Most people survive lethal encounters because they are lucky, not because they were prepared. If you look at the FBI stats on police officers killed and assaulted, you will see that the majority of deaths occur from 0 to 5 feet and that almost all nonlethal assaults occur in the same range.
If you attempt to access a tool when confronted by a lethal threat inside of this range, as your primary response, you will lose. You must have the unarmed skills to allow you the time to access tools [be it gun, knife, hand grenade, whatever
].
Most classes deal with the mechanics of shooting. They are skills-development classes. There is nothing wrong with that and I believe they are a great starting point to allow the interested student to incorporate his 'gun skills' into his 'fight skills'. Heck, Surgical Speed Shooting is, by far, the most popular OPS class and it is nothing but skills-development. But it is not enough.
When looking at 'gun skills', you must maintain a combative perspective. Your gunhandling must support your 'fight skills'. Do you have a retention position incorporated and utilized in your presentation? Do you have a reactive or protected position to allow you to use the gun in the 0 -5 foot envelope when the bad guy is pressuring you? Have you worked these skills in force-on-force? Do they hold up?
There is no 'magic pill' that will allow you to be safe. Learning to effectively utilize unarmed skills as well as tool-based skills [gun, knife, OC, baton,whatever] is a physical and mental process. You will be tired. You will be sore. Anyone who pretends this is not the case is selling you a bill of goods.
When is the knife superior to the pistol? The knife is superior when I am in the position where I can access my knife and I cannot access my firearm or the proxemics are such that accessing my firearm would most likely result in a weapon retention issue or, due to the dynamic nature of the struggle, I have more appropiate targets available to the knife. My biggest concern when accessing a folder is the number of mechanations required prior to the establishment of a good grip [remove, open, grip] as opposed to the pistol [grip, remove]. By going with a small fixed blade, my knife access is very similar to my gun access [grip, remove].