Its kinda crazy to me how someone can stab 18 people before someone is able to stop them. Were all the victims alone with nobody close to stop the suspect? I probably would chicken out aswell in a situation where im not close, but if somebody gets stabbed right next to me, there is nothing to do but fight is there?
In my youth I used to fight Muay Thai professionally and did so for about ten years. I would be very confident taking on a random person in fisticuffs but I would rank my chances against someone with a knife very, very poorly.
Knives give an obvious reach advantage. Also just one nasty slice or one well placed stab and you're fucked where generally most people will take a few well placed strikes to stop. The odds just aren't in your favour.
Basically the safest thing to do against someone with a knife is run for your life or get your hands on a weapon that's longer than the knife if you can't run.
When I was practicing jujitsu, our instructors were pretty unanimous that they would rather be robbed by someone with a gun than with a knife. Not that your odds are great against any weapons, but a gun only has one dangerous bit. The first time I was learning to disarm someone armed with a knife I was told "If you fight someone with a knife, you're going to get cut, no question."
In the time I spend figuring out what happened, I'm probably also getting stabbed. If not, I'd be wondering if it was targetted (and therefore I'm safe) as I'm running away, but I haven't planned an escape route yet, so I'm just as likely to crash into an obstacle as I am to run away.
That makes a lot more sense then. This is no laughing matter but for the lack of a better example he was basically on a stealth mission then, quickly and silently killing people to maximise the damage he could do.
Not a whole bunch you can do without some kind of polearm or range weapon. At most you can try stabbing him back if you happen to have a knife, but you'll probably both bleed out. More than likely some of those 18 people who were attacked were likely hurt trying to help.
Idk if a liveleaks equivalent still exists, but back in the day you could see the results of unarmed people trying to disarm someone with a knife. It's usually not pretty even if it's a couple people working together.
I think the poles that allow you to pin someone down are prob going to be more common place in places like the UK or Australia .