DAYS OF THE LONG KNIVES

(Todd Rathner, director of legislative affairs for Knife Rights, browses knives during the Usual Suspect Gathering, where knife and other industry related vendors displayed and sold products last month in Las Vegas. (Bridget Bennett/For The Washington Post) [ If you missed the big knife show and the gathering of "The Usual Suspects", but you can learn about it here.https://www.usngathering.com/]

Something Else to Worry About

     While you have been fretting about guns you may have overlooked the knife problem. Simply put (so I can spoil your day more quickly) the calls for “Knife Rights” in the United States are growing louder. Apparently the Second Amendment indicates the right to carry a switchblade should not be infringed.

     Here is what you need to know from this recent article in the Washington Post. Perhaps it is fake news, but I doubt it:  “Borrowing Strategy From NRA, Activists Quietly Overturn Knife Restrictions Across U.S.” Todd C. Frankel, Sept. 15, 2018. It begins this way:

  He ordered the 20-ounce rib-eye, and so the waitress at the upscale restaurant dropped off a wood-handled serrated steak knife. Doug Ritter ignored it. Instead he pulled out a folding knife, its 3.4-inch blade illegal to carry concealed here in Clark County. He flicked it open with one hand. When the steak arrived, medium-rare, he started cutting.
     The steak dinner came as Ritter was savoring his many successful attempts at repealing the nation’s knife laws. Decades-old restrictions on switchblades, daggers and stilettos have fallen away in state after state in recent years. Much of this is because of Ritter and his little-known Arizona-based advocacy group Knife Rights, which has used tactics borrowed from the National Rifle Association to rack up legislative victories across the nation. And many of the changes have escaped widespread notice, obscured, in part, by the nation’s focus on guns….

     In addition, Ritter, 65, said that knives, like guns, should be considered arms protected by the Second Amendment. He doesn’t support any restriction on knives — not on switchblades or push daggers or even the ballistic knives that shoot like spears from a handle.

That’s become a winning argument. Twenty-one states have repealed or weakened their knife laws since 2010, many of them with bipartisan support, including Colorado, Michigan and Illinois. New York came close to doing the same last year. 

Now, Knife Rights is going after its biggest legislative target: overturning the 1958 Federal Switchblade Act, which bans the interstate shipment or importation of knives that open at the push of a button. It’s a long shot, but Ritter met earlier this month with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
 “We’re trying to frame it as a freedom issue,” Ritter said in Washington, before disappearing into a congressman’s office.

Post Script

     For the Canadian situation see "Knives and Violent Crime in Canada, 2008," by Mia Dauvergne. More recently the CBC reported that knives appear to be a problem in the UK: "Surge in Knife Crime Pushes London's Murder Rate Beyond New York's," Thomson Reuters · Posted: Apr 06, 2018.
See also: "Why is Knife Crime Increasing in England and Wales? Shocking Statistics Show Incidents of Stabbing Have Risen by 22 Per Cent in a Year, With Children as Young as 13 Among the Victims," Lizzie Dearden, Independent, April 27, 2018.

The picture above is from: "Ban on Knives Being Delivered to Shoppers' Doors Proposed by Government," Telegraph, July 18, 2017.

I suppose the Knife Rights people wish Charlton Heston was still around to utter "I Will Give Up My Knife When They Peel My Cold Dead Fingers From Around It."

I suggest that they could alter the other popular slogan to read: "If knives  are outlawed, only outlaws will have knives and we will all have to become vegetarians.”