This is a knife attack. NSFW and bloody.

From the photos, it looked like the guy was maybe doped up on something very strong, but I only saw pics not video. I don't know if even a great (non-lethal) kick would've stopped him. As for the bystanders being ineffectual, fear can rob you of strength, and cowardice doesn't play into their reactions. It's survival instinct, and I will not berate them for that. Not everyone can overcome that kind of primal fear.

It's a emotional conflict occuring. The scene triggers more sympathy than agression in my case. Not easy to release voilence when your whole body just want to help somebody. Would have been a lot easier if there was somebody bleeding on the street (sympathy) or somebody attacking myself or a child (aggression).

Captain Illumination wrote:

Nemesis wrote:

Don't shoot into the air...ask anyone who's been hit by a falling bullet on the 4th...they do not reach escape velocity, and people get hurt. If you're prepared to fire your weapon, fire it at your target. Otherwise, don't.

This isn't entirely true, the bullet can only fall at it's terminal velocity, that being said 300 mph is still decently fast, could it kill someone? yes but chances are a 1,000 times less likely then lighting striking them. You just have to make sure you aim straight up, never fire a gun at less then a 75 degree angle or the bullet can come back down still under it's own power and easily kill the poor guy unlucky enough to get in it's way.

I mean, that's all well and good, but it happens often enough for me to be able to post a bunch of news stories on the matter...it happens pretty much every fourth around here, and I'm sure those shooters also think it's super unlikely they'll hit someone. Doesn't change the fact that you're possibly killing an innocent, and blatantly disregarding good gun safety practice to maybe scare a piece of crap into stopping stabbing his wife to death. Take the shot, or don't bother to use the gun. In between puts others at risk.

I have to agree with Nemesis here. Do not pack unless you are prepared to kill someone. Guns are not for scaring people off (although they can have that effect), they are for defending your life or the life of another with deadly force. Period.

Any gun safety trainer will tell you to never fire your gun without a clear target and knowing what lies beyond it. It is one of the four cardinal rules of firearm safety, and one of the first things you learn in any firearms class. Firing into the air may have a low likelihood of killing, but it is possible and avoidable. You don't want a manslaughter rap for trying to warn some killer to stop.

EDIT -- what Gauge said about targets

As for the scenario thing -- without a gun, really whatever you decide to do, whether it's to pick up something to bash the guy with or kick him with your steel toed boots or pull out your pocket knife...

...and again this is easy for me to say here posting from my office...

the thing to do is to seriously commit to the action and give it everything you have. The guys in this video who were trying to help all did things that might have helped a lot, but they didn't do them boldly. In the end they did actually help her some, even so.

You don't have to be a martial arts expert or whatever, just whatever it is you think of to do in the moment, really do it.

Very much this. Commitment to take action is vital. The kickers in the video were trying to help and stay away at the same time. Very ineffectual.

Thanks for posting.

What EON and Gauge said. What's the term...violence of action? Or some such thing. You have to fully commit to the aggression.

How many people here have been the victim of a knife attack, had a gun pointed at them, or have been otherwise accosted? What were the circumstances and how did you react?

Had a gun pointed at me. There was a cop on the other end. Simple misunderstanding, followed instructions, went home fine. Kind of a different situation than you mean.

A bit, but you kept your head, both figuratively and literally.

Well, I've had a few personal experiences. They weren't RLSH things.

I’ve had a knife pulled on me, broken up a knife fight between two former friends, and have been stabbed pretty good twice by accident (neither time during the two actual knife attacks, once by myself even, go figure.) Things seem to slow down. When the knife was pulled on me I froze for a second, I think it was a short second, it's difficult to judge time in that kind of stress, before kicking the guy as hard as I could. It worked out. Dumb luck and pure brute force. If that guy had been any kind of real knifer he would have cut my leg apart. In other words, I got lucky because this was before I had any knowledge or training in how a real knife fight goes down and the knifer was as equally awkward.

I was shot at in 1994 in St. Louis when we found a guy breaking into a neighbor's car. He opened up and we scattered. I caught a piece of a ricochet in my right calf. Kept my head but the adrenaline was pumping, especially when the thief pulled up and opened fire. I scattered and ran like crazy with the guys who were with me and didn't know my leg was bleeding until a was safe. Still have a nice scar from that one.

There's been other times where I've been out and about and a nasty fight broke out. I've been caught off guard and frozen just like the people in the vid. I sympathize with them. But I was still able to act after the initial shock.

None of these were on any sort of patrol or neighborhood watch either. Just crazy life randomness.

The first stab wound I got was when an idiot friend flipped an icepick at me when I asked for it. I caught it in my left forearm and it was about two inches in. No pain, only a dot of blood. If I hadn't gotten my arm up it would have been in my face. Of course when I pulled it out skin tension pulled the skin up with the shaft until it slid out. We had a talk after that.

The moron maneuver where I fell onto a carving knife with my left knee was more serious. Drove it into my knee about an inch and a half. Lots of blood, soaked half of a bath towel before we got it stopped with pressure and super glue. Being poor and uninsured at the time we treated it at home. No infection, lucky.
Once again skin tension is interesting. Gashes and long stabs will pop right open when the skin tension is broke.

As with the ricochet it didn't' hurt until after the adrenaline went away. Then it hurt like a bitch.

Unless it's an intant or near-instant fatal wound, you will have time to act when wounded, but it's a short time, before shock and blood loss set in.

I've been on the ground with six cops pointing guns at me. They had reports that someone in a car fitting my car's description was riding around with a gun threatening to kill himself. I had just got off work, it was 2:00 in the morning. I complied with their instructions. They let me go and never did apologize for scaring the crap out of me.

had a chemically imbalanced teen wielding a skateboard come at me. He thought the rabbits were coming to get him (I have no frickin' idea). He went away for a little while after that.

Stabbed myself in the hand a couple of times (not on purpose).

My brother used me as a human dart board once. Tacked me in the right upper inner arm. Another inch and it would have been my chest. I was so pissed I just pulled it out and threw it back at him. Never felt it.

Got hit in the head by a Christmas tree..... The whole event is fuzzy in my memory... I just remember it smelling pleasant.

Was shot in the chest by a paintball gun at close range once (personal attack by a very unpleasant individual).

Oh, and I got hung up on a rusted fence once while running from an angry duck when I was 8... and by hung up I mean my arm was impaled on the top of the fence.

I really hated that duck...

Would it be reasonable in this case to try and lock the assailant's arm down - via arm bar or other grappling technique - or break it if need be?

Alternatively, my first instinct here was to garrote the guy with a rope or really anything. Not sure if thats the proper approach.

Whatever works is the proper approach.
It will vary from individual to individual, as long as you can get him off her and not get carved up while you're doing it.

I'd be leery of trying to grapple his arm because of his sleeves and the fresh blood due to the possibility of not being able to hang on and now I'm down in his knife range. Then again, most of us won't have time to think about that and just do it if that is our instinct/training.

As Eon said: easy to analyze in the comfort of the 'office.'

Training is God.
I'm enjoying how this thread is going. I'm sure we're all thinking hard about this and getting new ideas or confirmations of old ones.

My first instinct was kind of a mix of MD and Zenith's ideas. Take off my shirt and use it to garrote the guy and literally drag him off the victim. The shirt gives you enough distance that, along with the fact that you're dragging and choking this guy simultaneously, should hopefully make it difficult for him to stab you... or at least not deeply... At any rate, at this point you have an advantage and a chance to subdue the assailant and hopefully time for someone to get the victim to safety.

Of course the average person doesn't want to get stabbed, no matter how badly they might want to help, which is what you see in the video. The guy who grabbed the assailant's hoodie had the right idea, but due to his own fear of getting stabbed, he let go too soon. Honestly I'm glad (maybe a little surprised) to see that so many people got involved.

Also, I think the thing that would give me the most is less so getting stabbed (it's happened to me before, that fear has passed), but rather the risk of bloodborne pathogens. I dont know if that woman has HIV or Hepatitis, and I think that I'd be more worried about THAT if the guy came for me with the knife he'd just had in another person.

Gauge wrote:

Any gun safety trainer will tell you to never fire your gun without a clear target and knowing what lies beyond it. It is one of the four cardinal rules of firearm safety, and one of the first things you learn in any firearms class. Firing into the air may have a low likelihood of killing, but it is possible and avoidable. You don't want a manslaughter rap for trying to warn some killer to stop.

I know a lot of you disagree with me, and I respect that, but I've got to got to stick to my guns here "pun intended" . We take a lot of risks that could jeopardize other around us in order to be safe our selves, or to protect others. Has any of you swerved or stopped short to miss an animal crossing the road? Well if you did you put the lives in the car behind you and in the next lane at risk, last I checked head on collisions kill more every year then falling bullets. Crazy stuff can happen "it does all the time" but common sense sort of dictates the possibility of such events happening. [Headlines:RLSH saves women from mad stabber, warning shot falls 3 miles away and kills mouther] If something like that happened I'd say fate deemed it to be as the world was against me, and I would gladly surrender to the repercussion of my actions. So in the end I'd still give a warning shot. If someone was attacking me I shore won't, but sadly we live in a world were everyone can be sued and for the dumbest reasons. If I walked up to that guy and put a bullet in his brain, a defense attorney could slander me so badly I'd probably go away to jail for the rest of my life. You never knew, DA: "so here on tape you waked up, pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger.. Hmm what are you some sort of executionor? Is that it, are you above the law? No, I don't think you believe your above the law, you think YOU ARE THE LAW!" Sounds crazy? Can anyone here think back to any cases brought to curt were things didn't go quite as planed? were people got off that should have been found guilty? I don't think I have to list any names. I'm sure you guys can think of a few. Sadly the world doesn't work the way we always want it too . Good guys don't always win "even if we should ". That being said we should always make the right choices, just be careful to protect yourself when you do so!

Why does the warning shot have to be up? Why not fire into the ground?

Is there a richochet problem with concrete and asphalt that I'm unaware of?

Zenith wrote:

Why does the warning shot have to be up? Why not fire into the ground?

Is there a richochet problem with concrete and asphalt that I'm unaware of?

Yea spall is really bad from pavement shots, I run a 0.00001% risk of hitting a bystander with a "sky shot warning", I risk a 100% chance to inflict minor or worse injuries to everyone with in a 20+ foot radius, and with a women on the ground the danger is way to much to take a chance. A few years back there was a police men who tried to shoot a deer in the middle of the road "after being hit by a car". His bullet ricocheted off the ground and a fragment hit him in the head killing him...

If I used frangible ammo like I wanted, the chances of injuries near me are much less, that being said if I just shot a frangible bullet in the sky it probably wouldn't even hurt someone on the way down "frangible ammo is extremely light weight, normally composed of powder and often not even containing any lead".

Ah, well I've learned something today then.

While a bullet does run the risk of killing someon it's way down "no matter how unlikely that it hit you on the very top of the head, and you where unlucky enough for it to fall on you, I think frangible ammo might be the answer. At 1/3 the density of conventional bullets the terminal velocity of such a bullet would be no more then 175mph, that slower then a paintball! Sure it would sting to be hit with, but I can't imagine it killing anyone.

The frangible .44 Magnum round I want to buy would only produce 21 foot pound of energy falling down, That's the exact same power as a 950 fps pellet rifle, or less then 1/5th the power of a .22 LR round. Even if the bullet was guaranteed to hit someone, the chances of death would be pretty slim, heck a .22 LR only has enough power to penetrate one side of a human skull I have no idea how it would go through the same skull with only 20% of it's full power, that's not to mention the fact that the .44 would have less sectional density compared to the .22 bullet thus producing even less penetration, and as a final touch the head of the .44 magnum round is composed of a soft plastic.