Quote from: Zumbagirl on June 01, 2015, 07:50:33 AM
Don't bring a sword to a gun fight
In all seriousness though, when I took my concealed carry training, one thing they told me is that if I carry a gun then don't bother with a knife because I would be 8 times more likely to go to prison for using a knife than I would if I had used a gun. Seriously, this is direct from the mouth of the people who train cops at the police academy.
From what I have read and it may be hear say or prima facie, but the mere possession of a weapon has prevented a great many crimes without a shot being fired. Sometimes the idea that a criminal upon selecting a victim unwittingly selects an armed citizen who produces a weapon the criminal flees without a shot being fired. That would be my hopes and dreams if it ever came to my being the chosen victim and I would venture to say nearly all other armed citizens like myself in my country.
As someone involved in LE training in a past life, I can unfortunately confirm most LE training is horrible. I've even had to correct issues with SWAT cops that should have been trained better...
I always taught folks to carry a knife capable of being deployed one handed on the opposite side of your gun, so in a retention struggle your strong side can focus on the gun and weak side can go all stabby-stab. I bring this up because on the LE side at least, 90% of all gunfights start AND end as fistfights, partly because pistols suck at killing people and none of us focus on combatives as much as we should. The knife isn't your primary BTW, it's just there to assist with retention.
And street violence never comes out of nowhere. There's almost always pre assault indicators, grooming cues, etc. ECQC by Craig Douglas is an excellent class on managing close quarter contacts and combining combatives with gunfighting, and covers most of this.