Posted on 09/29/2017 6:01:55 AM PDT by marktwain
When I came to Australia, I had read of the weapons laws regarding the carry of knives. I had read that knives could only be carried if you had a “good reason” to do so.
I knew how much the “good reason” limitation had been abused in the United States to stop people from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
States like New Jersey, New York, and California are notorious for the abuse of that limitation. I was apprehensive about carrying a pocket knife in Australia.
On arrival, I wrote:
As I talked to the manager, I mentioned that I understood it was illegal to carry a pocket knife. She said that yes, she used to carry a small knife all the time, but she does not do so anymore.
Such are the ways in which liberty dies, a little at a time.After I found my hotel, and checked in, I spent some time walking about the city. It is clean and busy. It seemed odd to be unarmed, and to realize that carrying even a pocket knife is a serious crime.
Now, after almost three months in Australia. I admit, I was wrong about knives and the ability to carry them. In rural Australia, knives are common, and are sold over the counter in many stores. It is true that you are not allowed to carry a knife without a “good reason”. I was quickly informed that a “good reason” is easily met.
Informed people told me that there were two reasons that nearly always would be accepted. First, that the knife was a “rescue tool” in time of need. Not for self defense. Self defense is not a valid reason. But to aid in an auto accident, to cut
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Just not for self defense.
Informed people told me that there were two reasons that nearly always would be accepted.
First, that the knife was a “rescue tool” in time of need. Not for self defense. Self defense is not a valid reason. But to aid in an auto accident, to cut a line, or other rescue purposes, is valid.
Second is “food preparation”. Slicing a salami, peeling fruit, or other food preparation tasks are valid reasons.
The last thing any government needs is people capable of defending themselves. They might think they have unalienable rights, or something.
Thought crimes are a nasty concept.
A pocket knife is a tool. Like a pair of pliers or a screwdriver.
I’ve carried a pocket knife since I was about 9. Even to school. Nobody thought anything about it. Never saw anyone injured by one.
Now, it is not the same.
Urban citizens are crazy. Rural folks understand the utility of opening a letter, cutting open a package, cutting tape, pealing an apple or a pear.
I’m so glad I live in fly over country. (I traveled the West and Midwest for 30+ years. Was a drummer (traveling hardware salesman, or manager).
Only time I was ever questioned about one? I made the mistake of carrying a perfectly legal ($75) small Buck lockback pocket knife to a Trump Rally in NC. The idiot even took my belt sheath with a 4” adjustable wrench & 4” pair of pliers (got that back). They confiscated over 600 pocket knives that day, I’m told.
Now, this is a real knife. I don’t own one, but have thought about it. I do have a machete. This is better.
Why is self-defense against the law?
Something is totally screwed up.
Should be a third reason: to slice open sealed plastic bags. Damned things are hard to open, and my pocket knife comes in handy. Then there are straps, ties, etc. holding bundles of goods that need to be cut to free items for purchase. When hauling stuff in my truck I use duct tape to hold it and red safety flags in place; use of a knife to slice the duct tape away is fast and easy when later unloading. What if you need to slice away a seat belt because you or someone else is trapped in an accident? I constantly carry a pocket knife, but shouldn't because of picking up kids at school, a no-no to have it on school grounds. I don't mean any harm to anyone but I'd be in trouble if searched. Sigh...
Self defence is not against the law in Australia.
Carrying a weapon for self defence is.
But if you happen to be carrying a knife for some other ‘legitimate’ reason, then if you find a need to defend yourself, you may use anything you have to hand provided you act reasonably. Using a weapon is justified in a situation where you have genuine reason to feel you or another person is at risk of death or serious injury.
All those reasons would likely be accepted in Australia as well.
I'm not buying this tangled argument.
Field expedient weapons are uncertain and not to be counted on, when the need presents itself. Unless one is well-trained with a purposeful weapon to employ in self-defense, successful self-defense is highly unlikely.
Here's the problem with needing a "genuine reason" for carrying a self-defense weapon -- one never knows when one is going to need it. There are a lot of dead people who have discovered all too late that they needed a weapon, but only the active shooter in these real life in situtations had a weapon and he is able to kill at will. Running at the shooter with a chair or a briefcase, as suggested in some recent anti-terrorism training I received, is doomed to fail against a DISTANCE weapon like a firearm.
Successful self-defense is effectively against the law in any State or Country that denies its citizens the right to keep and bear arms.
I have had to defend myself. I have never had any legal issues from doing so.
Australian law on self defence is quite straightforward and simple. It's only people outside Australia who ever seem to think it's complicated.
Or a harpoon, or an alligator.
I am sure we all have interesting anecdotes to share -- irate drivers, dogs and their owners, itinerants.
I am prepared to survive the active shooter scenario. When that world of hurt goes down, there is no time to fetch ones weapon from storage. It must be worn and readily available. If one has no other option than to use field expedient weapons against the active shooter, then he can kiss his backside goodbye.
Laws on the justified use (or threatened use) of physical and lethal force present challenges to the defender. These laws need to be understood and integrated, allowing the defender to act. Arizona's force laws are straightforward and not overly complicated. There are lethal weapons and non-lethal weapons and the circumstances for deploying each are clearly marked out.
And Arizonan's are free to carry and employ the full range of weapon options in self-defense -- gun, knife, chemical sprays, impact weapons -- appropriate for the level of the threat. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Our states/countries may begin with the same letter "A". But when it comes to firearms and the citizen's God given right of self-defense, I'll take Arizona any day over Australia.
Which is fine. I'd prefer the situation in Arizona too, personally. I'm the first to say that Australian weapons laws are unnecessarily restrictive.
But that is very different from claiming that there is no right to self defence in Australia.
That's simply untrue - and it's dangerous. Because some idiot might believe it and wind up not doing something to protect themselves or somebody else out of a fear of legal consequences that they have no reason to fear.
The loony left would like people to think they are not allowed to defend themselves, and try to make people think that is the case. And that could stop some people doing things they are perfectly legally able to do.
The law on self defence in Australia is quite simple and clear. It could be simpler and clearer, sure - but that's no reason for anybody to say it's more complicated or that there's less of a right to defend yourself than there is.
I would argue that the legal gantlet created by Australian law with its irrational distinctives creates the dangerous environment which leads people to believe "there is no right of self defense in Australia." My inaccurate point was meant to illustrate this. The law may enshrine "self-defense", but it is compromised by conflicting and inconsistent statutes.
It is my wish that Australia will come to its senses and respect the right of its citizens to carry whatever tools they deem suitable to guarantee their safety without burdensome state interference.
As always over the years, thanks for your insight from “down-under” and we are always happy to see conservatives from other parts of the world, especially those who have joined us in defending freedom.
It sometimes baffles me that we respond to your comments by arguing with you, as though you aren’t reporting in honest fellowship. Oh, well, it never changes.
My oldest visited down there last year on business and said it was a wonderful nation and a great experience.
I'd like that as well and I'm doing what I can to try and make that happen. But in the meantime we have to deal with the situation we have now.
I assume the next part of this series of posts (part 26) will eventually be posted to Freerepublic by its author. I've already read it though and in that section, the author highlight a recent Australian case where a man who used a legally owned firearm in his own home to deter a criminal has had his weapons at least temporarily confiscated by the police while they investigate what happened. Without prejudging the case because only limited information about it is public, assuming what we know is true and that there aren't details that haven't been in the media, it looks to me like that man acted entirely within Australian law concerning self defence and if that is the case, I would expect his weapons to be returned to him once the police have finished their investigation, as has happened in a number of similar cases in the past that I am aware of.
But the problem is, while the law is quite clear in allowing self defence, this does always seem to be clear to the police. I know of numerous cases where police officers do not seem to understand Australian law on this, and where because of that situations like the ones described have developed. The courts - involving Judges and lawyers who generally do understand the law, eventually wind up ruling in the gun owners favour and returning the firearms, but that process can easily take a couple of years. If self defence law was better understood we'd have a lot less likelihood of these problems developing. As I've mentioned, I have had to defend myself more than once, and I've never had any legal problems, but that's in part because I do understand the law on self defence and so when I was questioned by police in a couple of cases, I said exactly the right thing to make sure I didn't create legal doubt about my situation. It is critically important for that reason that the issue of self defence is not made cloudy.
I understand why you might think that the confusion relating to these laws is closely linked to weapons laws, but it isn't really. The major changes to Australian gun laws that created significant restrictions on what firearms most people could easily own talk place in the 1990s, but even before those laws were in place, the law made exactly the same distinction about carrying a weapon for self defence as they do now. In fact, handguns (arguably the most useful weapons somebody might carry routinely for self defence purposes) were, for the most part not actually restricted by the changes made in the 1990s. They've become more restricted since because of a more recent set of laws which went more or less unnoticed outside of Australia and probably aren't even known to have been passed by most Australians in the wake of the Monash University Shootings of 2002 (in that case, in fact, the gunman most likely purchased handguns because they were easier to purchase than the weapons he'd have liked to use).
Well stated.
However, there is a clear conflict between Australian weapons law and the law for self defense.
As others have noted, if the law prevents you from having access to the necessary tools for self defense, self defense is effectively prohibited.
That is the implicit and seldom stated purpose of much of the British system of weapons law.
If self-defense with weapons is legitimate, most of the weapons controls are out the window.
Philip Alpers, one of the chief proponents of the Australian weapons law scheme, explicitly stated that the Australian law was written to deny the existence of the right to arms.
Fortunately for Australians, Australian culture is so incredibly law-abiding (right up there with Japan and Switzerland!) that the conflict is seldom exposed.
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