A great many people seem to advocate the carry and use of toys — firearms, knives, and martial arts accessories that really aren’t serious or “real” weapons. People who do this generally do so from ignorance, delusion, and fantasy: they want to feel as if they are armed, as if they are prepared, and so they carry props that help them look the part and which may fire their overactive imaginations on the topic.
When I dismiss certain weapons as toys, what am I saying? Clearly many of these items are quite dangerous in and of themselves. So what is the dividing line between a dangerous toy and a weapon? If the weapon you are carrying is really just a toy, how do you recognize this… and how do you fix the problem? Said differently, if we presume that law-abiding, prepared citizens of this nation seek to acquire and carry legal weapons of self-defense, how do they then choose? What distinguishes “toy” from “tool” and “weapon” from “useless junk?”
Speaking very generally, there are certain principles that can be applied to choosing the technology of self-defense. Keep these principles in mind, study carefully, and seek training in the use of personal weaponry, and you will be able to make informed choices that better serve your needs while protecting you and your family.
A weapon must afford a positive, secure grip. A handle that is slippery, improperly sized or shaped, or even painful in one’s grip makes that weapon useless, as does any holster or sheath that inhibits a positive drawstroke. Some misguided martial artists go so far as to strap weapons to their bodies in the form of “ninja hand claws” or other arm blades and bracers. These interfere with a positive, secure grip should the wearer attempt to use any other weapon, while representing a constant threat of self-injury to the wearer. A weapon that affords a poor grip will fail because it is not under positive control.
A weapon must not be awkward to use. Some weapons sacrifice utility to style. In self-defense, stress and adrenaline combine with the speed of a life-threatening scenario to demand fast and decisive action. If your action involves wielding a weapon, you will have neither the time nor the required fine motor skills to wield an awkward tool. If the weapon you carry is not handy and reasonably efficient, if it is poorly balanced, improperly sized, or uncomfortable, it will fail because you will fail.
A weapon must be capable of delivering repeated shots or strikes. Knives and clubs never run out of ammunition, but projectile weapons do. A weapon that can deliver only a single shot before it must be slowly and painstakingly reloaded is, barring great luck on your part, a dangerous toy. That crossbow or single-shot firearm may well deal a deadly blow… once. If you miss, and human beings frequently do miss under stress, you have missed your chance. You will fail because you will be overwhelmed as you attempt to reload your slow and cumbersome toy.
A weapon must not be fragile A weapon that is not properly constructed, a weapon that simply breaks, is a weapon that has simply and irrevocably failed. Stainless steel swords, junk-guns sold cheaply and manufactured by companies that never seem to survive long, pocket knives with locks that don’t lock or springs that stop springing… these are fragile toys, junk that seems lethal but stops working too quickly. A fragile weapon is not a weapon at all. Reliability is success. Fragility is failure.
A weapon must yield reproducible, reliable results, be it lethal or less-lethal by design. Any weapon and many dangerous toys can conceivably cause great harm by fluke or happenstance. Some air guns and spring guns could, under freak conditions, hurt or even kill a human being. A blow gun might, under extreme circumstances, successfully propel a dart through a vital portion of the human body. A firearm that jams constantly might well get off the first shot or two. While any of these things could perform as weapons, most of the time they will not. If the results produced by the weapon are not reliably reproducible, it must be considered a toy. Success that is rare and random is failure.
A weapon must not be more dangerous to the user than to the target. In all cases, your weapon is a toy if it is more likely to cause more problems than it solves. If you can’t control it, if you’re not sure if it will work, if it handles poorly, if it may break, then you wield a “weapon” that any assailant fervently hopes you will choose. Your failure, your weapon’s failure, is your attacker’s success. He wants you to choose a tool that has one or more of the problems I have described. He wants you to fail in taking self-defense seriously, in preparing for self-preservation, in arming yourself to meet adversity.
Armed self-defense is not a game. There is no place in it for toys; there is no provision within self-defense for play. Without doubt, a free people should be armed. Without exception, martialists must choose only those pragmatic, practial weapons that increase their chances of success in the gamble that is self-defense. There is no place in such decisions for your ego, your misconceptions, or your martial arts fantasies. This is the realm of reality, and only a ruthless devotion to reality will save your life and protect your family.
Good points. I’ve often thought that if necessary my leatherman switched into its needle nose pliers mode is a good defense weapon. If worse came to worse I still think it may but the lack of a guard on it may make it slippery when jabs are tried with it. Of course lock knives may have that problem too if the handle isn’t made to fit the whole hand snug, I’ve often wondered if a stab with a lockknife without a guard or a snug fitting handle could cause your own hand to slide foreward and slice yourself too in the process if not worse than the opponent.
Great article! I have to admit, I was at first feeling a little guilty about the various less-than-lethal geegaws I carry with me as keychains. But as I read each point, I realized that nearly all of them feel into line with every point you made. Sadly, the bottle-cap opener didn’t make the cut. But the Stinger sure did.