Who else carries a blade at all times?

luckyshot said:
Sorry... good call. I actually posted the wrong video: this is the video I thought I was posting.

For the record, if someone does pull a knife on you in a semi-open area, I'd advise giving him your shit and running away. And if someone pulls a gun, my advice would be the exact same. Make the bastard hit a moving target if he wants to shoot you; if he tries to shoot you while you're running away, chances are he was going to shoot you anyways.

I do carry a knife, but it is certainly not with the idea of getting into a knife duel (I've never studied Kail or anything like that). My main defensive weapons are my sneakers.
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Yeah, dude, I think we're more or less on the same page.

My issue with Vunak is that my gut feeling for him is that he's a guy who talks not out of experience, but theory.

Like this whole "nobody stabs" thing. Bullshit. I've seen guys stabbed twice. Once in the back, once in the front, nobody saw it coming. Well, I didn't see the guy getting stabbed in the back, but I assume he didn't see it coming. When I was working in a particularly bizarre part of SE Asia, I saw a guy get sliced in the face, and he and the guys he was with didn't see it coming, but I got the sense (actually, I was given the explanation) that it was for intimidation because the guy who got cut backed down.

I don't make any claims to having any competency in knife fighting but I've spent a lot much more time in many more sketchy, backwater, third world shit-hole bars, markets, docks, dives and social gathering places than almost anybody I know. I know bullshit when I smell it. My experience says that when someone's decided to pull his knife to actually physically harm you (not, say, for intimidation, but he could still cut you then, too), you're never going to see it coming.

Anyway, like I said way in the beginning of this thread, when I'm working, I EDC a CRKT M16-12M. It's a tool for digging, poking and cutting, not self defense.

I used to carry the smaller M16-10Z, but it broke while slaughtering and dressing a chicken and I also didn't like the action, so I traded up. The downside is the bigger blade does come off more looking more like a weapon to the lay person, so I'm considering trading out for the bright orange FD/rescue version with the safety notch. I'm also starting to rethink combo serrated/flat blades. It kills half the blade length for any given situation so it always ends up being a less than ideal knife.
 
Doughbelly said:
Yeah, dude, I think we're more or less on the same page.

My issue with Vunak is that my gut feeling for him is that he's a guy who talks not out of experience, but theory.

Like this whole "nobody stabs" thing. Bullshit. I've seen guys stabbed twice. Once in the back, once in the front, nobody saw it coming. Well, I didn't see the guy getting stabbed in the back, but I assume he didn't see it coming. When I was working in a particularly bizarre part of SE Asia, I saw a guy get sliced in the face, and he and the guys he was with didn't see it coming, but I got the sense (actually, I was given the explanation) that it was for intimidation because the guy who got cut backed down.

I don't make any claims to having any competency in knife fighting but I've spent a lot much more time in many more sketchy, backwater, third world shit-hole bars, markets, docks, dives and social gathering places than almost anybody I know. I know bullshit when I smell it. My experience says that when someone's decided to pull his knife to actually physically harm you (not, say, for intimidation, but he could still cut you then, too), you're never going to see it coming.
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I don't know much about Vunak as a person or a trainer. I've watched a couple of his videos, and my teacher's teacher trained with him in the JKD scene about twenty-five years ago. Word is he has a bad coke problem.

I've never seen anyone stabbed with a knife, but I have seen several "glassings" at bars, and even had the pleasure of experiencing one myself (although thank god I caught in in the arms, not in the face). I would confirm your experience; if the intent is to do real harm, no one sees it coming and it is explosive.

When I was about 18 I was in this real local shit hole, "The Thirsty Turtle," sitting there all night. After about and hour and a half, some guy comes storming in, grabs a bottle, smashes it over the head of the guy next to me and pumps it into his face about 15 times, then he turns and runs out as quickly as he came in. The whole thing, from the time I noticed him until the time he was out the door, could not have lasted more than 10 seconds.
 
I saw a video of a stabbing once. Two football fans were jawing back and forth about their teams and things eventually get heated. One guy stabs the other 5 times in his considerable gut with what appeared to be a small folder. The guy who got stabbed didn't even realize he was being stabbed until the attack was over. And it was over fast. The victim survived, but it was interesting to see how fast it went down and how even the people around them didn't realize what was happening.
 
A little while ago, I had one on me every day, since I was temporarily with a buddy in a pretty bad neighborhood.
It was one of his knives, and if I remember correctly, it was a Benchmade Nim Cub II
BM147BKblog.jpg
 
Im old school. Box Cutter SON! But I got a legit reason, I work stock and its not illegal.
 
In Morocco you better not walk on the street with your phone to your head because before you know it's gone and if you are in the wrong neighbourhood you better be gone there or you will have a knife in your eye or face.
 
I mentioned those incidents of knifings because I was physically there to see with my own eyes. The following post is more a general experience thing, but more of why I feel this knife fighting thing is silly.

In my line of work, every morning starts with a staff meeting and a component of each meeting is security. I hear every rumor and half a dozen sides to every violent incident because it's essential for us to maintain absolute situational awareness for us to be able to safely do our work. It gets to the point where if all the women of one tribe/clan are buying up all the salt in the village market, I'm going to want know that. Every day after the meeting, either myself or the security lead will get on the phone or radio with the local police and/or military district commander and will go over all of the previous day's incidents, just so we know what's going on. Hey, what's up with the stabbing? Two drunk guys? One tribe against another? One gang against some dumb guy or against another gang and we're going to see more trouble? How'd it happen? (More than likely, badly wounded person will end up at the hospital or clinics that we're either outright running or running some sort of program in anyway, at which point someone's going to talk to him, the people who brought him in, etc.)

Then, during the day, if I'm about town, I'm going to stop to talk to people (cops, merchants, loggers, random people) about stuff. So is everyone else on the team. In fact, I wouldn't be exaggerating very much if I said we have a better practical day-to-day localized intelligence network for the places we work than any national intelligence agency. We work very hard to be able to see a serious change in a security situation coming before anyone else, and as a side effect, I have a pretty good idea of how day to day violence happens in many places where assault with deadly intent is much more commonplace than anywhere in America, by a long shot.

Anyway, here's the point of all of this. People don't get into knife fights. People get stabbed and people get cut, but it's almost always a one way street. It is almost never a "fight." It's an assault. Any guy who has a blade with bad intentions and no moral compunctions is going to go from 0-60 real fucking fast. The other guy doesn't stand a chance.

When it's not a flash incident, it's more often than not a machete, not a knife, as the weapon of choice. When people in poor, undeveloped countries have more than a few seconds to think about fucking the other guy up and they know the other guy probably has a knife, they go grab a motherfucking machete.

I think the idea of practicing knife on knife fighting with an eye on defending yourself if such a situation should arise is an outright absurd fantasy, just a few steps short of chasing dragons with swords. (Don't get me wrong, I think escrima/kali/arnis is cool as a form of martial art for study.) So yeah, I don't think Paul Vunak or the vast majority of knife fighting 'experts' have ever been in a real knife fight.

My CRKT can be quickly flicked open one-handed, but it's for the same reason I prefer Gerber multitools - so I can open it while my other hand is occupied (aka, holding onto a ladder).
 
BTW, does anybody know of ANY chisel ground blades where the edge isn't the WRONG fucking side? This is starting to really annoy me.
 
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