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Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Remember the first rule of gunfighting... "have a gun."''
|''Jeff Cooper''}}
Both a [[Stock Phrase]] and a staple of the [[Action Adventure Tropes|action genre]]. A character comes into the scene armed with what he thinks is sufficient, only to find out he is severely outclassed weapon-wise, because he brought the entirely wrong ''type'' of weapon (usually the superior weapon is revealed after the first person has committed to a fight). Could lead to a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] (which would make it a [[Pre-Mortem One-Liner]], or maybe a [[Bond One-Liner]] if uttered after), or the character running for his life.
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Elmer Keith is the [[Trope Namer]]... he was a gunwriter and Idaho cowpuncher, and the phrase is sometimes called "Keith's First Law".
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* Parodied in a Geico ad series which
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
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** Marv also took out a SWAT team that were armed with automatic rifles while all he had was a hatchet.
== [[
* ''[[Forged in Fire]]'' has Brutus Bones say this exactly, after shooting a knife-wielding antagonist.
* Occurs in ''[[The Shocker Legit|Shocker: Legit]]'':
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* As much as it is a love letter to the [[Katanas Are Just Better]], ''[[Kill Bill]]'' follows this rule. Nearly any time the Bride's Katana is pitted against a gun, the gun wins, such as when the Bride charges into Budd's trailer, he is able to subdue her with a shotgun. And when she invades Bill's home, she's got a pistol out as her primary weapon rather than the sword slung on her back.
* Subverted in ''Yojimbo'', where during the climactic confrontation {{spoiler|Sanjūrō's knife-throwing skills turn out to be more deadly accurate that Unosuke's gunslinger skills.}}
* Parodied in ''[[30 Minutes or Less]]'' with "You just brought a gun to a bomb fight, officer!"
* The final scene of ''[[The Warriors (film)|The Warriors]]'' has Swan, knife in hand, facing down Luther and his gun. Weirdly enough, Luther shoots, but Swan dodges and ''nobody else gets harmed''. Nobody else, that is, except for Luther, who takes a knife to his gun hand.
* ''[[War Horse]]'' has a scene in [[World War I]] where the British cavalry appears to have caught the German encampment flatfooted, only to find that the Germans were prepared with a hidden defensive line of machine guns to mow them down. As a German officer says afterward, "Did you think we'd have a camp on open ground without it being defended?"
* In the BBC adaptation of ''[[Tom Jones]]'', when Lord Fellamar's attempted rape of Sophia is interrupted by her father, he turns his sword on the older man, assuring him that his class and education have well prepared him for anything the squire can dish out. Squire Western pulls out a pistol and promptly shoots out one of Fellamar's knees.
* Routinely inverted by the
== [[Literature]] ==
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* McKay in ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' is cornered by the Genii into finding the location of all the pieces of a device to reveal a Zero-Point Module. Upon finding it on a wall-sized map, he asks for a knife, which the Genii are reluctant to give.
{{quote|'''McKay:''' You all have ''guns.'' Someone give me a knife.}}
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* [[Bruce Lee]] himself mentioned that this would be a stupid idea, although he was talking about using martial arts against guns but the idea is still the same.▼
* This may be inverted in [[Real Life]] if the knife-user is skilled and/or the gun-user isn't. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Opinions differ]] on the details, but at very close ranges the one with the knife has a lot of advantages, which is compounded by the fact that outside of the police/military, people often massively overestimate their own ability to use a gun effectively.▼
** All things being equal, guns are better at distance of 10 m or more. At 3 m or less, the knifeman really may win. Between 3 and 10 m, everything depends on the gunman's skills (or rather lack of them). Most people are able to shoot only one shot at the time a running man can cover that distance, and if it misses, the knifeman literally has the edge. People not trained on handguns are likely to miss against a moving target, even at short distances.▼
** One of many reasons the Bayonet was invented. Shoot if he's far, fight if he's near.▼
** What many people, including above, miss about the [[wikipedia:Tueller Drill|Tueller Drill]] is that 21 feet, or whatever, is the distance at which a person with a melee weapon becomes a threat to a gunman. Somewhat later on, people added the notion of the knife "winning" from some distance below that, which is very far from reality: someone with a gun is a lethal threat from maximum effective range down to 0.0m. The distance issue is more about not getting stabbed at all; the actual chance of the assailant both executing a stab and not taking severe return fire afterwards - and the human body is all but guaranteed to retain motor functions to complete draw-and-shoot even after a hit - are never ones you'd want to bet on. In other words, there are techniques to defend against a knife-wielding runner-in, but no sane martial training suggests knife-wielding running-in as a viable method of countering a firearm. [[Taking You with Me|More than once in one's life, anyways.]]▼
*** One has somewhat better odds with slightly larger melee weapons; being hacked with a sword or axe or smashed with a club ''does'' tend to interfere with return fire, though certainly not enough to make it a sure thing or even a particularly good idea.▼
* In 2013, a man armed with a baseball bat and a knife attempted to rob a gun store in Portland, Oregon. [http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/us/gun-robber-armed-with-bat/ It ended about how you'd expect.]▼
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* A mugger finds himself on the wrong end of this trope in [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/02242005/ this] ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' strip.
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' once had a mobster who realized that he had brought a [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-07-30 prybar to a gunfight.]
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* [[Bruce Lee]] himself mentioned that this would be a stupid idea, although he was talking about using martial arts against guns but the idea is still the same.
▲* This may be inverted in [[Real Life]] if the knife-user is skilled and/or the gun-user isn't. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Opinions differ]] on the details, but at very close ranges the one with the knife has a lot of advantages, which is compounded by the fact that outside of the police/military, people often massively overestimate their own ability to use a gun effectively.
▲** All things being equal, guns are better at distance of 10 m or more. At 3 m or less, the knifeman really may win. Between 3 and 10 m, everything depends on the gunman's skills (or rather lack of them). Most people are able to shoot only one shot at the time a running man can cover that distance, and if it misses, the knifeman literally has the edge. People not trained on handguns are likely to miss against a moving target, even at short distances.
▲** One of many reasons the Bayonet was invented. Shoot if he's far, fight if he's near.
▲** What many people, including above, miss about the [[wikipedia:Tueller Drill|Tueller Drill]] is that 21 feet, or whatever, is the distance at which a person with a melee weapon becomes a threat to a gunman. Somewhat later on, people added the notion of the knife "winning" from some distance below that, which is very far from reality: someone with a gun is a lethal threat from maximum effective range down to 0.0m. The distance issue is more about not getting stabbed at all; the actual chance of the assailant both executing a stab and not taking severe return fire afterwards - and the human body is all but guaranteed to retain motor functions to complete draw-and-shoot even after a hit - are never ones you'd want to bet on. In other words, there are techniques to defend against a knife-wielding runner-in, but no sane martial training suggests knife-wielding running-in as a viable method of countering a firearm. [[Taking You with Me|More than once in one's life, anyways.]]
▲*** One has somewhat better odds with slightly larger melee weapons; being hacked with a sword or axe or smashed with a club ''does'' tend to interfere with return fire, though certainly not enough to make it a sure thing or even a particularly good idea.
▲* In 2013, a man armed with a baseball bat and a knife attempted to rob a gun store in Portland, Oregon. [http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/us/gun-robber-armed-with-bat/ It ended about how you'd expect.]
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