Two woman were brutally attacked by a nut-case with a knife.
One of the lessons to be learned is that fighting back is an option that should be given serious consideration. But for some reason the plans are to learn bare handed self-defense rather than get training in commonly available tools specifically designed for engaging an attacker from a distance out of range of edged weapons.
As I learned in knife school, if you get in a knife fight you are going to get cut. Unarmed versus knife and your odds are nearly 100% that you are going to be loosing precious bodily fluids.
Make it your gun versus their knife and your odds of requiring stitches or a coffin go way down.
Firearms instructors in the area should be offering their services to these women.
[H/T to Mike for the email pointer.]
Also firearms make a fight less dependent on your agility or physical strength. I’m 6’0″ 190lbs and in decent shape…but I’d be an idiot to think I’m the biggest dog on the block.
Still against just about any attacker, I’m not going to fare too much better if I have a gun, than my substantially weaker wife would. That’s what makes guns so important!
That is one of the things from my way-too-old-now martial arts training that has stuck with me over the years, probably because I was always one of those stupid teenagers who always volunteered to be the test gerbil.
My instructor and I got up there in front of class, and using a Blue Force knife, he demonstrated all the ways you are going to get cut in a knife fight. Then he handed it to me, and told me to attack him. Even as a lowly little green belt going up against some-ungodly-level black belt (Keith Elkins, if it matters), I was able to score cuts on him for the first few seconds of combat.
The trick is to learn how to engineer the situation that the cuts are on places that may not matter in the short run – the outside edge of your forearms, the sides of your ribs, etc.
Unfortunately, most of that muscle memory has been lost in the decade between then and now, but one thing is for certain: if an angry-looking individual comes at me with a bare knife in his hand, he just met all three requirements of the deadly force triangle, and will be handled appropriately (and, of course, that is where Tueller drills matter).