Hey, All:
Thank you for your discussion and for sharing your personal thoughts and perspectives. While I appreciate that very much, these threads are always a double-edged sword. On one hand, you have some people asking for and offering sound advice relevant to the OP's question, and on the other hand you have often-repeated self-defense cliches and some pretty wild tangents.
From my perspective, I feel it's important to address a few critical issues:
First, introducing a knife, gun, or any other deadly weapon into a situation means you are crossing the line into lethal force. To do that legally, you must be able to articulate that you were in fear for your life or in fear of grievous bodily injury. If you can't reasonably do that, even the threat of a weapon can be considered felony menacing. Does that mean the "defensive display" of a weapon can't diffuse a situation? Absolutely not. I've done it several times, but mostly overseas and while I was carrying a diplomatic passport. In the US, with the proliferation of cameras, I would be much more calculating in the use of that tactic--and fully aware of the risks involved.
To answer the original question, "Is a small folder capable of serving as a self-defense knife?"--absolutely, when wielded with tactics appropriate to the tool. The tactics of Martial Blade Concepts (MBC) assume the "worst-case scenario" is that you live in Chicago or Boston or work in a US Federal building where a 2.5-inch blade is all that is legally permitted. I quantify the destructive capacity of a 2.5-inch blade, translate that to human tissue, and focus on targets that will result in immediate or near-immediate incapacitation. The MBC system is designed to work with small knives and provide reliable, predictable stopping power. "Stopping" an attacker is the goal in all justifiable self-defense. It's also the only logical way of keeping yourself safe. Trading blows to the head with a tire iron and thrusts to the body with a knife is, at best, mutual slaying. It's certainly not an effective approach to self-defense.
With that said, yes, a gun is a better weapon than a knife because it offers the advantage of distance. However, if you can't legally carry one or won't make the commitment to, the point is moot. If you can legally carry one, it's still not the solution to every self-defense problem. Compared to a knife, which is selective, firing rounds out in public has a high probability of collateral damage, so you must be skilled in its use.
Speaking of skills, if you're going to carry ANY weapon for self-defense, you must train diligently in its use. For shooters, that doesn't just mean marksmanship on a piece of carboard; it means actual gunfighting training and integration of the gun with other tactics. No weapon wards off evil spirits. If you're not going to train, don't bother carrying a weapon.
While I enjoy watching videos of Filipino masters and trace much of my Filipino martial arts (FMA) heritage through the Serrada line to Angel Cabales, we DO all get old. We also get sick and injured. All of that diminishes our physical abilities and makes self-defense more challenging.
In the 11 years that I co-hosted "The Best Defense" TV series, we did a number of episodes that focused on self-defense for the elderly and physically challenged. I have also personally trained people who are coping with physical disabilities, injuries, and the effects of age. Dismissing their challenges is unfair.
When I teach, I explain self-defense using what I call the "Four Pillars." These are: physical attributes, skills, weapons, and mindset. Each one of these elements is scalable. When combined, the output is what I call "net violence." Essentially, this is your ability to physically injure and incapacitate an attacker to make him stop. If your net violence output is inadequate, your self-defense efforts fall short and you lose.
How much net violence do you need? That's also variable, based on the threat you face. If your attacker is bigger and stronger, armed, or has friends, the requirement goes up.
When we're young, fast, and strong, our physical attributes are good. We also tend to be confident, so mindset is also good. As such, we don't need many skills or any weapons to generate adequate net violence. However, as we age, get ill, or suffer injury, our physical attributes diminish. Ideally, we've compensated by training to develop skill and well-placed confidence (mindset) so we can still achieve good output. When our physical attributes drop so low that our ability to generate net violence is inadequate for the average attacker, we need to add weapons (and the skill to use them) to the mix. Similarly, if you start out with very limited physical attributes--like a small-framed female--weapons should be part of the equation from the very start.
This approach to self-defense emphasizes the most important aspect of the challenge: self. In the traditional martial arts, the goal is to get everyone to do "the system" exactly the same way. The "art" becomes more important than the individual. In MBC we have a saying: "You don't have to fight like me; you just have to fight well." I encourage all my students to do a serious self-assessment and be honest about their limitations. That process not only helps them determine the skills, tactics, and weapons that are most appropriate for their personal needs, but also is the foundation of their ability to assess threats and justify their actions. A small-framed person or someone with a physical disability is less capable of fighting an attacker unarmed--period. As such, the threshold at which they could reasonably feel that they were in fear of death or grievous bodily injury is lower than a more physically able person. That means the threshold at which they could introduce a weapon and justify their action is also lower. That's how it should work.
One reference I use in all my teaching is a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report on weapon use in violent crime:
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wuvc01.pdf. Although dated (I wish they'd do a new one), the statistics it presents are very compelling. In simple terms, 75% of violent attacks are unarmed. 25% involve weapons. Of the weapons, 15% are contact-distance weapons (knives and impact weapons) and 10% are firearms. When I teach gun guys who love to spout the "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight," I ask them straight up what they would do in the 3 out of 4 incidents that involve fists and feet instead of weapons. When they go through the motions of brandishing their gun, I ask them about their weapon-retention training and how they would justify shooting an unarmed person with comparable physical attributes. The goal is not to embarrass them, but to make them think hard enough to fill in the blanks in their tactics and skill set.
Saving the best for last, physical skills are ALWAYS a last resort. Whenever possible, they should always be preceded by awareness, avoidance, de-escalation, and boundary setting--the "soft skills" of personal protection that allow you to avoid or diffuse a situation before it gets physical. Learn and train those skills just as diligently as your physical skills and they'll pay big dividends.
Stay safe,
Mike
