08-28-2003, 10:05 PM
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#9 (permalink)
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Tone.
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Originally posted by debaser
First off, this is a great discussion.
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Absolutely, see above. However, a complete rookie could take a pistol, shoot me, and kill me. The same cannot be said of a knife. Anyone with a modicum of athletic ability can defend themselves from a novice with a knife with a good chance of success.
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Yep, it is a great discussion! I disagree that a rookie could take a pistol and kill you. Sure, if it's a non-dangerous situation for the rookie - - i.e. you're tied up and can't hurt him and he can take his time aiming, then yeah he can kill you. If, however, you're busy charging him down with a gun of your own out and he thinks you're gonna kill him, he'll get the adrenaline dump. Never having had any training, he'll have never experienced this before (hell, very few schools train for this for that matter), his hands will shake like crazy, and he'll be lucky if his shots go in the same cardinal direction as you.
That just goes to my point - I'm not against guns or knives. I'm just against all those damn fools out there that think that posession of a weapon guarantees protection by the weapon. Just because I'm carrying a knife, a gun, or even something as simple as a club, doesn't mean it's gonna help me worth a damn unless I know something about using it. I've talked to too many people in the area where I live that ran out and bought a gun for protection and then didn't even bother to learn how to shoot the stupid thing properly.
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First, remember that both shooting and stabbing are considered lethal force. If you feel that you must defend yourself with either knife or gun you should be killing your assailant. The only way I know to stab someone will result in their (almost) instantaneous death, which is the same way I shoot.
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Well that's certainly true, which means you should never pull your weapon unless it's truly a life or death situation. Again, that goes back to training, as most of the gun mishaps on the street involve yahoos who don't have the proper training but think they're fully qualified to evaluate hostile situations.
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I would not shoot someone who "looked" like they were going to tackle me, I'd have to be sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that my life was in danger before I took someones life.
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but that's YOU! You obviously have had more than rudimentary exposure to gun-based self defense. The VAST majority of gun carriers out there have not!
That being said, most criminals will not brandish a weapon in the commision of a crime, they will simply state that they have one.
Actually in most muggings involving a weapon, the criminal will not tell you they have one or brandish it. And usually it'll be a knife. And usually it'll be hidden and you won't know about it until it's already put a few holes in your gut. This is why reliance on guns for defense is foolish (in my opinion of course). Too many people run around thinking "I have a gun, I'm protected, no one will hurt me). Only problem is, you can't shoot someone who comes up to you and asks you the time even though that's a common ploy for a mugger to use to get close enough to use a knife on you. The guy who thinks guns are the end-all and be-all of defense will probably die, whereas the guy who has trained in street-combat oriented martial arts has a much better chance of survival.
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You hit the nail on the head. Why not run away rather than shoot. An equally good question is why not run rather than use a knife? If someone attacks me with a knife, and I shoot him, it is obviously self defense (since most people won't pull a knife to defend themselves from a gun). If he attacks me with a knife and I stab him (or slash him), it simply looks like a knife fight. Both situations beg the question, "Why didn't you run?".
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Because if you're close enough to slash your attacker, you're too close to necessarilly be able to run. If, however, you're standing 15 feet from him and you shoot him, you have no possible excuse.
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The simple fact is a gun is a defense against any type of attack (barring alien abduction or nuclear bombardment), a knife is not.
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I guarantee you could be attacked in such a way as to render your gun useless. The cold hard reality is that if a mugger gets the jump on you, you'd better be good with hand to hand because you may not be able to pull ANY weapon at first, if at all
Last edited by shakran; 08-28-2003 at 10:09 PM..
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