Nameles sez ………..
“Be grateful that combat is not the finishing school you have graduated from.”
How ironic that you lecture me with that statement. You assume so much, and know so little of who you address. Please, allow me to tell you a bit about myself, perhaps it will help.
I am sixty seven years old, a Vietnam combat veteran. I served with Hco. 75th Infantry, Rangers, attached to the first cav division, first at firebase bearcat, then at Bien Hoa Army/Airbase. We operated as six man teams, ambush warfare utilizing claymore mines. Over 50% of the whole first cav’s kills came from us, and we never had more than six teams in the field at once, that’s 36 people. We were very effective at our job.
I had an infantry MOS and a medical MOS, was airborne qualified also.
When I came back from VN I was a bit weird, I liked to frequent the biker bars just to get into fights with them. You didn’t have to try to start fights with those people, as they would always do that themselves. Loud Harleys, leather jackets, lots of alcohol and other drugs, does not a tough guy make. It was laughable how easy it was to beat the living crap out of those outlaw bikers.
I got married, I changed, she saved my life, I love her and am forever grateful for the efforts she made to bring me back …… god knows I was a bastard and a sonofabitch to live with.
It was after VN that I got involved in martial arts, so no, combat was not my finishing school, it was my beginning in earnest. I have never stopped. I still work out every other day with weights, still practice with blades, sticks, and firearms, and unarmed. It hurts, because I am old and kind of busted up, but I feel it is necessary. I never want to die because I punked out, got fat, went stupid, or sank into the morass of denial and justification.
Nameles sez ………
“Have you ever killed something with a blade? The places you strike at to kill inside a body cavity suck in blades and make pulling it out a bitch it get out and body fluids make the handle slick”
No, I never killed anybody with a blade, but I did disable two people in separate instances with a blade. One, stepped out and grabbed his right wrist with my right hand as he swung at me, then sliced his right deltoid muscle nearly in two wielding the knife in my left hand, disabling his arm entirely ……. fight over. Two, crazed billybobs run me and my buddy off the road, we climb out of the ditch and are immediately attacked by billybob number one, he was on amphetamines and whiskey, hits me in the right temple very fast, I go for his gut with my knife, he swings with his right, I cut his arm from wrist to inside elbow to the bone, incredible amount of arterial blood spray, opponent disabled, fight over. That fool almost died from blood loss, and I was lucky he didn’t. I talked to the cops about it and they said forget it, the whole family is psycho, we hope they all die.
So no, I haven’t killed anybody with a knife, but I did shoot a man in the head, twice, with a 1911 colt 45 at about 20 feet because my Russian PPS jammed …….. OMG weapon failure, glad I had a backup. This is an example of the POS that almost got me killed.
I also killed a VC with that same PPS from about 30 feet. It is an open bolt fired weapon, just full auto, thirty five round magazine, with an astounding muzzle flash, huge, fry the enemy at point blank range, kidding.
I don’t mind talking about these things, as I have nothing to be ashamed of. You do realize, shit happens, some people live, some people die, and I intend to live. Another aside, a lot of fake veterans around now, and one thing I have experienced them doing is hinting at terrible combat experiences, that they just cannot talk about, brings on flashbacks, scares the women and children, that sort of thing. Bool sheet, they don’t talk about it because that would expose them as fakes to real combat veterans. Then there are real veterans who saw no combat, but really want to get in on the nauseating veteran worship that is so popular now, everybody wants to be seen as some kind of hero. Puke. So they inflate their experiences, but just can’t bring themselves to talk about it, especially to actual combat veterans. I despise liars, and especially despise fake or exaggerating veterans.
By the way, about that knife sticking in people, no, not unless it is jammed in bone or cartilage, and anyway, why do you want to pull it out after going to all the trouble of getting it in? I think to produce the worst/best wound I would roto-root it around in them as hard as I could before trying to pull it out, to ensure as much tissue damage as possible.
Enough of that, I will get to the point of all this arguing here on this thread.
I think you, and many others have invested way too heavily in firearms as the be all, do all of self defense weapons. Whether this is because they are so effective, so easy, or because it is more difficult and frightening to employ anything lessor, or bare handed, the attitude has spread to many, if not most people, to the point that they are contemptuous of anything else. Sound familiar? This is putting all one’s eggs into one basket, concerning a critical aspect of survival, self defense/offense.
I think that when I bring up my thoughts on this matter it threatens people, threatens their sense of security in their dependency on firearms, and so they strenuously deny the validity of anything I might say on the matter, no matter how logical it may be. This is insanity, myopic in the extreme, deadly in its ramifications. How many other aspects of prepping/survivalism do you not have any backup, any plan B to fall back on if plan A fails for whatever reason? Dang, do you only carry one lighter because you are sure it will always light? Do you only have one knife because it is magic, unbreakable, and you just know you will never lose it?
Self defense is by definition a life or death situation, why no plan B,C,D,E,F, etc, take too much effort, or just too deep in denial?
Another thing, don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining ……. crude, but communicates the point well.
It is entirely possible that we can get along.