"Wisconsin citizens have the fundamental right to defend themselves and feel safe and secure in their homes and we remain committed to protecting those rights," the governor said in a prepared statement.Sample comment: "Oh thank god this was finally passed..now we can all breathe again. Lol. Thanks dopey fool Wanker."
February 7, 2016
"Gov. Scott Walker on Saturday signed into law a bill that legalizes switchblades..."
"... and expands the ability to carry switchblades, bowie knives and other concealed knives without a permit," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
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41 comments:
Crap, when I was a kid, starting at about age 7, I carried a knife in my pocket every day to school. Nobody got cut.
You need a knife to defend yourself against plastic packaging, too.
The Swiss Army spork is permissible again.
I didn't know knifes were illegal.
Why didn't spell checker correct "knifes"?
Switchblades were already legal.
Volokh: "We hold that the right to bear arms protects instruments that are designed as weapons traditionally or commonly used by law abiding citizens for the lawful purpose of self-defense."
Volokh:"Home possession of switchblade knives protected by the Second Amendment"
"The court also concluded that, whether one applies intermediate scrutiny or strict scrutiny to the switchblade ban, the ban fails such scrutiny, to home possession."
I'd love to see evidence of any prohibition of a given weapon actually preventing a murder or felonious assault.
Out the front knives generally are okay to own but not to carry. In Ohio, you can only carry one if you a CCW.
"Legalizes switchblades."
Well...
When you're a Jet,
You're a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last dyin' day.
Was the switchblade a rider on the bill, or the only thing on the bill. Was it selectively highlighted in the press to make the legislature and Governor look ignorant?
I reserve judgement.
If you can carry a gun (as I firmly believe you be able to do), I can't come up with a rationale to ban carrying bladed weapons.
Bob Ellison said...Crap, when I was a kid...
The population has almost doubled since the 60's, and the segregated white schools we went to are all gone.
The European background of America has been replaced by Orientals and Latino's. Two of the worlds most violent races.
Pettifogger said...
If you can carry a gun (as I firmly believe you be able to do), I can't come up with a rationale to ban carrying bladed weapons.
But you can't carry a so-called silencer.
And "knives are quiet".
Here in Texas there was a law allowing carry of a loaded handgun while "traveling," for the purpose of self defense. Little old ladies typically had a .38 Special in the glove compartment for deterrence of unwanted advances from riffraff.
The Houston DA ordered local police to arrest, during traffic stops, people with loaded handguns in their cars. The people were forced to go to court with lawyers and attempt to convince juries that they were "traveling" and hence the gun was legal, not a felony. Even acquittal carried a high $$$ price and the ignominy of being charged, arrested, booked, bailed out and forced to go to trial.
So Texas legislature passed a law allowing loaded handguns in cars, period. People who think like the Houston DA screamed "Blood in the streets!" and "Wild West!" and "Gunfights at every red light!" None of that happened, of course. The only thing that changed was that little old ladies were no longer arrested in Houston.
Same thing happened recently with Concealed Carry licensees being allowed to Open Carry here in Texas. Accidentally exposing the handgun on your hip when your shirt rides up is no longer a crime, and the Houston DA can't make your life a living hell for legally carrying a firearm concealed. I've yet to see an open carried handgun, and the law has been in place 6 weeks.
This knife law is more of the same. I doubt there were any arrests for switchblade or Bowie knife ownership in the last decade in your fair state - go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong. But being arrested for having one sort of knife instead of another is kinda unfair, illogical and silly.
I note that Texas still outlaws public carry of dirks, poignards, daggers, switchblades and Bowie knives. So way to go, progressive northern friends!
Switchblade bans are ridiculous. It comes from the same liberal impulse as bans on scary-looking cosmetic features on guns. It comes from people who know nothing about what they're banning and have never held a knife.
I have automatic openers. They aren't any more or less dangerous than manual ones. I can deploy a thumb-opening folding knife just as fast as a switchblade. But I like some of my autos because they're cool. Cosmetic.
I have carried semi-illegal switchblades and oh so threatening looking butterfly knives for decades, and have never been in a knife fight. But a lot of packaging and straps and cords have gone down.
Hysteria is contagious. There is an epidemic among newspaper reporters.
My god, the comments at the link are so dishearteningly stupid. The consensus seems to be that switchblades are uber-dangerous because they're so much easier to conceal than other knives.
How do you reach that conclusion? Wouldn't you have to have no idea what a knife is? Autos and folders are not different in size or function or, i dunno, sharpness, in any way. How can you not know that? How can you pound the table and insist that a switchblade is a lethal stealth weapon? How do you get that dumb? It has to be deliberate, signaling that you'll swear that white is black if Dear Leader tells you to.
Genuinely very sad.
Another clue in the lack of diversity in the newsroom. Switch blades are no more dangerous, and only fractionally, if at all, faster to open than a thumb opening knife.
But there is no one at the paper available to note this, or their hatred of all things Walker cause them to ignore that, fact.
But the comments... OMG the stupid is strong in them.
That official statement is hilarious.
Walker has become a parody of himself.
Society will never be safe until carrying of weapons is banned. That would include pens, pencils, car keys, belt, necktie, shoe laces, roll of nickles...
Whether realized with guns, knives, scalpels, or fists, self-defense is a human right.
While there is a natural right to commit elective abortion or cause gratuitous harm to another human life, civilized societies in a conservative (i.e. stable) state penalize individuals who exhibit these behaviors.
That said, the prerequisite for liberty is men and women capable of self-moderating, responsible behavior.
There's a right way, and a wrong way, to do something like this.
The right way is a bill that simply strikes out or alters previous provisions banning something, leaving it legal by default and resulting in a smaller, more comprehensible body of law.
Wisconsin chose the other way...
Oh dear, switchblades! The crushing ignorance of liberals is hilarious. In Washinton State evil switchblades are illegal but (the actually faster to faster to deploy) spring loaded assisted-opening knives are perfectly legal. The difference is that you touch a stud on the blade instead of a button on the handle. I guess we should be grateful for the liberal ignorance. Otherwise the little creeps would try to ban everything.
Go through the Amazon portal and get your honey this lovely pink anodized aluminum spring assist pocket knife.
Give a little flick to the stud and it pops right open. And it's a quality blade. I have one in blue.
I've never understood why switchblades are/were illegal. What's the big advantage to forcing everyone to manually open their folding knife?
Like castle doctrine and stand your ground statutes, this is in response to judges allowing malicious prosecution. Judges allowed the concept that citizens had to first prove the circumstances warranted their self defense, rather than prosecutors proving the Citizen was negligent.
This is push back against judges writing law with their Bench rulings in criminal cases
It's the same knife! I bought that at a little pawnshop just two blocks from the boy's house; it cost $6. That's right, I broke the law.
I don't bother reading the comments at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - it's just a liberal version of the cesspool of commenters you find at Breitbart. You have to dig pretty deep to find any nuggets of intelligence, but most times there won't be any.
@Eric: Switchblades were demonized during the 1950's when they began appearing in white urban gangs and movies about same - - Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, The Wild Ones - - and laws to ban them quickly spread throughout the US. It was the same sort of hysteria that is usually ginned up over certain types of guns: "Saturday Night Specials," "Plastic" guns that defeat metal detectors, "Assault" weapons, etc.
A strange exemption was usually written into switchblade laws to allow their use by amputees, those with only one arm. This exemption was made to allow WWII and Korean War veterans with missing arms to carry a knife for eating and other knife chores.
One less thing to charge people with, especially young black men who local police are always out to get. Good going Governor Walker!
The right to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed". There is nothing in the Constitution or The Bill Of Rights as to "reasonable" conditions limiting that right.
James Pawlak,
I believe it would be legal to build or buy a Ship of the Line with working cannons, as those were legal at the time of the signing of the Constitution. I am not sure if that is reasonable to you, but I know the number of Liberal heads that would explode surely justifies betting yourself one.
Original Mike wrote: Why didn't spell checker correct "knifes"?
Perhaps because in what passes for Modern English knife is both a noun and a verb, as in You look at my bitch again and Ima gonna knife you in the eye, muthafucka.
As a verb knifes is the third person, singular and plural, present tense, as in Tyrone knifes his ho for holding out on him.
"Ship of the Line with working cannons"
Doesn't even need to be a ship of the line. Cannon were standard accessories on private vessels.
I once taught Industrial Maintenance Technology in a high school career center. Neither my students nor I were allowed to have a pocket knife on campus. However, I had a shop tool room full of sharp tools, including knives, of all types. Some of them capable of severing limbs. The irony of this never bothered anyone in the administration.
Good. You know who tends to get jammed up on BS knife charges? Blacks and Latinos.
Why are Dem/Progs so damned racist?
They cannot help it, holdfast. It goes back to the earliest days of the Democrat Party. Democrats are racist by default.
Maine hasn't done anything that I am aware of on knives; all working men in the rural areas carry at least a folding pocket knife. We did just pass Constitutional Carry of handguns last year; it's one reason that Bloomburg's Everytown is targeting us for a referendum on Background checks. You know what else? Maine has had the lowest per-capita assault rate in the nation for the past ten years of available data (2005-2014). Hmmm, I wonder if there's a connection there?
Great! Now we're all ready in case there's a big revival of "West Side Story."
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