Hello my friends, the day is once more / Just wait to see what we have in store / A silly knife no doubt, and one that is furthermore...
...Naughty.
I have on multiple occasions mentioned owning several knives with various aspects that the law finds it within itself to frown upon. And probably just as often, expressed my own personal conclusion that regulations outlawing this feature or that particular mechanism or the other shape or whatever are ultimately all very silly when viewed from the perspective of anyone familiar with, you know, reality. Byzantine knife laws make the least sense out of pretty much anything because at the end of the day blade is a blade, and there is self-evidently no such thing, for example, as a "high capacity assault knife." You could cut someone just as well with a 4" paring knife from the Dollar General as you could with the latest tactical spring loaded all black half serrated tanto point karambit switchblade from 5.11 or Emerson. Or a chunk of obsidian you've knapped on a rock, for that matter. One sharpened chunk of metal is much the same as any other from the standpoint of someone wanting to perform mischief with it -- or one having mischief performed upon them with it.
(And that's notwithstanding the racist motivations that underpin specifically the US federal switchblade ban, balisong bans, and "dirk and dagger" laws.)
But this. This is easily the single most likely thing I've got liable to keep a harebrained legislator up at nights worrying.
I've probably had it for about 20 years, and I'm pretty sure I bought it from BudK back in the day, when I was in one of my "get it before it's banned" moods.
Yes, this is a punch or push dagger. It is an early example of a brandless OEM Chinese special, so it never to my knowledge had any name or formal model designation, and while I can't find its exact ilk for sale anymore you can still find things online rather like it. If you prefer a brand name option, the Cold Steel FGX Push Blade leaps to mind. It has very little utilitarian purpose. This blade, it is made for stabbin'.
It's also made entirely of G-10, and is therefore completely nonmetallic.
In last week's column I gave an overview of a ceramic bladed folding knife, which doesn't have a metallic blade. But it still had a metallic liner, clip, and screws and therefore would not pass through a metal detector. This doesn't, and it absolutely would.
But even still, don't try it.
This "knife" is a 5" long, 0.175" thick, single flat piece of textured G-10, which has a cord wrapped T handle and a flat ground "blade" profile milled into it. For its part, G-10 is extremely strong for its weight (in total here only 17.4 grams or 0.62 ounces) and also surprisingly rigid. But considering that the thing and the whole of the thing is just fiberglass suspended in an epoxy resin, it doesn't actually hold an edge worth a damn. Like, at all.
So while there is an edge bevel on it, it's not even sharp enough to make a reliable letter opener. Even if you carefully sharpened it, it's unlikely it would last for more than one cut. The material is just too soft and prone to abrasion.
But that's not the point. The point is the point, and this knife is probably quite stout enough to Render Unto Caesar that what is Caesar's. Maybe not all 23 times, but certainly at least once. As a last-ditch holdout, it would seriously inconvenience anyone you punched with it although I imagine given how soft the material is it would utterly fail to penetrate leather or even the cheapest soft body armor.
Even so, I would not want to have this coming at me unexpectedly in the dark.
I present this to you bare, because although it did arrive with a belt sheath -- which ironically contained a large steel button snap on it, completely defeating its implied purpose -- this was made of fake leather so abysmal that it literally disintegrated into fish flakes while in storage in my knife cabinet. So I threw it away. Maybe some day I'll 3D print a replacement one, or something.
Whatevs. I'm obviously not carrying this thing with me anywhere, so I can't think of a single thing that's a lower priority.
The Inevitable Conclusion
It's probably because of things like this that all of our airports have switched over from plain metal detectors to those backscatter X-ray machines now.
It's all theater, though. Both that and this. Despite what the hysterical shriekers would have you believe if they could, to the nearest couple of decimal points no one is actually smuggling these anywhere, nor are they the crux of any kind of secret terrorist plot, and while we're at it nor is anyone realistically going to successfully use it as a last-ditch self defense tool when so many other ones are both better and just as readily available.
Even so, it's sometimes nice to know that just by owning something like this you're pissing off the right people, even if only passively.
A knife is a poor self defense weapon because, even with ample training and practice, if you pull it you're going to get cut.
The KA-BAR TDI design attempts to mitigate the risk. It's a last ditch weapon, worn on your weak side assuming your strong side and primary weapon are tied up.
It's even worse with the original sheath design, which was a low-rise belt loop with a full width, fold-over button snap retention flap. There was no way to draw it quickly.
This "knife" has no real purpose other than novelty, I'm sure.
Totally mall ninja. You probably know more about all this than I do. But, grab a TDI if you don't have one already. I'm pretty impressed with why they designed it the way they did and how solid it is for the price.