This is an article I wrote enumerating tactics for dealing with a larger more athletic attacker who has decided to butcher you with a knife. This is something close to my heart as I've been on both sides of this type of situation. The attack in question was a race-based attack by a black man against various white employees, which was thankfully stopped after one fatality by the business owner or manager who was armed with a gun. He was younger, larger; enjoying all of the OJ Simpson advantages a knifer wants in a rampage situation. In knife terms a 'goon' is an attacker who could take you out without the weapon—the twerp being his opposite; the guy who needs the weapon to even things out.

You have to understand how nasty this is. For instance I am a twerp [albeit a nasty one]; a small older guy, and am quite confident that I could disable and/or kill five healthy unarmed men in a bar or locker room sized space within a minute, armed only with a knife that can be found on everyone's kitchen counter.

For all of the 20th Century and the first 10 years of the 21st, the person most likely to stab or butcher you in such a fashion was a poor white man, almost always under six feet tall. Things have changed due to three generations of urban American blacks having been raised in extended families deeply involved with criminal litigation. The drug war has taught blacks to game the legal system like few whites outside of lawyers and cops could even imagine. Although it was not the case in Oklahoma with this Islamic suicide knifer, in many cases black criminals have adapted to the additional firearms penalties by using their hands, superior numbers, improvised weapons—and knives. In the ghetto I live in every middle eastern owned gas station [that would be all of them] and convenience store has a cardboard knife stand with small blades starting at a dollar, ones that can remove your kidney running $5, and blades I could chop your arm off with toping out at $10. Dollar stores, grocers, and drug stores sell butcher knives [which are essentially stripped down Bowie knives] for $1 to $4! These are good full tang blades designed to permit your grand ma to chop up a cow.

I see many young black men wearing knives on the bus, when 10-20 years ago only white guys and Latinos carried knives. This is partially for self defense as black guys attack other blacks all the time—especially since most of the whites have fled in abject terror to the suburbs where well-manicured lawns will certainly hold the hordes of feral ghetto thugs at bay when they show up. In that light you must be mindful of not getting in fights with a guy that might disembowel you as you take him to the ground or hit him again.

Black guys in general used to be better in hand to hand fights than whites because of a slight size advantage and years of childhood beatings. This is no longer the case, as, since the drug war, any brother that throws hands is in danger of getting popped by a drug gang enforcer. They are also getting soft like whites too, from washing down all of those pop tarts with artificial juice while they play the same emasculating video games that fat white boys are addicted to. The knife has been the perennial weapon of the man who lacks confidence in his bare hands. Overall I want readers to know that the knife is becoming more of a weapon to worry about; carried 23 times more often [according to my latest count], deployed twice as often, used to injure nearly three times as often, and almost always used more ruthlessly than the handgun.

If you are interested in knife use mechanics, and survivable tactics check out our Modern Agonistics and Modern Combat pages.

This past weekend I saw a news report about some wannabe Islamist in Oklahoma who cut a female coworker’s head off and stabbed another before the CEO stopped him with gunfire. The leftist press gave the CEO a pass for oppressing this starving brother because he was some kind of part time cop. Also, the reporters knew instinctively after seeing this goon’s mug shot that they would have been prison yard sushi in seconds.

Last night two coworkers and a friend asked me what could be done against such an attacker in the absence of a firearm, which usually is absent and will one day be banned altogether.

The goon is the knifer that could kick your ass without the knife. This is an OJ Simpson Situation I’m talking about. The thing that freaks cops about goons is that cops are trained to get close and take you down and the goon wants to get close and take you apart with a weapon more appropriate for that range than anything on the cop’s utility belt. By the looks of the mug shot this fellow was a 20-something African American of good size. Nobody in that front office was going to be able to outrun this buck.

In such a situation the women, the elderly, the children and the hesitant are dead meat. If you are a real man and would rather risk life and limb than see the kind of butchery that is going to commence on a regular basis in American public spaces and work places as soon as firearms are removed from U.S. society, you need to be able to fight with extension weapons.

The best weapons against a knife are, in order of preference, but unfortunately in a generally reverse order of availability:

1. Crow bar

2. Axe handle

3. Steel door pipe [found on exterior doors in supermarkets and other retail stockrooms]

4. **Dairy hook [a long soft iron bar with a handle and a dull hook used to drag stacks of milk crates—hit a hole in one with his head!]

5. Fireplace poker

6. **Steel shovel [chop-thrust into his face and throat from a high guard, then chop his hands off when he goes down]

7. Fire extinguisher

8. *Barstool

9. *Folding metal chair

10. Fixed wood or pipe frame chair

11. Commercial trashcan

12. Pool cue snapped off to a 3 foot length

13. A pitcher of beer or any bottle

14. Gallons of anything, bleach being the best, heaved with both hands at his chest

15. Canned goods used as missile weapons. Extend your left had as you cock for the throw as it will help your aim.

16. Bat

17. **Two-by-four

18. **Electric guitar

19. A small to medium-sized dog held by the hind legs [once used by a friend against a knifer] or a cat held by the tale and whipped in one hand

20. Hammer [turn him into hamburger]

21. Screwdriver [slam it into his face—it will go in]

22. A block or brick [knife rampages on construction sites should be short-lived]

23. ***The upright end frame handle of a retail U-boat [you need to be stronger than average] which are set loose in sockets on either end of the rolling platform

24. Commercial Mop bucket or the strainer, which should be swung two handed by the handle and used to de-flesh the face

25. **Toilet seat [It will come right off. Hold it by both the open ends and swing it like the capital C from hell]

26. Rolling chair

27. Five-gallon pail

28. Appliance such as TV, monitor, microwave

29. Shopping cart [run at him with it, smash his shins, and then dump the basket over his head and jump up and down on any feet or hands that stick out]

30. Wooden shelving or aluminum shelf molding [the tag stripping on dairy and frozen food cases makes a dull whippy sword

31. Anything longer and harder than the knife

*The most practical of the easily accessible weapons are stools and chairs. Stools can be gripped by the seat to fend off [knock his teeth down his throat] and pin a knifer or reversed as a pole axe. A folding chair should be closed and used to fend and pin with a grip on the bar and the seat back, and also makes a great pole-axe when held by the legs.

**Heavy extension weapons should be used at range as a pole axe. Practice making a rising ‘i’ loop and a falling reverse ‘Q’ loop. A pole-axe without a blade should not be used to chop but rather in sweeping motions that facilitate a flowing return stroke. If you gave me a folding metal chair or bar stool and gave any NFL player a butcher knife and tossed us into a pit, I would murder him. People have no idea how nasty extension weapons can be until they have fought with them, as martial arts defense sets and movie stunts always characterize the use of such weapons in the most ineffective ways possible.

Just remember, if you brought a troop of medieval warriors out of the past and let them select their weapons at the Home Depot, knives would be the last things they’d picked up.