Women and Weapons: Packing Begets Worse Attacking
While our weekly topic is strongly geared toward women, men should also be aware of these things.
Let's talk about knives. Do you think you can fight with a knife? Have you, do you, or do you plan to carry a knife around with you as you please?
Some knives are illegal. Others are legal. Some are legal if you have a concealed weapons license. Others are still illegal even if you have a CCW. If you don't know what is illegal or legal, you should not be carrying it anywhere. Even if you think it's a self-defense situation, if you pull out an illegal weapon and use it on the "attacker" (assuming you win), the law will still punish you for carrying (and using) an illegal weapon.
In any case: BE VERY CAREFUL WITH PULLING OUT A KNIFE IN ANY CONFRONTATION. I don't know what you think self-defense is, but if you have any sense in you YOU WILL UNDERSTAND that knives are just as, if not more, dangerous than guns. NO CONCEALED HANDGUN is legal without a CCW, no matter where you are.
BOTTOM LINE: If you are a woman, and you carry a knife with you...you may want to stop. If you are a woman with a CCW, and carry a firearm with you...you may want to stop. Or...you may not? You may be convinced you know how to use it. Who am I to tell you what to do?
But here's the ugly part: Although hypothetical, this HAS happened before!
You usually carry a knife with you everywhere. You're a tough girl and you know it, and ain't nobody gonna mess with you if the goin' gets rough! You are single. You meet a super hot guy on campus who you really like. He asks you out on a date. You go on a date with him Friday night. After the movies, you go to "the point." As he makes his advances, you generously accept and, although you normally don't do this the first date, give him a little make-out session. After ten minutes or so he wildly begins to advance far beyond your limits. After repeatedly telling him to "stop" you become convinced that he wants to rape you. He his holding you down violently and going further and further. You don't want to get raped, so you search for your knife. After a short struggle to find the knife in your pocket, you whip it out and open it up. He notices you have a knife. Now it's no longer "social violence." The situation has escalated into combat. He knows he either dies or he must control you, whether or not that means to kill, injure, or maim you. He doesn't care. But you do!
Because of his strength, and the closed-in space of his sports car, he manages to get the blade from you. He gets cut a little bit, and he's pissed. He wants to teach you a lesson, show you who's boss, and establish dominance. After all, rape is NEVER about sexual gratification. IT'S ABOUT POWER. DOMINANCE.
You end up in the hospital, lucky to be alive (or are you?), and he gets a nice vacation to the county jail to await his courtroom consequences. I say "nice vacation" because he's mentally screwed up, and jail or prison will not be a consequence to him like getting raped and injured will be a consequence to you. He wins. He doesn't care. Chances are he's either been to prison before or has been diagnosed with some kind of mental illness (or should have been and treated) or both. If he was a rational, logical criminal with a stable mind there still would have been malice and he still would have understood that, by raping (and possibly killing) you, he would go to prison. He's okay with that. His world is different than yours. He won't get the death penalty because you didn't die (even then he most likely wouldn't have), but EITHER WAY does not change the fact that you got raped and will have those scars for the rest of your life, the physical and emotional ones. The physical scars have the luxury of fading. Such is not always the case for emotional scars, which can affect every aspect of your life if you're not a strong person and know how to learn how to cope with them.
Lying, cheating, stealing, raping, murdering, and all those nasty things in life ARE NOT just events to the criminal. They are his culture. It's his way of life.
The predator WILL NEVER give you a "heads up" before attacking you. Unlike the movies where the bad guy slowly comes up to the victim in great suspense (or in horror movies where he walks while the victim runs and still manages to catch up and kill her/him), the real-life bad guys are much more sneaky. Unlike Hollywood where the hero gets approached from a distance by the villain (with cool bat-music in the background), the real-life villains don't give you time to prepare. THEY (QUICKLY) JUST ATTACK YOU, AND IF YOU HAVE A WEAPON ON YOUR PERSON...IT WILL BE USED ON YOU.
Now a little about GUNS:
Study after study has proven that if a sharp-shooting cop has a gun and the attacker has a knife, even at a distance of 21 feet the attacker can engage, attack, and kill BEFORE a skilled marksman can posture up, open their jacket, unsnap the holster, pull out the gun, and shoot him. Here are two things to which these studies don't even give justice: #1 Usually the attacker DOES NOT give you 21 feet of advanced notice before attacking you (usually it is much, much less...like 5 feet). #2 Muggings, rapings, murderings, etc. DO NOT HAPPEN IN THE DAYLIGHT. They happen at night. Therefore, you can't use your sights on the weapon EVEN if they are further than 21 feet and you are an expert marksman/woman.
Think that's just crazy? Think guns are more powerful than knives? Here's just one of the articles pertaining to what is called the "21 foot rule" DIRECTLY from the FBI government website:
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2006/march2006/mar06leb.htm
(It's a long article, so scroll down to the heading "Edged Weapons.")
So...if you own a weapon, knife or gun or both, think twice before carrying it. Think thrice before pulling it out and using it on an "attacker." Not only will you have to be able to coherently explain to the authorities why you used the weapon and how it was self-defense, but you'll have to deal with the psychological consequences of killing another human.
I'M NOT SAYING that weapons are bad and you shouldn't carry (or use) them. I'm saying that it is dangerous because any weapon you have can be used against you. Even if you win, you have an awful lot of explaining to do. I'm also saying that pulling out a weapon escalates ANY situation into a higher realm of combat. "Social Violence," where just fists are used is not near the caliber of "Mortal Violence," where knives and/or guns are used. One is more dangerous than the other. Even Social Violence is scary enough to be avoided. If you can help it, don't let weapons get involved UNLESS you have every pre-determined reason to use it. I say "pre-determined" because, in a heated moment, you won't actually be able to "think thrice" as said earlier, because you won't have time to! You have to decide, in advance, exactly what you are willing (and unwilling) to do in ANY given combat situation.
Here's a side note:
For your protection, I advise you to be aware of who is in your neighborhood. You should be aware of this, but in case you are not, when somebody commits any crime related to sex, they are called "sex offenders," and there is a list of who they are and where they live. Yup, sucks to be them (sucks even worse to be their victims, past, present, and/or future). Here is the government website wherefrom you can find them:
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/registry.htm
Have a great week!
--Patrick