Legal Issues Involving Using a Knife for Self-Defence

[James Kovacich]

In Spain it is illegal to carry a knife with you, and the spanish police would kick your *** if you were caught with one.

Thank you bobster, your post almost made me feel like a criminal. But then again maybe thats why the pick pockets stayed away.

 

[Don Roley]

Police officers can be a great help if you know how to use them.

My lawyer told me straight out that police officers are not there to determine what is legal and what is not. They have pros for that working in the DAs office. But.... if a police officer tells you that something is illeagle, then no matter what the reality is- you are looking forward to at least a trip to the station if you don't listen to him. If 9 officers tell you your knife is ok in the law, but the tenth tells you it is a no-no, er on the side of caution.

And if there is anything hinky about you when trouble starts, this goes double- more than double. If you get into a fist fight on a Saturday night and you have a strange weapon on you, it is probable that in some areas you will be in a cell until the DA folks get in on Monday. It does not matter if they weapon was never pulled. They er of the said of caution sometimes and you should too.

This erring on the side of caution is something I am very big on. If someone who seems to know what he is talking about tells you that you are in the wrong, then it just seems like common sense to me that you either follow the worst case scenario or make damn sure that they are wrong and you are right. So keep that in mind when you look over the comment that led to this thread.

Originally Posted by JenniM
In full blade mode, a blade has numerous applications ranging from deterrent strikes with shallow cuts to fingers, hands and arms to repel your attacker, and at crisis point you can simply progress to deeper slashing and thrusting when you want to incapacitate or the last resort of deadly force is necessary.

After the above advocating of slashing attacks to deter the other guy, let us look at what Marc MacYoung says on his site www.nononseselfdefense.com,

Lie #7 Bio-mechanical cutting
Technically this should not be on this page at all: First because I respect Bram Frank, and secondly -- as far as it goes -- it is a sound concept. The simple fact is that cutting tendons, muscles and nerves does work. A slash will destroy/hinder motor abilities. There is no argument about it's effectiveness.

However, like Jeff Cooper's well-thought out and considered "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six" was bastardized by Bubbas and "gun nuts" into a cliché of ignorance of the legal issues, I have seen this idea seriously misinterpreted and bandied about by those ignorant of the laws, precedents and legal nuances regarding use of lethal force. Much of the discussion about using a knife to inflict this kind of wound is the same fantasy thinking as when a toothless redneck, after being called upon his statement of "ah'd jes shoot 'im," responds with the Cooperism. Neither of them are taking into account that the law has a slightly different outlook about their use of a lethal force weapon on another human being.

In the eyes of the law, a knife is a deadly weapon. It's use on another human is classified as lethal force. And the only time you are justified in using lethal force -- in most states -- is when you are "in immediate threat of death or grievous bodily injury." In otherwords, if it is bad enough where you have to use a knife on someone, it is bad enough to kill them. If you are at a point where you are just trying to wound someone, you are not in enough danger to justify using a knife.

This is the ghost of the old "shooting him in the leg" misconception so many people had. People would shoot an intruder and then tell the police that they were only trying to wound him. This left them open to all kinds of criminal charges and civil litigation -- from the person they had shot. There is a natural hesitation to take another human life. However, when this manifests in seeking to "wound" someone in order to make them "go away" you end up in a very dangerous legal grey area. And the fact that you were even in a situation where a knife was used is going to make that grey area more dangerous. Remember, a knife is considered a thug's weapon.

You may note that the above comes not from a law that you can look up on the internet, but rather the way the law looks at things. As such, you would need to find a lawyer or other professional that is familar with the law and its whole range of interpetations. You can't get that from a martial arts instructor. You could read Marc's site and start to wonder. And I would reccomend you take his outlook on things until you get a paid profesional who has dealt with the legal realities in the courtroom to say otherwise.

And as an aside, you may want to read his account of his encounter with his best teacher for the knife and consider what he says. If you are there to fight and the other guy is there to kill you, then you will both get your wish when you fight and he kills you. Which do you think the idea of a non-lethal slash falls into?

 

[Cruentus]

I like Mr. Macyoungs site; it's funny when I read it though.

He argues against things that I often forget exist. I would never think about teaching a knife program without a discussion about legalities like "reasonableness," use of force and the continuem, lethal force, and so forth built into the program. I forget that there are a lot of knife genuises out there that don't do that. To not discuss those realities not only seems irresponsable, but it seems just plain weird to me.

Second of all, as to biomechanical cutting:

The concept is grossly useless and impractical anyways. Forget the legalities issue for a minute: when there are numerous accounts of people being shot multiple times with a .45 and still fighting, or cut multiple times and still fighting, one should beg the question as to whether or not the "sever the tendon so he can't close his hand and can't attack you" principle is even a valid one to rely on in a fight. Maybe it would be useful on a surgical table. It sounds like a simple case of someone who talked with a doctor about the anatomy, but who has never been in an actual fight, or has not looked at evidence from actual knife encounters where people continue to fight and cause damage despite trauma recieved from knife wounds (like severed tendons and such).

I'm sure the above blows through a lot of knife folks self concept, so I apologize. But, just because a fact is a fact that doesn't mean that anyone has to listen...

 

[Don Roley]

Forget the legalities issue for a minute: when there are numerous accounts of people being shot multiple times with a .45 and still fighting, or cut multiple times and still fighting, one should beg the question as to whether or not the "sever the tendon so he can't close his hand and can't attack you" principle is even a valid one to rely on in a fight.

It might work, or it might not. The problem I have with it, one of many, is the fact that legally to do it as presented you would then have to assess if it worked or not. If you were dueling at a distance, you may be able to do this. But you look at the tapes of real attacks caught on camera and you see that it is most likely a sudden lunge and violent closing of distance. Read Don Pentecosts book for a good description of a real felony knife attack. Can you determine if the guy dropped his weapon and is not a threat in time in that situation? And can you convey to the police that you were in fear for your life due to the situation getting out of control and thus you used a knife and yet you had the presence of mind to sit back and tell if the strike was enough or not?

And then there is the problem of what a pathologist would make of the strikes to the arms. When someone is trying to battle off a knife attacker, they get what are called 'defensive wounds' on their arms. Guess what they look like? You think the police are not going to be interested in that? Even if they guy had a knife, if you kill him and he has those types of wounds they are going to assume that you disarmed him and then killed him. There are actually people out these who teach exactly that. I have seen tapes of knife sinawali where the demonstrators were showing how to attack the hand to make the guy drop the knife and then stab into the torso.:xtrmshock

Once he does attack you with a knife, the second he drops it you are not justified in the eyes of the law to take his life. But if you nail him in the arm and he does not drop the knife, you may have to kill him and then they won't believe that he still had the knife in his hands. It can happen that a guy could hold onto a knife after being cut in the arm as you say, but the police are not going to believe it when they see the corpse.

Oh, and if he lives, it is a certainty that he is going to tell the police that he did not have a weapon and that you were attacking him. He will have the wounds to prove it too. You may be able to prove he had a weapon, maybe he or his friends will get rid of it. In most civilized countries, if you walk into an emergency room with knife wounds they are obligated to call the police. If the police talk to them, you can bet they will spin a story about being attacked. If you did not go to the police after the attack but they run you down later, how the heck do you think that is going to look like?

Oh boy, and this is just the start of the problems you can get into using a knife like this. If I can nail anything when fighting for my life, I will take the shot. But I know the problems and I hope I know what I will have to explain after the fact. And telling an officer that I was trying to stop the guy with a non-lethal blow is not one of the things that is going to come out of my mouth.

 

[Cruentus]

It might work, or it might not. The problem I have with it, one of many, is the fact that legally to do it as presented you would then have to assess if it worked or not.

Right... and therefore, it isn't practical. That's what I'm saying. Attempting to predict truama potential in a fight is not reliable, and therefore is not practical. The only practical thing is to engage the threat until the threat stops, not assume that because your biomechanically cutting that he will stop.

And then there is the problem of what a pathologist would make of the strikes to the arms. When someone is trying to battle off a knife attacker, they get what are called 'defensive wounds' on their arms.

That is going to depend partly on how the police write the report (which is hit or miss but it tends to not be in favor of the guy with the worse criminal record), statements made (which is why due to critical amnesia you DON'T talk after using lethal force, but you exercise your right to talk to your attorney instead), and who's attorney can "beat up" who in court. A defense attorney might argue that cuts to the arm were present because the attacker continued his onslaught and the defender sliced at what was nearest and available for fear of his life.

Point is, its not really the legalites of such details in the issue of "arm slicing" that is my concern; that's splitting hairs that I'll leave up to the attorneys to bicker over. My biggest concern as far as legalities go is simply that lethal force is justifiable if I am using a knife. My real concern regarding self-defense, though, is the practicality of focusing on primarily an arm slicing strategy; particularly taking an FMA drill type approach where one is attepting to pass the weapon hand and slice numerous times. Knives don't have the stopping power where focusing on arm slices would reliably make the attacker stop attacking, or even make the attacker realize that he is being truely damaged. Not to mention, this tactic invites a force disparity that could be extremely problematic for the defender; in other words the attacker is probably trying to shoot in the heart and head or cut vitals or club his victims brains to mush depending on what weapon he is using and the defender is hoping to slice his arm a few times to stop him. Not really an even match up.... so it sounds like we are setting up the defender to lose if we take that approach. The fact is that one opens himself up to copious amounts of damage if attempting to repeatedly pass and cut anothers weapon.

The goal should be to attack center mass and vital areas until the threat stops. To do anything less is setting a person up to lose.

I have seen tapes of knife sinawali where the demonstrators were showing how to attack the hand to make the guy drop the knife and then stab into the torso.:xtrmshock

The biggest problem is, as I have been saying, that most aren't teaching to simply use the tool of force until the threat STOPS. If the threat doesn't stop and your life is still in danger, you keep defending with force. The fact is, you won't really be able to do anything else in a real fight. When the attacker stops attacking you, then you stop. If the attacker doesn't stop, then what else would you be expected to do? It's almost like some would argue for the defender to be looking for fine details like a dropped weapon so he can then resheath or fold up his knife to finish the fight unarmed; such expectations are not even worth entertaining.

And telling an officer that I was trying to stop the guy with a non-lethal blow is not one of the things that is going to come out of my mouth.

I have my opinions on how truely blurred the issue can be with some of the other details you've mentioned, but this last quoted statement is one I can agree on for sure. One should say something along the lines of, "I was attacked, I was afraid for my life, and I used whatever means I could to try to defend myself." And anything beyond that sounds like this, "I'm sorry sir, I am really shooken up right now and my head isn't clear, so I want to speak to my attorney before I make a statement."

And that's about the size of it...

Paul