This excellent and thorough Village Voice article on the outdated, arbitrary, and capricious knife laws in New York City is about “gravity knives”, but those laws share the hallmarks of most weapons-related legislation:
- They were passed in an emotional atmosphere fanned by perceptions and media coverage
- They have little to no basis in demonstrable facts or science
- Their intent at enactment was to disarm specific ethnic or racial groups
- They are used as a universal legal adapter to arrest primarily people from those ethnic or racial groups at will
- Their statutory language is intentionally vague and interpreted by law enforcement in the broadest possible definition to make it applicable to as many people as possible
- They are still used disproportionately against specific ethnic and racial groups
- They are used to pad arrest and prosecution statistics artificially to make the police and DAs look tough on crime
- They put thousands or even tens of thousands of nonviolent people in prison who have no proven criminal intent
- They are enforced inconsistently, arbitrarily, and unequally depending on race, ethnicity, and social status of the accused person
Most weapons laws aren’t about public safety, they are–and always have been–about social control.
scotus failed grammer and ethics.
I agree completely. All too often, I’ve seen government officials continue to push meaningless, feel-good laws which have little to no effect on actual crimes. “For the children,” they implore, “… if it saves one life.. do it for the children.” The truth is, none of the thousands of laws on the books were effective in preventing the mass shootings that were publicized by the media. The truth is, that law-abiding citizens care just as much about protecting our children as MDA, Everytown or any other anti-gun, citizen-control group you care to name, they just choose to realize and understand that we do not live in a sugar-coated fantasy land, where wishing makes things so, where you can click your heels and magically make bad people go away.
It’s not about protecting you, or the children. It’s about control, and it always has been. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric. Ask questions. Think for yourself.