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Letter to the editor: Sensible knife laws

August 21, 2014

knife crimeOPINION By GARY KIRKLAND

The senseless tragedy a few weeks ago in the Santa Barbra area clearly demonstrates we need some sensible knife laws.

Our legislators and the governor should require manufacturers to sell knives with handle locks. People should have to register their knives with the local police. No one under 18 years of age should be able to buy a knife, and parents should be responsible if a child obtains an unlocked knife and uses it to harm another. People who want to buy a knife should have to take a knife safety class and the law should require a 15-day waiting period after purchase before delivery. Felons and the mentally insane should not have the right to have knives. Law enforcement officials should have the right to confiscate knives from mentally unstable people if their family or friends report the unstable people to the officials. The government needs to encourage rat finks.

I do not understand why U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstine or Barbara Boxer have not introduced legislation in Congress that would ban assault knives. It is obvious our elected leaders are in the pockets of the National Knife Association (NKA). Relatives of the victims need to go to Washington and campaign for new laws. If just one person dies because we do not have sensible knife laws that is one person too many. People: contact your elected representatives and demand that they keep knives out of the hands of criminals, the insane, and children by enacting sensible knife laws.


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Actually Gary, California is one of the most restrictive states when it comes to what kind of knives are legal versus illegal, how you can legally carry certain knives and not others, where you can legally carry knives, and the out-right prohibition of certain knives (illegal to own, possess or carry, at any time, anywhere). There are many different restrictions and they are all spelled out very succinctly by law.


Did you know that you can carry a fixed blade knife on your person of any length? It has to be in a holster/sheath on your belt, and it has to be not concealed under a jacket, coat or vest, but otherwise if you want to carry a ten inch blade knife, it isn’t illegal to do so if you follow the legal guidelines.


You can also carry, legally, any length of folding knife, as long as it is folded. If you open a folding knife and place it on your person, it then becomes illegal.


You can own, possess and carry a switchblade only if the blade is less than 2″ long, otherwise, any switchblade is illegal.


Always illegal are butterfly knives, any knife that is concealed to look like something else, i.e., an air gauge that conceals a knife, a lipstick container, a belt buckle knife, a cane sword, a knife concealed as a writing pen, gravity opening knives, spring loaded knives, the larger than 2″ blade switchblades, and any knife that is constructed of a material that will not show up in a metal detector or magnetometer.


Are there equally restrictive and arcane gun laws? Yes, absolutely. Do any of these laws actually “do” anything about protecting citizens from those who wish to do them harm? Perhaps only in the sense that it is a little harder to obtain the illegal ones, and, if found during a search by law enforcement, it gives LEOs something to charge a criminal or even a potential criminal who are caught carrying one (or more) of the restricted weapons.


Your little verbal exercise here, although somewhat clever, is, IMO, also somewhat immature. You have a problem with certain gun laws in California? Make your case against a specific law or laws, don’t just generalize that “all of them are bad”, please.


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Actually a fixed-blade knife may be carried one one’s person if it’s not concealed but it doesn’t need to be on one’s belt. PC12020 25(d) “Knives carried in sheaths which are worn openly suspended from the waist of the wearer are not concealed within the meaning of this section.” merely gives one example — it’s been tested in court more than once. Further, one can carry a fixed blade knife in a backpack, briefcase, etc. and it would not be “on their person.”


The folding knife you speak of must not only be “open” but locked open in order to be treated as a fixed blade knife. As arcane as some of its knife laws are (mostly driven by hysterics over the years), there are many states with far more restrictive knife-carry laws.


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Thanks. Freedom is very fragile and easy to lose.

GK


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Gary was my teacher in HS and my independent study Teacher! Wonderful Satire, Gary! Bravo!!


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Thanks.

GK


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Predictable parody ignorant of decency. You made no points here.


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what about BASE BALL BATS ?


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Gary,


Oh man, why do you want to open up a can of worms with your regulating or banning knives topic?!


If legislation were able to do what you state about knives, then this leads to others within your state of mind to legislate against other killing entities as well, let the floodgates open forthwith!


What about banning iron skillets because they could be used to kill, automobiles because of their killing nature in the wrong hands, alcohol that can cause drunk driving and death, swimming pools because of drownings, commercial airlines because of crashes, living in “tornado alley” because of it’s deaths, prescription drugs because of overdoses that can kill, houses because of accidental fire deaths. The list can go on where the USA would come to a standstill! Dan, how would you address this fact?


You’re forgetting about the known factor that pencils and pens can cause misspelled words,which leads to stupidity in this case, and is in the same vein as your knife analogy. What do we do in this case? Regulate or ban pencils and pens to the totally ignorant if they can’t pass an equal test relative to your knives? Dan, how would you address this fact?


If we were to regulate knives, we would be interfering with almost every aspect of people’s lives, an unacceptable violation of liberty. Dan, how would you address this fact?


Most importantly, you should be the first to bring about regulating or outlawing “mental illness.” This faction of late, have been the impetus of a lot of needless deaths to our society and since we can’t regulate a mentally disturbed individual to take their needed medication, then to error on the side of caution, shouldn’t we house them all in mental institutions until their demise? Dan, how would you address this fact?


There is a non-quantitative argument against your position in that you’re obviously using “guns or knives Butch.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqhm36sjVE


Guns are a single-use object, knives are not. Guns are for killing, killing animals, and self-defense. Knives are used for killing as well, but also for slicing food, whittling, cleaning fish, cooking, and a thousand other tasks that women are suppose to do for man if they actually are Christians that follow their bible! (1Corinthians 11: 3,8, Timothy 2:12, Ephesians 5:22-24, 1 Peter 3:1-2, 1 Timothy 2: 11-15)


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I meant, “Gary, how would you address this fact?” Don’t be in conversation with two different individuals at the same time. :(


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Extremely Stoic 1: 1-2 Amen,amen I tell you the thuth, pay no attention to the false prophet known as Ted Slanders. So let it be written, so let it be done.


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Stoic,


Were you sent here by Satan Himself?! How dare you disagree with the direct word of the Hebrew God as I’ve so stated in my post above! To wit: 1Corinthians 11: 3,8, Timothy 2:12, Ephesians 5:22-24, 1 Peter 3:1-2, 1 Timothy 2: 11-15.


Until you can explain away what the above passages so state, then it is YOU that is the false prophet, and the one that we true Christians were instructed to look out for! My words are directly from God, your rhetoric is from man! Do the math.


“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1)


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Lol


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I hope most would see the satire in my letter. Maybe I’m wrong.

GK


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Lots of people rising to the bait . . . . . . . Very pointed words resting on the razor’s edge of pertinence.


The first clue this was sarcasm for me was the “National Knife Association (NKA)” reference. Well crafted GARY KIRKLAND!!!!


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Yep, had me for a minute! The crazy thing is, there are probably people that think this would be a good idea. And the fact is, we DO have knife laws, i.e. no switchblades, blade length limits, dirk and dagger laws, etc. All of which do absolutely nothing to stop criminals.


I wonder if the sociopathic, egocentric mysogynist that killed those people in SB complied with our gun and knife laws. Oh, that’s right, he was already planning on violating our law against murder, so it really wasn’t much of a concern.


Even a law against incompetent, self-indulgent parenting wouldn’t have protected his victims, though we might be able to place some of the blame where it is due.


There is a modern paradigm that needs correction here- law, in its earliest forms, was not intended to control behavior. Indeed, law is incapable of controlling behavior. Law provides punishment for wrong-doing, and in doing so, provides SOME amount of discouragment to those that would harm others. Anyone that doubts this should investigate the murder and theft rates in England when the penalty for theft was death (circa 1723).


Once you accept that law does not control behavior, you will see just how ridiculous many of our laws are.


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I agree with your general point but I do want to take exception to one comment. The parents of the psychopath in Santa Barbara knew their kid had a problem and tried to deal with it previously. Unfortunately, they lost that ability when he turned 18. They got the SB Sheriffs office to check him out shortly before he went on a rampage but he was sharp enough to not give them enough to haul him in.


In a case like his, sometimes there is little or nothing that can be done to prevent this from happening — certainly not without opening the door to violating others rights. We live among human beings and the erratic nature of some of those humans makes for risks to everyone else.


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The parents sure as heck lost the ability to control him when they bought him a Beemer, rented him a place, and shipped him 100 miles away. Appears to me they enabled him and left him hung out to dry.


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiGFZUnJgqU


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I’m not worried about deranged individuals with weapons when I’m allowed to protect myself with the same or more effective weapon. None of us were in danger until you started to take our ability to defend ourselves away!


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…and that was meant to be a reply to panflash’s first comment.


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This cannot be a serious article … I hope that it was written for comic relief. If it is serious, would a 16 year old busboy be precluded from clearing.

Silverware from a table in a steakhouse. I cannot believe that CCN would print such garbage.


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Lighten up, it’s called a parody.


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So long as the knife holds less than 10 serrations it would be legal… once in awhile we should step back and look at what we have become as a society.


I for one enjoyed it.


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