Right?! The only sense in that using a knife is going to be regarded as attractive by any rational member of the opposite sex is if you're using it to prepare dinner for her. The action movies have lied to us, Hazmatac. Or rather, they've been written by other guys who haven't got any better idea how women tick than we do. But set that aside for a moment. Lots of people here carry a knife, ostensibly for self-defense. I used to as well. But, honestly, once I started really thinking about what it meant to cut or stab someone, I stopped carrying. As has already been said, never introduce a weapon you aren't prepared to actually use. Either because you're not prepared to actually fight OR because you're not prepared to use THAT weapon. When we train in knife combatives, I've seen scores of people casually emulate cutting one another's jugular like it's nothing. I wonder how seriously we've really considered what we're proposing.
I always carry a knife, but I also train extensively in Use of Force concerns, tactics and escalation - the mental game needs every bit as much training as the physical one. That said I use my knife daily on various items that need cutting so for me it is not so much a weapon as a tool
I'm with you on this (and the rest of your post too). I have often though I should invest time in my dinner preparation skills. Digression - I will say that I'd be surprised if too many people on MAP could match my level of knife nerd-itry at various points of my life. My dad was an amateur knife maker when I was a kid, and I started knife collecting at a pretty young age (going to various shows and flea markets a lot). I have sold out all my collection, and built another one a few times since I was a kid. I'm not exactly sure how many knives I actually have now, but it is a lot. Mostly old or old style pocket knives. I am going to thin the heard a bit soon, and use the proceeds for training (and maybe a guitar, heh). All that being said, I'm not at all self defense motivated with knife stuff, for the same reasons you describe. It would never be my first choice of defensive tool. Further digression - Since I am a nerd about such things, I can appreciate how Filipino martial arts is probably as close to old school sword fighting as anything except for HEMA training. It's neat to see the various bladed weapons, etc. as well. But the practical side of my mind zones out a bit when people talk about "well if this stick was really a sword, you wouldn't grab it like this, etc." I guess I sort of see that sort of thing as artistic rather than practical, and the same with various knife stuff too. I think the odds of me ever suddenly being in a sword fight, or having 2 swords vs. two swords in real life is much less than me somehow developing extremely great cooking skills which will impress my wife...
