Makes sense. The attacker usually picks the target, time and place to provide the best advantage.

Have you seen many head wounds?

They’re a pretty heterogenous group. Same goes for stabbing victims.

I’ve seen someone missing half their head survive, while someone with a seemingly small single puncture wound from a screwdriver dies. The reverse is also true. Small head trauma dies, multiple stab wounds victim survives.

Often less about the weapon, more about skill/luck of the wielder and/or bad luck of the victim.

It's best to train for multiple scenarios. IMO, having a gun for self defense beats any of the alternatives. So, yes, you can get stabbed to death while carrying a gun if the attackers surprises you. Situational awareness and some fast feet are often your best defenses. But you should still carry a gun if you have the skills developed to use it effectively.

That is what stress to people when talking self defense. There is a limit. Someone can walk past you on the street do three or four quick jabs as they pass and you will likely be dead, if not you will have a bad time. And if they did it well you might never know who did it.

Sounds like some of the more important things to learn are how to go through life without angering people to the point where they feel the need to come up behind you with a hammer and how to identify people who might be more likely to do that and limit and manage your interactions with those people as much as possible.

Excellent points. In one on one defense, that is why the dog is a massive security boost. They always have their weapons ready and have faster reflexes than any human. They buy you time to flee or get to a weapon. 😎👍🏼

The initial publication re this exercise seemed more related to answering the question “why was deadly force justified when the bad guy was 21 feet away?” or “why should I bother unholstering if the bad guy is way over there?” http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Tueller/How.Close.htm - I took a Glock armorer class from Dennis Tueller in the mid-2010’s and he seemed like a pretty solid no-BS person.

This crops up as often as the shark changes it's teeth.

Why situational awareness is the #1 survival skill

It's called the Tueller drill. The purpose is to prove that the average person who doesn't train can be physically touched befor drawing from a holstered postition And placing an accurate shot on the target because of the stress that's induced from being attacked. Therefore, never allow someone you may suspect of being a threat to ever come any closer than the 7 yards, at a bare minimum. This rule is used to help justify law enforcement involved shootings. The idea is that even if you stop the threat, you've now Increased your chances of death if you were "touched". It's meant to be a very general drill that helps to illustrate the difficulty of high stress firearms engagement from a sudden or unexpected attack. I wouldn't say it's bullshit, but some people teaching it are probably bullshit artists.

And just for the record, the high level instructors I learned from all say create as much distance as possible from your threat especially if they have a knife. One exercise we had was to give one person a marker just to prove that if you engage a knifed attacker, you are very likely to be cut, as proven by the marker all over our clothing. The point was to expect it if you engage, and how to engage of you really have the need to, otherwise get away. Knives are far more scary because they're silent.

Actually, the IMI instructors taught us to run toward the attacker and engage as quickly as possible, of course keep an acceptable safe distance whatever you deem that to be. The Isralies are a little different in their approach, but the US military instructors don't suggest this to the civilian trainees.