Me: 5’11″ 200 lbs., 5th dan black belt TKD, 20 years experience on men’s heavyweight black belt tournament circuit. I can smash 7 ribbed concrete roofing tiles with my fist, and seven pine boards with either foot. This has taught me much about the LIMITATIONS of the human body in defending against criminal attack. Guess what? I can’t dodge a bullet. I have taught many women’s self defense classes, for local rape crisis centers and at community colleges. I have had many talented students who have learned well how to disable, maim and if necessary even kill. Not one has shown notable bullet-dodging abilities either. Perhaps God made men…and women. But only Colonel Colt made them equal. Criminals will always have guns. Deal with it. Efforts to disarm the law-abiding are moronic. Where women are disarmed, no rapist will ever hear: “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
As scary as criminals with guns are, criminals with knives scare me more. Many years ago, in one of my self defense classes for the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center, the following twist on the old axiom (a favorite of gun rights activists) occurred to me:

The political statement is “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

As a technician whose task is to teach people how to deal with armed criminals, rather than a rhetorician (is that a word?–my spell checkers think so!), I see it like this:

“Guns don’t kill people; bullets kill people.”

My point is that guns are never dangerous unless they’re pointed at you when the trigger is pulled (unless you’re being beaten with it, at which point it is, by definition, a club rather than a gun). A well-trained person can generally get one away from an amateur, since amateurs tend to do three stupid things with guns–one, they get too close to their intended victim; two, they rely on the gun, to the exclusion of other useful tools; and, three, they forget to protect the gun.

Knives, on the other hand, are dangerous all the time. They’re sharp even when they’re not “pointed at you,” and you can get cut very badly taking one away from someone, even if they’re relatively clueless about knife fighting techniques.

Another good reason to make sure that you’re the one bringing the gun to the knife fight, rather than vice versa….

–Terence Geoghegan