The Centerline Blade
I’ve carried some sort of blade on me for over 30 years, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be a “Knife Guy.” I can’t tell you why one type of steel is better than another and other such things, and I tended to carry brands that I recognized, like Victorinox, SOG and Leatherman.
Fast-forward a few years, and I’m now dipping my toes in America’s gun culture, and one of my instructors is talking about how he had a small two-shot .22 derringer in his back pocket as his “get off me gun.”
“Huh,” I thought to myself, “I hadn’t realized that sort of fight might be a thing, but it makes sense.”
Flash forward another ten years, and I’m taking ECQC from Craig Douglas. ECQC, or Extreme Close Quarters Combat, is all about fighting within an arm’s reach of each other with whatever might be at hand, and then testing out what may or may not work by the use of force-on-force scenarios, or Evos. Watching those evos play out taught me four things.
- I am not in anywhere near as good of shape as I should be.
- Most people are absolutely terrible at de-escalation and mediation.
- No one thought to outsource their violence and call in a cop to deal with the crazy person in front of them.
- Once an entangled fight starts, forget about your pistol. It doesn’t exist. Everyone who tried to use a pistol when grappling was going on failed to get rounds on-target, even though they were literally holding onto the target. What almost always happened was that the bad guy was able to wrap up the pistol and prevent you from getting a shot off, and the fight turned into who would have control of the pistol. The usual result of this fight was nobody wound up with control, and the gun flopped into the dirt and was ignored for the rest of the fight.
What did work, however, was if someone had a fixed-blade knife they could access with either hand. There was no need to aim a blade, and grabbing onto a sharp object is usually a very bad idea. The person who was first to access a blade and then stitch up his opponent won the entangled fight.
Every. Single. Time.
As a result, I started carrying a small fixed-blade knife up front, in between my hips. It’s easy to access there, with either hand, and it’s easy to get into play. Counterintuitively, it’s also hard for your opponent to detect, as the weight of your bodies crushing into each other smashes that blade into your belly, making it hard to feel when you’re rolling around trying to grapple with each other. Since then, I’ve made a centerline blade an essential part of my kit. ‘
I usually carry an SOG Mini Instinct (the top knife in the cover photo), but I recently picked up an SOG Snarl as well (the bottom blade). I carry OWB, support side, as for some reason, and IWB blade pinches me more than my gun in my holster does, don’t ask me why.
Sean Connery once admonished his (fictional) opponent not to bring a knife to a gun fight. It’s my contention that the reverse is also true: When things are up close and personal, don’t bring a gun to a knife fight.
