Obviously, on this site we’re typically advocating for your right to carry a firearm as a self-defense tool—but there are situations where that’s not an option. In that case, you might be considering carrying a knife for self-defense. Before you do, it’s vital that you understand a few things.
1. A Knife Is a Lethal Weapon
A knife is considered a lethal weapon, just like a gun is. That means if you use one in a self-defense situation, you are subject to all of the rules that govern lethal force in your state—such as a duty to retreat, Castle Doctrine, and the more general definition of when lethal force is justified and when it’s not.
For all intents and purposes, a knife and a gun are treated mostly the same way in a self-defense court case. If you wouldn’t be legally justified to use a gun in each situation, you won’t be legally justified to use a knife, either. You might, however, be fine to use something like pepper spray—which is why it’s always a good idea to have a less-than-lethal self-defense tool available.
That said, although a knife is a lethal weapon, it’s unquestionably not as effective at stopping threats as a gun is in most cases, and that’s probably even more true for women. If you have a knife and your attacker has a gun, you’re toast, so I’m not even going to address that in this article. If you have a knife and you’re trying to defend yourself against a larger, stronger male attacker, the disparity of force is huge and your chance of success is slim. (This is why we call a gun “the great equalizer.”)
2. Drawing a Knife Is Really Difficult
If you’re going to carry a knife for self-defense, think about where you’ll carry it. I keep my folding pocketknife in the bottom of my purse, buried under lip balm and sunglasses and God knows what else. It’s not for self-defense—if it were, I’d wear it on my belt, and I’d probably choose a fixed-blade in a sheath. A folding knife takes too long to open (and often requires two hands). No matter what kind of knife you choose, drawing it when you need it is difficult because…
3. Knives Are Close-Range Weapons
The bad guy isn’t going to reveal his knife or his evil intentions, if he is unarmed, until he’s close enough to attack you. At this point, it will be extremely difficult to draw a knife before he can react and stop you because he’s already within arm’s reach.
If you do manage to get your knife out, you must understand and really contemplate the intimate nature of knife fighting. You can defend yourself with a gun from a bit of a distance, but you can’t defend yourself with a knife without physically touching the person. There will be blood in both instances, but with a knife, it is close. It’s all over you, in fact. The knife will get slippery and be difficult to hold onto. The sights, sounds and smells will be overwhelming and visceral in a brutally up-close-and-personal way that many people are totally unprepared to handle. On top of that…
4. Knife Use Requires Real Skill
Yes, you do need to train with your firearm, but even a relative newbie can successfully defend themselves with a gun. Not so much with a knife. There is a tremendous amount of skill involved in knowing where, when and how to strike, slash or stab effectively. This requires specialized training, and again, consider the disparity of force if you are a woman facing a male attacker. And even if you are well-trained in knife fighting…
5. Expect to Get Cut
This is kind of a cliché in knife fighting, but it’s true. If you get into a self-defense situation where you and your attacker are both armed with a knife, you will get cut and possibly very seriously. There are techniques you can learn to help block some strikes, but part of your training will be learning to accept the injuries and continue fighting through them.
6. Knives Don’t Immediately Stop a Threat
This is one of the major problems with knives as a self-defense tool—they’re not reliable threat stoppers. A well-placed gunshot to a fairly large area (upper chest cavity or head) usually stops a threat immediately. Not so with a knife.
There are two practical ways to stop a threat with a knife: Psychological, which means the bad guy decides this is a bad idea and he ceases his attack and runs away; and physical, which means you make enough holes in his body that he bleeds out, or if you’re good/lucky enough, you damage a major organ or slice an artery. The psychological method cannot be relied upon—it might or might not work against an attacker who has almost certainly been in a lot more knife fights than you have and who might be hopped up on some kind of substance. That leaves the physical method, which, frankly, takes a lot more time with a knife than it does with a gun. As mentioned, you’ll both be taking injuries, so it’s a matter of who gets the most injured the fastest or who quits first. This is a horribly violent, unreliable way of stopping a threat.
7. What Knives Do Well
It’s not all bad news—after all, a knife for self-defense is probably better than nothing. There are likely some places where you cannot bring a gun, but knives are allowed (check your local and state laws and regulations), which is a point in the knife’s favor.
Because they’re such an up-close-and-personal weapon, a knife is a “get off me” tool that can, if you’re able to deploy it, buy you some space to get to your gun or to run away. This can be particularly useful to women who are facing unarmed attackers who didn’t have to sneak up on them, like a date who turns into a would-be date rapist.
If a knife is your only option for a particular situation (again, consider pepper spray if possible), you should carry a knife you can access quickly, which means it should probably be a sheathed fixed-blade carried on your belt. Off-body carry is practically worthless from a self-defense standpoint because of the close nature of knife work—you’ll never get to it in time.
Consider the possibility that your knife could be taken from you and used against you. If you’re going to use it, there’s no room for hesitation or meekness. Go in fast and hard and inflict as much damage in as little time as possible. It takes serious training to learn how to do that, so if a knife is your only option for self-defense, I highly recommend you take some edged weapons courses to learn how to deploy and use a knife effectively.
