my only edged weapon...PumaTAC1 
Posted on 01/28/2006 6:11:13 PM PST by Copernicus
OPPRESSIVE KNIFE LAWS
by Bernard Levine (c)1998 published in BLADE Magazine
In BLADE Magazine, back in the first half of 1997, I offered a six-part compilation of the many and varied knife laws of our fifty states. But what are these laws really about? Why do we have them? Do they actually do any good?
To me these questions are far more interesting than the details of the laws themselves. Here is how I see the answers.
* * *
> THE LAWS ON THE BOOKS
Nearly every state has knife laws. So does the federal government. So also do countless cities and towns -- except where the state legislature has pre-empted this sort of ordinance, retaining a monopoly for itself.
These knife laws are artifacts of fear -- of prejudice and uncertainty. If you know a little American history, you can look at a knife law's wording, and tell when it was first enacted.
* If it speaks of bowie knives and Arkansas toothpicks, it dates back to the second quarter of the 19th century, to the rapid and sometimes lawless expansion of settlement in the Mississippi River basin.
* If it speaks of concealed dirks and daggers, it dates to the wave of anarchist and pro-German terror bombings around 1915-1918, which frightened an entire generation of Americans into surrendering their liberty.
* If it speaks of switchblades and gravity knives, it dates to the "West Side Story" era of the late 1950s, when the mass media drummed up fear of teen-age gangs, and of violence by immigrant refugees with too many vowels in their names.
* And if it speaks of school grounds, and "dangerous" weapons, it most likely dates to the convulsive expansion of puritanical prior restraint of our own politically correct era.
*
> THE GREAT DIVIDE
Ever since its first European settlements, in the early 1600s, America developed as two completely different republics. We have been politically divided ever since, and will always remain so. This is because our two founding republican traditions are both opposite and irreconcilable.
On one side of the divide were the agrarian republicans like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with their foundation stones of equal creation, personal freedom, and the inalienable rights of every citizen. Theirs was a republic of innate virtue, where crime and vice were nothing more than aberrations. An individual's misbehavior was only of concern to the State when other citizens had been harmed by it.
On the other side of the divide were the puritanical republicans like the autocratic clergyman, Cotton Mather. These men believed all citizens to be innate sinners, irresistibly driven to dastardly deeds unless rigidly restrained by the State. Their puritan republic, their City of God, was like a brittle chain, which a single weak link would sunder. In their world, even the slightest mis-step from pious purity had to be prevented at all cost. Countless detailed laws and regulations were devised, and then constantly revised, in order to eliminate every possibility of straying. To the true puritan -- whether pious Christian, secular humanist, or leveling socialist -- notions of rights and responsibilities are meaningless. All that matters is the prevention of sin. No form of prior restraint can be too severe, if it advances this fundamental goal.
Guess which side gave us our knife laws.
> WHY THEY DO IT
The puritanical impulse is a deep one. We all have it. It is founded in the fear that other people's freedom of action is a threat to our own safety, our own sanctity. It is the impulse to make the other fellow toe the mark.
The puritan knows that his own motives are good, but he does not trust yours. By regulating every detail of everyone else's life, he believes he can prevent crime before it happens. This is so much neater and safer than waiting to punish actual crimes after the fact.
The puritan impulse is the wish to make all risk disappear. This seems much more direct than learning how to manage or avoid risk, and much less demanding than arming oneself to defend against risk. The puritan, like the primitive shaman, seeks to make everything right in the world by magical words of command.
Has it ever worked? Can it ever work? Look at the record -- it has never been successful. Puritanism is, at bottom, simple tyranny, and tyranny is doomed to failure.
But puritanism's unbroken record of failure will not stop people from trying again and again. Every new generation is born with faith in the power of magic words -- written laws -- to prevent sin. And every American generation for the past century and a half has produced its own new wave of oppressive and futile knife laws.
> THE RATIONALE OF REPRESSION
No one but a puritan would imagine that a particular TYPE of knife, lying in a drawer in someone's private home, should be construed as a crime. "Some knives are just inherently dangerous," said a New York state senator in 1958 -- a sentiment often echoed since then. To a puritan this is self-evident truth. To an agrarian it is poppycock. Here is why the two outlooks are so different.
An agrarian republican recognizes that other people are his equals, no better and no worse. Curtailing another man's freedom does not enhance one's own, but merely encourages the other man to return the "favor," in a descending spiral of mutual repression.
But to a puritan, on the other hand, repression is the whole point of law and government. Without repression there would be chaos. Then sin would prevail, and we would all go to hell in a handcart.
The agrarian republicans, when they were in power back in the 1780s, generously extended their 'live and let live' philosophy to every citizen -- including even their puritan opponents. Since that time, the puritans have made full use of this grant of liberty, to enact all the tyrannical regulations and prior restraint that they desired. And they generously extended their increasingly oppressive rule to every citizen -- including of course the agrarians. For the puritans it was a 'heads I win, tails you lose' proposition. To this day, the few remaining agrarians have never figured out what hit them.
But puritans can be selectively tolerant -- in their own distinctive way. They insist upon extending their repressive laws to people who disagree with them. But they generally exempt one small group from all of their laws and rules -- namely their own leaders. I guess the theory must be that their leaders are so exalted and pure, that their foibles are not really sins at all. Their transgressions will not endanger the community, the way yours or mine would. This was just as true in William Bradford's Plymouth and Cotton Mather's Boston, as it was three centuries later in Joseph P. Kennedy's Boston and Adolf Hitler's Berlin, and as it is today in Bill Clinton's Washington.
Check yer nives and shootin irons at the hat counter bump..
When stainless steel was first used for knife blades it was not very good. I still don't think it is the very best but plenty of fine blades are made of stainless now, and it is no problem getting them to keep an edge. It can be a problem putting an edge on some of them, particularly Buck knives.
I've always have carried an automatic knife......
my only edged weapon...PumaTAC1
I have some of these Kershaw Spring Assist knives:
http://www.bladehq.com/item--Kershaw-Avalanche-Spring--144
Easy one-hand operation.
L
Very good article. It applies far beyond the narrow scope of knives.
Many people on this forum would agree with its narrow scope but contradict themselves on it's wider application to issues such as the war on drugs, anti-smoking laws, pornography and other inalienable rights.
"-- puritanism's unbroken record of failure will not stop people from trying again and again.
Every new generation is born with faith in the power of magic words -- written laws -- to prevent sin.
And every American generation for the past century and a half has produced its own new wave of oppressive and futile [prohibitive] laws. --"
As you note Zon, great essay..
Lets see what some of FR's foremost prohibitionists have to say about the war on knives..
Things like that always make me begin doubting the "conclusions" in such pieces ~ not necessarily the "facts" or "factoids", but the secondary results of too-casual analysis of the situation.
Frankly, once you've missed being "bombed" you develop a clear-cut aversion to the idea that bombers should be allowed to run loose.
The Democrats, on the other hand, think nothing of mad bombers getting Presidential pardons or commutations of sentence. We even have a case where one convicted bomber became a serious campaign advisor to the highest levels of the Democratic party (SEE: Brent Kimberlin for example).
Get a SOG Flash II. Its my favorite assisted opening folder.
As fast as an auto, without the legal troubles.
I have three of them.
In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
In St. Louis, it's illegal to sit on the curb of any city street and drink beer from a bucket.
It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
So there.
;It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
Well I guess thats one place Camilla is safe.
Check out the Columbia River (CRKT) Assisted Openers. I have both the Wild Weasel and the Voodoo. Faster than a switchblade. Always handy, and very good steel. Like the credit card, ya shouldnt leave home without it.
Can you own one of these up your way yet?
Check out Emerson Knives. Fastest draw out of the pocket around with the "wave" feature. Superb quality knife!
There are several different blade lengths and several different models of assisted openers.
There are lots of options, even if you can only carry a sub 2 inch folder. And they are really reasonably priced.
I recall that in some state I lived in, it was legal to own a switchblade - but only if you were missing an arm! I saw one that I liked in a store in Atlanta - and the clerk said "you can't carry it, though". So I asked her, "so how do I get it out of the store"? The clerk just got totally confused. The girl I was with though that was pretty funny...
Well, there was a Russian knife called the pilum that was available back in the 80's that probably did qualify as inherently dangerous. When you activated a lever a powerful spring inside would actually shoot the blade out of the handle at a respectable velocity. From what I've read of it though you were more likely to accidentally discharge it than you were to actually shoot it at anything.
Interestingly they are now extremely illegal and you'll do more time for having one than you would for possessing an illegal machinegun. You can look up the details by googling "ballistic knife".
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