I have noted that the TV stations in my area are showing a photo of the knife used by the attacker of the three policemen in the run-up to the NYC Times Square New Year's celebration, and calling it a "machete". Whether it is the actual knife (that is what they seem to be implying) or a stock photo, it appears that they know even less about knives than about firearms. At about age 12 (decades ago), when I first encountered one, hanging on the wall of a friends house, his father (who bought it from a Gurhka guard at an American airbase in India at which he served in WW II), told me that it was a Gurhka Knife. A few years later I found out that the Gurhkas carried them as their primary mode of close quarters combat, and that they were very lethal with them, and what we in the U.S. called a Gurhka Knife back then was properly named a Kukri by the Gurhkas (who are native to Nepal).
That somewhat lengthy tale shows that the press cannot tell a Gurhka Knife, or, more accurately, a Kukri, from a machete. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
That somewhat lengthy tale shows that the press cannot tell a Gurhka Knife, or, more accurately, a Kukri, from a machete. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.