Aardwolfe:

Heinlein may not have been an authority or a tactician for todays world, but those passages quoted speak volumes of truth.

I"ve had guns and knives as a young man, and I have guns and knives today as a middle aged man (I am however, better looking today then when I was younger.). As a young man, we used to engage in open hand slap fights for practice in the event a fistfight would ever become necessary. We played "chicken" and "stretch" with knives, and we even fought each other with real knives for practice (The rules for practice were no stabbing, no cuts above the throat or below the belly button, light cutting only and the one to draw first blood won.) I learned a very important technique from a cousin for prolonged knife fights that cost me a more than usual amount of blood which I keep in the back of my head to this day and will not tell anyone else about. We used to dress all in black and play hide n seek at night within a designated area using neighborhood yards, garages, gardens, and whatever else would conceal us. Those boyhood experiences, although never lifethreatening have taught me that it is better to be passive and wait for the advantage than it is to be openly powerful and always worrying about your back.

I remember an old "Hawiai Five-0" episode where one of the villans said, "Remember that behind every smile there are teeth".

Given a choice, I would prefer weapons up the wazo at my current age and life's experiences, but if I could go back and talk to myself as a young man, I would tell him to play the weak fool and learn before trying to assert yourself.

Bountyhunter