very great. The first bucks up on you, the second backs into the web of your hand and spanks it. Semiautos keep their barrel line lower to your hand, all the workings of the system are automatically powered and run backwards and forwards, so this kind of pistol is more ergonomic to shoot. It's a better fighting tool, overall. This is why semiauto pistols proliferate as they do -- more firepower, which has been true from very early on (8 for the 1911, 13 for the Browning HP 9mm, designed between the wars; now see 1911 actions with double stack magazines of 14 rounds in .45 and cut-down versions of the same pistol with 10, and 17 rounds of 9mm in a full-size Glock, or 19 with magazine extension buttplates, a little more bang with a little more bulk), more repeat-shot accuracy -- hits win better than misses, which is what a responsible gun owner seriously needs.

Police departments have pretty much universally converted to autoloading pistols. Weapon development tends toward the conservative, and police departments are particularly so. They are not going to take up a firearm that is only iffy. They have discovered it is important to shoot better than they used to be satisfied with, and this instrument does the job.