The knife
If you've been tracking, dear reader, you know I am a practicioner of the "art of the blade" - the misnomer "knife fighting", or as I prefer "knife combatives".
People, often as not, react badly to knives. A knife is very visceral, anything that cuts is, because we've got thousands of years of "biological memory" to tell us that being cut, by lions claws, teeth, stone blades, or steel, sucks. This doesnt happen with the gun, not yet. With both knives and guns though most people dont get it. I cant explain to those who wont listen, because none of you are tuned in. When you decide your life is worth protecting, and when you truly understand what it is to preserve life, maybe you will listen. Until then, I dismiss you to live in your fearful little caves of ignorance... I am not your shepard.
I cant (yet) carry a gun, but in the interest of better living through not getting killed, I carry a knife (more than one, actually, as part of a layered carry profile, including other tools). I would say that while I am far from the master of the knife, I have a degree of knowing about the knife - and like others who do I respect it, but do not fear it for itself alone (I fear intent to kill me, with anything, when presented with it - but the tool matters not).
From this point of view I see that even those who "know the knife" misunderstand it sometimes.
A cut, a wound from steel, is a powerful thing. One little cut can make men drop everything and panic. But is can also mean absolutely nothing.
If you are faced with a 17 year old kid out for a thrill, steal some dudes wallet, and you cut him good, he might turn tail and run. But, take the same 17 year old, dump a pharmacists bad dream of drugs into him, and either get him when he's high or coming down and needs more, and you have a monster - one cut will not stop him, and it is very possible he may not even feel it.
I think it is a mistake to say, to believe, that the knife is a tool that crosses all levels of force escalation from less-lethal to lethal, and back again. When used in a conflict the edged weapon is a lethal tool, just like a gun. You draw it and you use it to stop an attacker.
The end of an attack, without any death, is wonderful and should be a celebrated thing. But to make that the one and only acceptable goal is foolish, and dangerous to yourself... it should be an incidental positive, not THE goal.
The art, the dance, the right hand path of the blade are all fine, and beautiful (even while deadly) things. But you find me a street thug who walks the right hand path... there aint one. Its not in his job description, he cant make a career as a thug on that path. I speak of the left-hand path, the back-alley knife mans traditions of speed, brutality, deception and trickery, applied to "better living through not getting killed"/defense of ones life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Out thugging the thugs, so we can go home at night, is the play.
You cannot confuse the two, it can be deadly. In the streets, the gutters, the alleyways filled with piss, blood, beer, and cum, there are no right-hand artisans, only left hand killers.