I keep insisting that people who conceal carry should always have a knife as a twin to their gun. Knives complement handguns exceptionally well, especially inside buildings.
The Tueller Drill is often cited, but this is of an armed police officer *expecting* a knife attack, who still needs more than 21 feet to have an advantage. A civilian, with concealed carry, who is *not* expecting an attack, needs, as a rough guess, 30 feet or more to effectively use their gun this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
However, a sheath knife can be very rapidly drawn, and it provides good quality defense within 5 feet, even being aided by the momentum of the attacker.
Soldiers in trenches in World War I quickly figured out that the ideal combination for hand to hand fighting in a trench was a pistol in one hand and a trench knife in the other. And, if you think about it, the corridors and rooms of a building are not very different from a trench with a ceiling.
But it is also a great combination outside, because you may not be aware of a threat until it is close, and discreetly brandishing a knife is an effective counter to an attack without attracting too much attention in case it isn’t.
Good info. Thanks.
Anyone who is not expecting a knife attack will die. There is no defense against walking by a seemingly friendly person at a party and then getting 10" of steel into your back.
On top of that, 21' is a distance outdoors. There are rarely such distances indoors; houses are a maze of little twisty passages, and the attack can easily come from the room that you just walked by. In most cases the victim will not even know what happened. The killer can lure victims into rooms, thus delaying discovery of his activities.