never get close to someone and threaten them with a gun

That seems so sensible, doesn't it? Yet, apparently, the gun is such a symbol of power that your average attacker feels invulnerable with it, and treats it carelessly. Stand ten feet away, make your victim lie face down on the ground and scoot their valuables toward you. That's how you rob at gunpoint. For crhist's sake, don't touch them.

You won't listen to me, fine. But bring martial artists into it -- bring observers of fights. Bring people who prosecute armed attacks. Ask their opinions. I'm very interested in what I seem to be missing here.

Not to drag this out any longer than it needs to be dragged out in the movie thread, but what you're missing is that I never doubted your krav training and experience, the startling deadliness of the knife, or the credentials of your krav trainers.

In fact, I never stopped listening to you, but at this point, I reallly do feel like you have me arguing something I'm not actually arguing. It's starting to seem like you're having a very different argument with me than I'm having with you, especially when all I really chimed in to say originally was "hey, don't dis the hammer."

Well, ya know, ita is Argue Girl.

And on the topic of knives and movies, I have Kill Bill vol. 1 sitting here, and think I will pop it in the ol' DVD player while I clean the house.

Am I missing your point? You don't think the hammer is as good a weapon as the knife? If you don't, I apologise for mischaracterising your point. I was pretty sure that's what you'd said.

If you do think they're equivalently useful for self-defense, I disagree, but realise there's nothing more I know that can change your mind.

I delivered pizza part-time while I was in college, and was robbed once at gunpoint. I had the pizzas in one hand while I knocked on the door -- the last in the row -- and a guy with a nylon mask came around the corner and stuck a .45 automatic in my side, below and behind the elbow of the arm I had the pizzas in. Two others masked guys followed him around the corner. They got two large pizzas and $17 in ones. I drove across the street to the pay phone at a Wendy's and called the cops, who took half an hour to show up, talked to me about for a couple of minutes, and declined to be shown where the robbery occurred. When they talked to my manager the next day they suggested to him that I had taken the pizzas and the money myself. The manager knew better. Nothing more was ever said about the incident.

My point? Well, aside from "Ooh, ooh, I have a story that fits the topic!" I guess my point is that rules of engagement are an important part of self-defense. I wasn't going to try to fight with my hands encumbered and a gun in my side, or with only two pizzas and $17 of someone else's money at stake.

Am I missing your point?

Yes. Still.

Let's put it this way --

If YOU come at ME, I really don't care whether you're wielding a hammer or a knife, ita. Either way, I'm fucked.

If I come at YOU, it really doesn't matter which I'm holding, you're going to take it away from me, and I doubt you're going to get cut, only because it's ME.

If someone who knows what they're doing with their particular weapon attacks you, who the person is, and how well they use their weapon is way more important than which weapon it is.

If it's a guy who, for some unfathomable reason, loves the hammer as a personal weapon, and has spent night and day of the last thirty years making his hammer an extention of himself, and who knows how to fight, I think you're going to need to worry about the hammer.

I doubt you're going to get cut, only because it's ME.

Dude, you misunderstand my point. Chances are non-negligible I will get cut. That's the bulk of my point. The scenario with the five-year old? Give one of them an unsheathed lipstick or an uncapped marker and try to get it away from them without getting marked -- not that easy.

If someone who knows what they're doing with their particular weapon attacks you, who the person is, and how well they use their weapon is way more important than which weapon it is.

You're right. I did misunderstand, then. I'd read too much into:

I think that regular run of the mill hammers are probably just as effective as kitchen knives for home defense - possibly less dangerous to your opponent, but less likelyhood of accidentally opening an artery.

since I don't think the likelihood of injuring oneself is significant, certainly not to outweigh its other actual strengths.

I was only arguing in the home defense situation that you brought up, you know.

ita said above that if you're fighting someone with a knife, you should know you're going to get cut, but you can still win anyway. (Edit: not realizing I would crosspost with the woman herself, I meant way above.) It's obvious even to me that if you're holding the handle of the knife with the blade pointed toward the other person, they'd pretty much have to grab the blade to get it away from you. So their hand, at least, would get cut. Anyway.

Stand ten feet away, make your victim lie face down on the ground and scoot their valuables toward you.

Hey! That's what my robbers did! They weren't so dumb after all. They did let us negotiate, but the guy with the gun stayed further away.

I was only arguing in the home defense situation that you brought up, you know.

And I conceded in the initial statement:

possibly less dangerous to your opponent,

That the knife is in general more dangerous to your attacker, and yet STILL....

The point I was vaguely trying to make, then, and have become more and more clear about over the last twenty-four hors is that just about every other factor besides the choice of weapon is more important to the outcome of said confrontation.

Is a knife even available where I am in the house? Is the guy standing right in front of me, or can I crack his skull open with the hammer when he comes unsuspecting around a corner? How dark is it? How big is the guy? How well trained? How sharp is the knife?

Don't obsess on my opening statement, that was so five minutes ago. I've moved on from that specific scenario, which was never all that specific to begin with.

(I sort of suspect that, if your average person surprised a burglar in her kitchen, picking up anything and menacing the burglar with it would freak the burglar out so bad he would run away. The person who lives there has a reason to win the fight, and the burglar really doesn't. Unless he is an assassin or a crazy person, in which case the person who lives there has a good chance of losing, and that is when knowing how to beat your opponent down with a rolled-up back issue of Cosmo becomes an issue.)

(Therefore, hammer or knife or cast-iron frying pan, it's really about the attitude of "Go away you dumb crook!" that is a nice offensive weapon.)

On topic, I am sort of surprised that more horror movie villains do not use frying pans. Always the knives, they go for. These dudes are (a) villains, (b) insane, and (c) usually undead. Shouldn't they be dumber, and try to kill Our Heroine with, like, a can of creamed corn or a baguette or something? But no, always the knives, except when it's a chain saw.