Encounter with a NKP(s)

[The Deacon]

The late Jeff Cooper referred to people like the afore-mentioned woman as "hoplophobes". Someone with an irrational fear of weapons.

I've thought that too, except it's somewhat different with knives and, in some respects, even more irrational than a true phobia. The same woman who cringed at the sight of a SAK would probably think nothing of being in the kitchen with someone wielding a 10" chef's knife.

[r small]

Or a meat cleaver.

[NYRich]

The older I get and the more I am made aware of such people, the more I desire to
hide away in some isolated area of the world and I live in the middle of nowhere as it is.
I used to like to have serious type discussions with people about these type of things
to perhaps open their minds and learn things myself, but sometimes it seems like we
are being over-run with stupidness.

I know exactly what you mean. Here I am, a 65 year old guy who stands maybe 5'8". Weekends aside, I'm dressed "corporate casual" and certainly don't look like some gang banger. Yet, I've had people recoil when I take an SAK or small Case slipjoint out of my pocket.

Example....last weekend was my wife's birthday. Our son took us to dinner and, in the restaurant (in New Jersey, right across the Hudson from New York City) handed his mom a small package containing her birthday gift. I think he put enough tape on that thing to secure a 747, so she asked me to slice the tape. She knows that I always carry a pocket knife. In fact, she has a Swiss Army Tomo attached to her own keyring.

Anyway, I took a Case Peanut (all of about 2") out of my pocket and cut the tape. I thought the people at the next table were going to run out of the place screaming. They didn't say anything, but the look on their faces couldn't have been more telling than if I had whipped out an AK47. The irony of this is that all of us were eating steak and using what must have been 6" steak knives to cut our meat.

I'm not getting into the politics of all this, but it really makes me wonder how some people think.

Fortunately, I retire at the end of this month and will be heading well away from this place. Maybe not to the middle of nowhere, but certainly where people understand that someone carrying a small knife is not a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper.