Knife to Gun comparisons

Posted by: metalkupo

Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/12/07 02:29 PM

Hey all, I'm new to this area of discussion, and specifically came to this site because I could not find the information I had hoped to turn up from a Google search.

What I am looking for is studies done comparing effectiveness of knives and other small edged weapons against a gun.

I seem to remember reading/watching about a study done that explained in different situations where a knife could "beat" a gun. If memory serves, it was done by having the combatants at several set distances from one another.

Any information on the subject would be helpful.

And as a sidenote: This inquiry is simply to understand the concepts behind weaponry, so if this is the incorrect forum to post such questions feel free to delete this post.
Posted by: shadowkahn

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/12/07 05:19 PM

Quote:


What I am looking for is studies done comparing effectiveness of knives and other small edged weapons against a gun.




The basic concept is that if you are close enough (within a foot or two) to the gunman, and you're very good with a knife, there's a chance you might escape alive. You'll probably get shot, however.

If you're farther than that, you'd better hope you're a good talker or that the gun is broken, because otherwise. . . .
Posted by: MattJ

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/12/07 05:39 PM

"In the world of police work there is what has become known as the ‘21-feet’ rule. Simply put, if a person has a knife and is 21 feet away from you, and he decides to initiate an attack, he can easily cover the distance in 1.5 seconds.


WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU?

Consider this:
If you have a holstered gun and you are very well trained in a quick draw, you can likely draw and fire your weapon in a 1-to-1.1 seconds. The second shot goes off about 2/10’s of a second later. The third shot is released in another 2/10’s of a second.

Therefore, if someone standing 21 feet away attacks you with a knife, he will strike his target in 1.5 seconds. You, on the other hand, in that same 1.5 seconds are lucky to draw and fire one or maybe two shots.

It gets even worse when you factor in reaction time.

It can take as much as 1/2 second to react to the attack mentally and make the decision to counterattack with your weapon.

And just imagine if you’re a civilian or off-duty in civilian clothes and your weapon is carried concealed. That’s probably going to add another 2/10 or 3/10 of a second to your draw.

Considering the fact that a handgun cartridge (even the .45ACP) does not have the ability to instantly put someone down, unless it’s a head shot and within the kill zone, in such a knife attack, you are probably going to get hurt.

What can you do?


YOU HAVE TO THINK AND MOVE TACTICALLY

If you can move in such a way as to place a barrier or some kind of obstacles between you and the assailant, you can effectively slow down the attack. That gives you the opportunity to deal more effectively with the threat, either by putting more obstacles in his way, or by firing more rounds to stop the attacker before he can reach you.


YOU WANT TO CUT YOUR REACTION TIME BY SETTING YOUR
MENTAL TRIGGER THE MOMENT YOU SPOT THE THREAT

Before you can pull the trigger on your gun, you must first pull your mental trigger. The fact is (short of accidental discharge) you cannot fire your weapon until you have made a mental decision to do so.

When facing a dangerous threat, if your mind is cluttered with thoughts of why me, or I can’t believe this
is happening, or I hate knives, or anything else for that matter, you will first have to clear your thoughts and then make your decision to act.


THE COLOR CODE FOR MENTAL ALERTNESS
IS YOUR BEST FRIEND.

As you move from condition yellow to orange, you are assessing the threat. But when you go into condition red, you must set your mental trigger by saying to yourself: If he does this, I will shoot.

Now it may be as simple as, if he fails to respond to my command to drop the knife, I will shoot.

Or. it might be: If he turns toward me, or starts to run, I will shoot. The point is, you must decide in advance exactly how you are going to act if the attack begins. If you wait until the attack is under way before you start making decisions, you are going to lose the fight.


DON’T HESITATE IN DRAWING YOUR WEAPON.

If someone is holding a knife or edged weapon and is making verbal threats to you or someone else, and you believe the threat is real, have your gun out, finger off the trigger, and in a low ready position. You are not endangering anyone at this point, yet you have cut your response time by 1/2 second or more. This alone could mean the difference between winning or losing the fight.

If your weapon is already in a low ready position and your mental trigger is set, in the 1.5 seconds it takes
the attacker to reach you from 21 feet, you’ve already shot him three or four times.


WHEN THE ATTACK BEGINS, MOVE LATERALLY.


Keep this in mind. When someone rushes toward you, they tend to move in a straight line. Why? Because it’s the quickest and easiest way to reach you. And, physically, it allows the attacker to put his full power into the attack. He is going to run right over you and plunge his knife into your vital area(s).

If you are rushed by a knife-wielding attacker, it’s important that you move out of his direct path.

Think of a bullfighter. He uses his cape to keep the bull’s attention focused, and at the last minute, he quickly moves to the left and out of the bull’s path. Thus rendering the attack harmless.

If under attack, what we want to do is shoot and move. If the attacker is holding the knife in his right hand, assuming you have the space, move directly to the left. If he tries to change his direction to meet you, keep moving laterally.

If he has the knife in his left hand, you want to shoot and move to the right.

Don’t get caught trying to move backwards to gain distance. He is moving faster than you can, so he will continue to close the distance with extreme speed.

By moving laterally to the right or left, you either won’t be where he was expecting you to be, or he will be forced to slow his attack as he changes his direction.


USE VERBAL COMMANDS


Strong commands such as: Drop the weapon; Stop: Get Down. all may have the affect of at least distracting the attacker from his mission. If not, they will help to alert and warn anyone else who is close to the danger zone.

If you have to shoot, hopefully witnesses will have remembered your verbal commands and be able to testify that you tried to stoop the attacker verbally before resorting to firing your weapon.

As you train, practice drawing and firing your weapon while moving. Don’t forget to use verbal commands in your practice sessions as well. And, be sure to use visualization and mental imagining exercises to prepare you today for any potential threat."

http://www.trailerparkshow.com/selfdefense3.html
Posted by: Dedicated1

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/12/07 09:42 PM

Very well put! We must have seen the same training video.
Posted by: Fletch1

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/18/07 09:18 PM

What it sounds like you are describing is a duel between a knife and a gun. All things being equal, in their respective ranges both weapons in the wrong hands can be very dangerous.

It stands to reason however, that if you are being attacked at very close range by someone with a knife or a gun, your first priority may well be preventing the other guy from using his weapon rather than trying to deploy yours. It's not necessarily the quick draw contest some make it out to be. Movement and hard cover will be your best friends.
Posted by: Chen Zen

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/19/07 01:25 AM

If you have let the opponent deploy his weapon, you've lost. Im not going to go back and say whats already been said, Matt did a great job. No one mentioned prevention though. Being able to stuff the opponents draw, or establish a clinch, could do wonders for surviving such an attack. If I see a weapon, Im not worried about my weapon. I want to make contact at least once with his, as a deflection measure, then I want to lay into him with the hardest and fastest shots I can and after I throw three to four Im going to change levels, and hopefully put him on his back.

As for handguns putting people down, I humbly disagree. There are many types of pistols that will drop someone in their tracks, in the kill zone or not. For instance, Id imagine that just about any kind of round to the knee or thigh would stop an advancing attacker, unless extremely doped up. And if thats the case, most likely his heart is pounding and he is going to bleed out quickly. It doesnt even have to be a large round. For instance you can acquire a semi automatic, HANDHELD, .223 caliber for around a grand. A Semi automatic pistol, with no recoil, the ability to hold a sixty round clip, and shoots a .223, M16 round.

When one of these comes out of a barrell, it doesnt spin like a normal bullet. Instead it tumbles end over end, causing a saw like effect, and also causing it to tumble aound INSIDE the target. A shot in the leg could easily come out the side of the torso or even the neck. My favorite kind of gun.
Posted by: MattJ

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/19/07 11:08 AM

Check this thread for cross-reference -

http://www.fightingarts.com/ubbthreads/s...=0#Post15935169
Posted by: MAGon

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/19/07 11:46 AM

Hate to do it, but I gotta take issue with you with here on a coupla-, three things:

Quote:

I want to make contact at least once with his, as a deflection measure, then I want to lay into him with the hardest and fastest shots I can and after I throw three to four Im going to change levels, and hopefully put him on his back.




You mention making contact with the weapon. But the rest of the paragraph seems to imply that your attention would be focused on taking out the person, not neutralizing the gun itself.
Now, I can't for the life of me remember the magazine, author or even the name of the article so take this for what it's worth. Anyway I read up some yrs. ago about a study done on LEOs who'd had to go unarmed against a gun, whether successfully or not. One of the findings was that the LEOs who had the best numbers for success were guys with a strong weapons handling background. Much less succesful were guys with a MA background. In analyzing the case studies what came out was that the guys with a weapons background concentrated on neutralizing the firearm, in many cases rendering it inoperative by using their knowledge to foul up the mechanism. The MA background LEOs, though, concentrated on taking out the gunman. This turned out to be a lot less effective. I don't recall if the study mentioned it or not, but I would speculate that the reason for that is one we've discussed often here: Kinda hard to land a heavy blow when you're tussling with somebody that doesn't wanna get KOed! Takes a while, and in the meanwhile: BANG!!!

Quote:

There are many types of pistols that will drop someone in their tracks, in the kill zone or not. For instance, Id imagine that just about any kind of round to the knee or thigh would stop an advancing attacker, unless extremely doped up. And if thats the case, most likely his heart is pounding and he is going to bleed out quickly. It doesnt even have to be a large round.




Yes and no. The lowly .22 has killed plenty of folks. On the other hand, there's the story that Douglas Fairbairn (Of Fairbairn/Sykes fame) tells of a Shanghai policeman putting seven .45 rounds into a charging attacker and the man not going down. I heard plenty of stories in the Corps of doped up V.C. taking multiple hits with .223 ammo and continuing on until they bled to death much later.
There's a pretty fair shooter in my old combat shooting club (Guy had taken all kinds of training and courses, to include Gunsite in Jeff Cooper's time) that was a .45 ACP fanatic. Used to ride me mercilessly about my 9 mm being "A .45 set on stun". Some yrs. later, on the same day I was trying out my brand new .40 Sig-Sauer P226 (I liked that the .40 had almost the same high capacity capability as the 9 mm, with the added bullet mass and extra powder oomph!), he walks up with another brand new P226. This one, though, was in 9 mm!!!!
After I got done tearing into him, we finally got into WTF? His answer was interesting: He said that over the yrs. he'd been doing his own anecdotal research on the whole handgun stopping power thing. He talked to EMTs, LEOs, ER docs, former SEALs with combat experience, etc. The gist of what he found was that the real killer was the rifle. A handgun in combat is just a poor second cousin, resorted to only at short range, because a rifle isn't handy and only until you can get your hands on a rifle and start getting serious. Handgun hits are relatively survivable, and shot placement and number of hits were more important in achieving lethality. So after listening to all this, he reluctantly put his beloved seven shot .45 Colt in it's box and bought the new 15-shot-mag Sig 9! 'Course, I just had to mess with 'im by asking if he hadn't given any thought to what a nice compromise between the .45's mass and power and the 9 mm's high capacity the .40 S&W round was, like in my also-brand-new 13-shot-mag Sig!

Quote:

For instance you can acquire a semi automatic, HANDHELD, .223 caliber for around a grand. A Semi automatic pistol, with no recoil, the ability to hold a sixty round clip, and shoots a .223, M16 round.

When one of these comes out of a barrell, it doesnt spin like a normal bullet. Instead it tumbles end over end, causing a saw like effect, and also causing it to tumble aound INSIDE the target. A shot in the leg could easily come out the side of the torso or even the neck. My favorite kind of gun.




Two things here, guy: The .223 round behaves like any other round when it leaves the barrel, otherwise it wouldn't have any ballistic stability and would be wildly inaccurate. It can tumble, but only when it hits.
As to the tumbling, you're right about how devastating it can be... But!!! It took a long time before many in the military reconciled themselves to the .223 because often enough it doesn't tumble if it hits soft tissue. It needs to hit harder stuff before the bullet is destabilized enough to tumble, otherwise it just drills this little hole through you, not much biger'n a .22!
Thought of sending this to you in a PM, but then got to thinking the discussion would be more interesting if others got a chance to wade in!
Posted by: Chen Zen

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/19/07 02:31 PM

Hey no problem. Feel free to disagree all you want. Heres what Ive got.

You caught the fist of my first post correctly, Im going after the assailant. The deflection from the beginning is going to momentarily render the weapon useless while also opening up his defences for me to land my shot. If it doesnt land, he's still got to defend from it and the next one coming behind it. Im not going to have to wrestle the gun or knife away from him to many times because its most likely that he is going to dop it when he gets hit or is forced to defend. Test it. Use a marker or a paintball gun, and see how many times you get "hit" trying to control the weapon versus deflecting it and launching an attack.

So, if pistols have no real stopping power until after several shots, such as you suggest, then why not launch the attack? He might get one, but if you can fight through one you could likely take him down right?

As for ballistics on .223's thats just what I heard during basics, but that might have been misunderstood. But really, how much soft tissue do you have? Other than in your ab area which would likely drop you if shot there, I couldnt think of much.
Posted by: Neko456

Re: Knife to Gun comparisons - 04/19/07 04:44 PM

I definitely agree with the information on the subject it seems that its been well thought out and studied. I also agree that within a certain range each has it advantages within grabbing range and skilled knifer can prevent you from drawing your pistol and a rifle can really be trapped (even though its the weapon you want in most fights at its perferred range) at closed range the knife has an advantage.
Of course the gun can be used as a club to get distance to fire.

If the gunner jumps back or moves his position out of range, draws and fires the knifer would have to be hard core to ignore the pain and continue the attack. But it could happen, just like a skilled shooter being hard core enough to fire until neturalize the threat. If he gets behind a desk or obstacle its bad luck for the knifer, multiple shots can be fired before he makes it around or even throws the knife.

At longer range advantage to the shooter 21 feet which is seven yards a skilled knife attack may beat you to your gun, but unless he traps the gunhand and cut a main arteries or immobilize the arm with a cut, he still can get shot. Both have chance of dying, then or later pending the skill level of each.

Weapon on weapon encounter are always savage and most time deadly. Both are better then empty hand vs. a weapon.

Interesting discussion with lots of good information.