[uhbqhipe] Gun vs knife

Some people feel they must keep a gun in the house for self-defense. However, there is the great danger of accidental discharge, especially by children. This danger from the possibility of accident is thought to exceed the danger of not having a gun. One can lock up the gun to make it difficult for children to access it, but that makes it also time-consuming for you to access it in the event that you need it quickly.

One solution is to roll back the killing technology one generation and reconsider keeping a knives, daggers, swords, etc. for self defense. Of course, children can hurt themselves with knives as well, but if you are worried about that, you need to keep them away from kitchen knives and scissors as well. Furthermore, in untrained hands like children, frequently knife accidents are not fatal.

We need two things: knives etc. specifically designed for combat against humans (most knives are either a tool for cutting stationary objects, or are ceremonial and expensive). I'm not sure what the optimal form factor should be: a dagger? a sword? a stick with a blade on the end? (But no doubt from the pre-firearm era a great amount of research exists answering that question.) We need training to use such a knife in combat (this training is the difference between you and the untrained hands of children).

Of course, a knife is a weaker weapon than a gun, and in contest the gun will probably win. But no matter what weapon you keep for self-defense, there is always another weapon more powerful that it will lose to.

In Japan, a country with strict gun control laws, most of the murders are stabbings, so a knife is "good enough".

A nanny state might enforce that any place that sells guns must also sell knives.