[IanDrake]

Wow, scary stuff. I've been there with crazy people, alone, at night, at a T-stop in Boston. One thing you can do, is put your keys in your hand, and make a fist with the keys pointed outward from your knuckles. That will make punches way more effective and one good punch could blind your assailant, which is exactly what you want to do.

Another thing to consider is getting a gun or at least supporting gun rights. Not a lot of unarmed people are going to help you against a crazy person with a knife. If someone was caring a gun, they could have helped. If she were caring, then she could have put an end to this nightmare herself.

There's a saying in the gun rights community, "The second you need a cop, they're always minutes away." All the cops I know agree with that statement. It's not a reflection on them, just that they can't be everywhere all the time.

I hope her injuries (both physical and mental) heal quickly.

[kagebe]

> If someone was caring a gun, they could have helped. If she were caring, then she could have put an end to this nightmare herself.

No, that is not how it would work out in most (if not all) cases. Especially not in such a public place. And especially not if the gun was contained in something, e.g. her purse.

Even if that person were a great shot, in a (even moderately) close combat fight with a knife-wielder, she would most likely not be able to pull/unlock the gun before being stabbed, or miss and/or hit others or just be plain too scared/untrained to keep that much control.

Even if it worked, there would be the question of ethics and legality of wounding/killing another person to save her possessions. The legality may not be an issue in (many states in) the US, but even there not always a clear case and most likely will have some legal procedure.

If she were able to use the gun for intimidation and get the assailant to run away, that might work, but the attacker is obviously beyond quite some normal mental restrictions when threatening to kill her in a public place and might not easily be deterred.

Guns are the perfect tool for killing people when you know you want/plan to kill people. They are effective in wounding too, if you're able to hit where it doesn't kill. They are mostly useless in not getting wounded/killed by someone who wants to wound/kill you.

[IanDrake]

Typically people who don't own a gun don't have any training with guns. These same people also think that people who do have guns don't have any training as well.

In fact, most people who own guns are well trained. I can also assure you that even under stress you can hit a human sized target from 15 feet very easily.

Most of the state laws about even brandishing a fire arm have to do with inescapable life threatening harm, meaning you can't just run away. In the blogger's case she couldn't run due to an injury, but based on her description she would have had time to properly use a gun in defense and it would have been legal for her to do so in my state of MA.

I was trained by a former police detective and told in a knife situation, if you couldn't escape, draw your weapon, yell stop or I will shoot, then shoot if they're within 15 feet and move toward you at all.

>Even if it worked, there would be the question of ethics

Ethics? Someone threatens to kill you, has a deadly weapon, and is coming at you and you think there's still an ethical issue? Sure, they're crazy and sure, you could choose to let them kill you because you pity them, but I doubt that makes you ethically superior.

[kagebe]

> but based on her description she would have had time to properly use a gun in defense

I quote the article: "She pulled the knife out further and pushed it into my blue purse" Into the purse that would have contained the gun. I think she would have been stabbed before she could have reached inside.

No one intend on robbing you up close and personal is going to pull out his knife from 15 feet away or announce to you from that distance, especially in such a public situation, that he's going to rob you. He wants to threaten you with a knife, not with his voice.

And this is what I mean with "training": the reflexes to pull your gun instinctively when seeing a flash of a weapon in pretty much any situation, in this case: With your headphones on and watching some movement on your phone, as she was doing.

Maybe most gun owners are well trained enough to hit moving people at some distance, but I would argue, that nearly none of them are well trained enough to hit somebody who is moving within arms reach and will try to hit you with a knife/grab your arm/etc.. Most martial arts practitioners will say that they are not well trained enough to evade/fight somebody untrained but handling a knife.

> you think there's still an ethical issue?

I will argue ethics whenever the outcome is death, especially when there are bystanders and even more when the other option is to lose some possessions.