I've been once threatened by an ex-gf with a knife, telling me she was gonna kill me. You know what I felt ? A mild worry, "come on, drop that, it's not worth it". She threw it across the kitchen and cried in my arms (difficult breakup, she has an history of family violence and alcohol abuse and comes from Myanmar, a tough place. We're both fine).
She would have had, to actually endanger me:
- to have enough strength to penetrate anything
- the courage to see a lot of blood and cries to actually go through with a full murder
- resist me fighting her back if it went to that, close range
- not react to any rational argument I would beg her to listen to while she attacked me
It was a bit traumatizing, but we laugh at it now... she failed at the first rational argument I presented "don't do it, don't ruin your life for a guy".
Imagine if we were in a gun country, and she pressed the trigger accidentally... it's not the same, you must understand that, knife murders are really really hard, gun murders really really easy.