By assigning knife regulations to its legislature, the state of Arizona has eliminated a patchwork of conflicting local laws and become what a report in The New York Times calls “a knife carrier’s dream, a place where everything from a samurai sword to a switchblade can be carried without a quibble.”
Arizona’s transformation, and the recent lifting of a ban on switchblades, stilettos, dirks and daggers in New Hampshire, has given new life to the knife rights lobby, the little-known cousin of the more politically potent gun rights movement.
A main driver behind this “transformation” is Knife Rights, “a membership advocacy organization…dedicated to [p]roviding knife and edged tool owners an effective voice to influence public policy and to oppose efforts to restrict the right to own, use and carry knives and edged tools,” and other objectives defined in the mission statements of the lobbying group and its companion foundation.
Naturally, as the movement gains momentum, it gains opposition. While it’s refreshing to learn of the progressive stance taken by the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police on lifting the switchblade ban, opposition from The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police advocating local jurisdiction seems tailored to guarantee knife owners being caught up in a tangle of edicts designed to make the safest “legal “course one of personal forfeiture of rights. And Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. sounds like he’s copied his objections from the Brady Campaign playbook:
“What makes these knives so dangerous is the ease with which they can be concealed and brandished,” Mr. Vance said of the illegal switchblades and gravity knives, which require a wrist flip to open instead of a switchblade’s spring, that were bought by undercover agents.
There’s little doubt where an unchecked regulatory impulse will lead, and we have only to look “across the pond” to our friends in the United Kingdom to see the ridiculous extent people who don’t trust others with tools will go in the name of “safety.”
From The Sunday Times:
The first “anti-stab” knife is to go on sale in Britain, designed to work as normal in the kitchen but to be ineffective as a weapon.
The knife has a rounded edge instead of a point and will snag on clothing and skin to make it more difficult to stab someone.
And while there appears to be no mandate—yet—to replace kitchen knives throughout the realm under force of decree, that doesn’t mean the government is not interested:
The knife… has been tested with “very favourable” results by the Home Office’s Design and Technology Alliance - set up to research products that can deter crime.
Ridiculous. But remember, these are people who don’t trust their subjects with to drink beer out of a glass in pubs.
Free people don’t depend on a government to trust them: it’s supposed to work the other way around. We were meant to be a Republic of adults with rights and attendant responsibilities in securing and exercising our Liberty.
We have a right to tools, even if those tools can be deployed as weapons.
"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.... [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." (Tench Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.)
Yeah, right. Privileged, multi-generational career parasite Cyrus Vance and some politically-ambitious cop administrators don’t trust you to have the judgment to carry a knife without their say-so, and their answer is “No.”
I wonder if they realize they don’t get the last word?
Photo © Oleg Volk. Used with permission. Be sure and check out more of his fantastic work at OlegVolk.net.
Also see:
- Obama's Customs agency declares war on pocket knives
- When gun bans are not enough--the war on . . . pocket knives?
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A taxing proposition
Oregon Firearms Federation reminds supporters of a fundraising opportunity:
Oregon allows you to make a donation to a political action committee and actually get a tax credit for that donation. This is not a “deduction.” This is a credit. That means that if you send $50.00, or you and your spouse send $100.00 to OFF’s political action committee, you get to take that amount off of any money that you will owe…in 2011.
Click here to learn how Oregon gun owners can “take some of the money the state plans to extract from your wallet and channel it instead to the defense of your gun rights.”
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Comments
I first heard about Knife Rights on GunTalk
Yeah, Tom Gresham sent me the NYT story link on Sunday--he's a board member.
The cool thing about Arizona is not that it has a better class of cop -- because Arizona cops have routinely opposed EVERY liberalization of weapons laws here, including CCW, guns in restaurants, guns on campuses, and constitutional carry -- but that we don't have a knee-jerk legislature that automatically values the cops' preferences over everybody else's.
Britain takes the cake! What next?...........rubber pencils?
Shhhh! Don't give them any ideas. If they can do it there, they'll try it here, too. Next thing you know, we'll all be wearing paper clothes because they deem sewing needles and scissors too sharp to trust the People to handle safely.
While I'm not convinced I ever needed a stab free knife or a shatter proof beer stein, I would be forever grateful to our British cousins if they could invent the stupid free politician.
DDS -- NRA Life Member
I am more trustworthy than the BEST government employee. They can't be trusted with a dull pencil; I can be trusted to not harm innocent people, with a fully-functional machine gun or Excalibur, no matter where I happen to be.
As are most of us. The government is scared of armed citizens because we can ultimately so NO. And they do not like that idea. We need the political system Jefferson envisioned. Someone serves just a few years and then returns to the job and life they had before.
And as Tence Coxe said, Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American....
I'm waiting for my M16A4 and my Abrams M1A1 tank.
Seems like these issues have already been abused by the courts system though. Nanchucku etc. have been made illegal. Why not a knife? Any knife? The degree to which big brother will go has no bounds...
Pointless knives? Forks have points. How about cut resistant knives? It's not about safety; it's about control.
I suppose swords are out of the question, since they're decorative, a badge of rank and an military collectible and weapon.
I wonder what it is that they object to? Oh yeah, freedom and liberty that they don't approve of. Maybe somebody should remove them.
Apparently a Samurai sword is no legal to carry in Arizona.
In Texas, (one of the 3-4 states most associated with the Boie Knife and Jim Bowie), the Bowie Knife is EXPLICITLY illegal by name.
Go figure.
Somebody pinch me; some good news for a change.
It’s good to know that people living in Arizona will be able to take their knives to a gun fight!
Personally David I’m glad you included a quote from Tenche Coxe.
In my opinion Tenche should be our national hero it was his vision that led this nation to use machine tools at Harpers Ferry in 1803 that started the Industrial revolution in this nation that made the USA a true Super Power.
By 1803 this USA was producing 40,000 standards of weapons a year for the militia/military.
If it wasn’t for Tenche Coxe we would not have had the weapons to defeat the British in the War of 1812
By 1867 due to the vision of Tenche Coxe the USA led the world in machine tool manufacturing.
NO one could surpass the USA in machine tooling until LBJ began to give it all away.
Today the machine tool companies that made this country great are ALL but gone.
Tenche Coxe’s dream of an industrialized country that would be the envy of the world is all but over and sadly most people have never heard his name.
Thank You David
But... but... what anout hammers??? Even those wicked rubber mallets of the sort used in body shops, can inflict massive head trauma! Ban hammers; we must do it for the children. And socks! They can be filled with sand or salt and also used as bludgeons! Ban socks! For the children!
Personally, I find it perverse that many states which issue pistol permits, whether CCW or open carry, maintain laws banning the carry of Bowies, or in fact, even hunting or sheath knives with blades over four or five inches. The Second Amendment makes no such restriction. And the muslim bastards on the 9-11 flights used box cutters. So, where is the safety?
Oh - that's right - criminals don't follow the law, do they?
btw - my father knew Cy Vance, the father. He was a prick, too.
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