Thread: Knives, rights, etc.

Originally Posted by Kriton

I can't really say it any better than this folks, read this little article and you tell me what the hell is going on in the world?

London article

K

PS: And just so we don't overlook the old land of the brave and free:

Washington Post article

SO glad I don't live in Britain. Here in TX you could hold the guy at gunpoint, and the police would thank you for it.

From the Times article:

This bracelet would:
• take the place of an airline boarding pass
• contain personal information about the traveler
• be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage
• shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

Notice the cool things the bracelet does get scarier with each bullet point!

I can't believe that any court would punish that guy for what he did. The facts point out exactly the problem: the shop owner is out about $500 for the window, the guy that held the hood is arrested, and the hood gets off scot free. It really doesn't pay to be a nice guy I guess.

A lot of this comes from well-meaning (we assume) people trying to solve a problem that they don't understand. What you end up with is some sort of knee-jerk reaction that sometimes finds its way into statute. For example, some of the characteristics of an "assault rifle" that constituted the assault rifle ban were literally laughable. These had to be written by someone who wouldn't know which end of the thing points in which direction.

On the bracelets: my wife won't even let us buy one of those electronic toll passes -- you know, the cards you adhere to your windshield that let you drive through the tolls? She thinks it lets government track our movements -- which, of course, it might.

quickO-> yeah, he added that after I'd commented, but once I read it, I just shrugged and said, well, I haven't flown in years, and now I'm never going to. to paraphrase a great patriot, they can put one on me when they put it on my cold dead wrist.

nordJ-> agree. notice the ban on bayonet lugs? lemme tell ya, drive-by bayonettings are a real problem in some places >:-}

Originally Posted by jockeys

quickO-> yeah, he added that after I'd commented, but once I read it, I just shrugged and said, well, I haven't flown in years, and now I'm never going to. to paraphrase a great patriot, they can put one on me when they put it on my cold dead wrist.

nordJ-> agree. notice the ban on bayonet lugs? lemme tell ya, drive-by bayonettings are a real problem in some places >:-}

Yeah. I think I'll rap them smartly on the nose with my bayonet lug. That'll teach them.

j

Strange thing is that I have a perfectly legal bolt-action rifle with a bayonet lug. This is a problem?

j

Of course it is- someone might get hurt by your lug! You need to see a certified machinist and have that dangerous thing filed completely off. Make sure he's certified though because filing is such a dangerous practice as well.

Thankfully, that bracelet thing just seems to be a bureaucrat's solution which will likely get tossed aside. You have to wonder though: is he really ok with it? Maybe it's just the way I was raised, but I wouldn't be ok with proposing that. It's just not an option that would present itself. I could see this technology on prisoners, a la Con Air, but regular Joe Shmoe? Please... I guess it just goes along with becoming sheeple: get tagged (RFID), sheared (taxed to hell), and sent to our padded, safe pen with the wise herder (Big Brother) to watch out for us.

These things are are not knee jerk reactions to societys problems they are using them to herd you like sheep, to keep you in line, unable to do anything for fear of legalities, It will be like the old Soviet Union the bureaucrats will have their privileges and the mafia will have their liberty and you will be caught in between, not knowing which extortionist is kicking your door in late at night. Its about Greed and Power. Do you want to see the future? Picture a humans face being stomped by a jackboot again and again and again, forever!..... Please forgive the poor paraphrase of Orwell.
BTW: wasnt it a few years back some englishman found intruders in his house and shot them as he should, and then the govt gave the surviving criminal the money to sue the homeowner.

Why am I not surprised at the vote count here at Straight Razor Place? My vote was the same, to be sure. If I'm wearing my pants, I'm generally carrying a Swiss Army Knife or a stockman-style pocketknife, and if I've got my sportcoat or suit, I've usually got my Tool Logic with its fearsome-looking little blade (which of course, by the time I got it out, would be way past any usefulness as a weapon--weaponry being totally beside the point for my knives anyway).

I'm very much a liberal Democrat but find it difficult to be an absolutist about weapons laws. I think, realistically, we have to realize that weapons--guns more than knives--have a very different place in the social ecology of a gang-ridden, economically and socially devastated urban neighborhood than in a rural community (of the type I grew up in), and I think communities need some flexibility in deciding how they are going to regulate weapons. At the same time, I'm not sure that more prohibition is going to help when there are so many other factors going into urban violence. The recent Supreme Court decision makes the question of absolute prohibition moot anyway. I'd like to think it will push state and local governments, and non-government groups as well, to more creative and effective solutions, but who knows ...

Rich

What these arguments all come down to is this:

Do YOU have the right to defend yourself from attack? Does your government agree with you?

Weather it be a knife as this thread is about or a gun as others have been this is what it comes down to. Fortunately in the US so far most of the time the answer to both has been yes. It seems that increasingly the English answer is NO.

I can't find the reference right now but I remember reading about a British woman who was arrested for carrying a pepper shaker. Thats right a pepper shaker, not pepper spray, but a shaker for ground pepper out of her kitchen. She was convicted of carrying a dangerous weapon, because she believed she might be able to use that to defend herself in case of a mugging. Or to put it simply she was convicted of the crime of believing she had a right to defend herself from an attack.

I thank God every day I live here because its been a very long time since I needed a Nanny to watch over me.

By the way I have never carried a knife with the intention that it be for self-defense, unless for some reason a gun was not allowed. If they took away my knife I'd carry a kubokan, take away that and I'd still carry a very sturdy ball point.