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I always carry a knife with me, but as a tool much more than a weapon. I carry a Cold Steel Recon 1 folding knife with a smooth edge and a tanto point. It is very good at keeping an edge on it and the point makes it easy to use for prying too (I know you are not supposed to do that but I do).

I have never been in a knife fight and hope never to be in one, so I have little experience on which to base my recommendations. In a couple of my classes, it was suggested that a knife is a great backup weapon to a gun, particularly if you are struggling for control of the firearm. That holds true if you grab the bad guys gun and are struggling for it also. What was recommended to me, and it seems to make sense to me, is to carry a two inch punch knife on you belt where your weak hand grabs it quickly. A punch knife, to clarify in case you use a different term, is a short double edged, pointed blade where the haft joins the grip in a T shape. When you grab it, you make a fist around the grip with the blade sticking out in the middle of your fingers. This lets you easily use it by punching at the opponent, thus stabbing him. You can also use it to slice by just drawing you hand down his body.

All of this makes it a fairly intuitive weapon to deploy and use. It should work very well in the grappling scenario but useless in any other knife fight. But if you aren't in that situation, you have a gun to use instead of the knife. And you should carry a BUG too, accessible by your weak hand also, of course.

cirus wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 4:47 pm If the other guy has a knife make sure you have a gun.

If you are carrying a gun, a knife is a very good backup to a gun. Admittedly, some of the need for this as a backup is more for police, but I think it is something to consider.

Part of the question is what to do if you cannot get to your gun? It could be that your shooting hand was injured by the BG already, or it could be that you got jumped and are in a wrestling match (think of someone going for your gun and you are fighting him off). The advice I was given, and it seemed sound to me, was to carry a knife on the side opposite your pistol. Specifically, a small punch knife was recommended that you could quickly draw and then stab into the side (kidney area) or rake along the ribs. For police officers who normally had a radio case on that side of the belt, a punch knife could be stuck behind it and be a very effective weapon. I did talk to a salesman at GT's in Austin who was showing me how the TDI (or a very similar knife) could also be a very effective back up weapon if you could not get to your pistol.

My everyday carry on duty, and still to this day, is a Cold Steel Recon 1 folding knife with a 3.5inch blade and a tanto point. But I do use it as a tool and not as a weapon. So far, I have managed to avoid ever getting into a knife fight and I plan on keeping that record going as long as I can.