Same here - I’ve lived on the border and worked on it.
I once crossed the border from Montana into Canada on a camping trip. Immigration Canada asked me the standard questions, including weapons. I remembered that I had a survival knife with a switchblade in my gear and told them.
Nope - not authorized and I was told I could not enter Canada. I didn’t give them any lip, even though the nearest city for a gang fight was 250 miles away. I politely turned around, went back to the concrete pylon border marker in the no-man’s land between border stations, buried the knife under a rock one inch inside the USA, turned back to Canada, politely said I didn’t have it any more and consented to a full search of the car, was cleared, and moved on into Canada for my camping trip.
They saw what I was doing from both border stations, but I didn’t give anybody any lip, and had no problems.
Four days later I came back to the USA, stopped by the rock and got the knife and came on home.
Now imagine if I had given these guys an attitude like the Canadian A-hole. I’d probably be in jail on a weapons charge.
That’s cool. Similar incident when I entered Chile. My backpack was checked, but did have some sharp edged thingy.
They emptied my back pack in front of me and wanted to know what the purpose was for each and every item, including the first aid kit.
I was told not to carry the sharp edged thingy unless I was in the area I said I intended on carrying it and even then, it might be a good idea to keep it in the bottom of the backpack, so I won’t get hassled by another soldier.
I said sure, that is what I thought the law was and no problemo. They even helped me put it all back together and asked about some of the technical stuff such as my GPS, Bino’s, waterproof paper.
Nice guys and I had a great vacation. Some of the equipment actually came in handy like my GPS, when I went helicopter snowboarding and wasn’t really sure where I was or if I was actually going the right direction back to the lodge. And the 120 lumen flashlight that helped me see way off into the distance and reassured me. headlamp was handy, while climbing over stuff too.