I think this is one of the better questions on any forum here, as a matter of fact. One of the more relevant, too.
I have some moral issues with the knife as well, because I've been very personally involved with the aftermath of knife attacks. I hate to sound like a candy-ass or anything, but after seeing so many people layed open or stabbed to death, the sex appeal of knives just went away for me. It was made infinitely worse when I'd attend workshops or seminars and I'd hear people talking casually or even cavalier about gutting people like fish or stabbing them in the heart and dumping their guts out on the floor. Having seen the human cost up close and personal, I found it deeply offensive. Likewise, I have a similar moral issue when it comes to firearms. I have also seen that aftermath, and in poignant fashion. I don't want to get too graphic here, but for the sake of making my point in a few minutes, I think this lends some gravity. I was working in the E.R. of our area's trauma center one morning when a woman was wheeled in by paramedics. Her head was mostly missing, the face blown away from the lower nose upward, and the skin and remnants of her forehead and skull flopped down over her mouth and cheek. The bowl-shaped depression that once sat behind her face was a mass of grayish pink with clumps of everything from eyeball to clotting blackish blood. Her brown hair, still pulled back in a pony tail was eerily neat and tidy, and the contrast of that tidy hairstyle with the grisly mess in front was disturbing. I was posted at the head of her gurney with another security guard at the door of the room. There was some concern that she'd been shot in the face by her boyfriend, and since he was still at large, our presence was a standard precaution. The lady was a drug addict, and she was around seven months pregnant. The medics had been pumping away on her chest, knowing she was long gone, but doing what they could to keep blood flowing to that baby. When she was laid up on the table, the doctor quickly gloved up and grabbed a scalpel. He literally slashed her belly open and dragged the baby out. It was so quick and "unsurgical" it made me stare. He saved the baby's life, such that it was having a drug addiction, a dead mother and a murderous father to grow up to. But when it was all over, there the woman lay, face blown into small tatters of meat and bone, belly gaping open like some kind of lipless mouth where there shouldn't have been one. I had to stay in the room with her body for another half-hour or so, and I couldn't help but stare from time to time at the wreck on that table.
That was certainly not the only time I saw such things working there, but it was one of the more impressive in terms of the emotional content of the experience. The human cost was made all the more prominent by the little baby pulled from the woman's body, already with three strikes against him.
Try listening to someone talk about a "cool new knife move" after that.
I still carry knives and guns for self-protection. I don't have a moral issue with doing so, and I think it's ignorant and stubborn not to see that they are some of the very most effective tools one can have for self-protection. However, I do not support the cavalier, aloof attitude shown by so many in training to use these things. When people don all sorts of "tactical" gear and get together to talk about hacking people up and stabbing them in their vitals as if it's some kind of hobby like bowling or crochet, I think it's disgusting. I think it's borderline sociopathic, in fact. There's nothing at all wrong with using weapons to protect you, and there's nothing wrong with training in their use. In fact, if you're going to train in their use, I think it would do most people well to get a clear picture of what they're training and have no illusions about the cost - both to the user and to the enemy.
I guess all I'm trying to say is that I have no moral issue with people carrying and using weapons. I think it's up to each of us to draw our own boundaries and decide what we're willing to do in our own defense. If someone can't make their own life more important than the idea of killing another person, then it's a decision they have to make for themselves. Personally? I don't care how gruesome or tragic someone else's death is. If it's in my own defense, the thought of my son growing up without a father, my wife growing old without her husband, and my not being there to see either of them far and away outweighs my moral opposition to killing. I don't take it lightly, and I reflect on those bodies and victims I saw/heard/touched/smelled during those years in the E.R. I think about putting someone else there, and it allows me to really define what's worth fighting over and what isn't. I think about someone putting me there, and the lines become even clearer.
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