Common sense knife control?

[DMG]

Honestly, I'm a little surprised how many people are in favor of allowing knives in schools, airports, government buildings, etc. with absolutely no restrictions.

Pointy things and edged weapons are already in all those places. In spite of the law.

 

[DMG]

I feel the government should take away everyone's knives and give them to me for "safe keeping."

Personally, I feel we need to reintroduce chivalry, honor, and dueling, whether with blade or pistol. Screw social media beefs, you gotta problem, name a time and a place. Each party bring 3 friends as witnesses and to officiate. Then again, as someone trained in martial arts and fencing, well I am rather confident in a duel of rapiers.

As long as it is mutual combat and no one is forced to participate, I am ok with that.

 

[David Mary]

I've seen far too many of real life cases to believe that the true criminal minded would be rehabilitated. They don't care! They know how to smooze that prison psychologist, fake the 'remorse' they feel for the poor victim they shot in that robbery, find Christ in the wee hours of night in their cell, whatever. Once they become a recidivist, there is no redemption, so there should be no mercy. The cutting off the hand will do a couple things; one, give a good healthy fear of the criminal justice system that is soooo totally lacking now. Its a joke. If the repeat offender will not respect the rights of others, then let him feat the consequences of it. If it was common for a second offense to loose tha right hand, a lotto wold. be punks will thin twice. If not, well just sharpen up the amputation tool. Just by the act of pointing a gun at a victim, the criminal is endangering the life of an innocent person. He doesn't have to pull the trigger, what if he "accidentally" twitches and it goes off? "Well your honor, I really didn't mean to shoot the guy, but I was really nervous and it just went off!" Aaa, we're not gonna go there. The crime is done, let them pay the penalty. If its the second offense, then kiss that righthand goodbye.

I don't care about what kind of effect it will. have on him, but one effect will be that everyone on the street will keep an eye on the one hand guy. And it will be a lot harder for him to continue his criminal career with just a left hand.

I've been very disgusted at the lack of effect our joke of a criminal justice system has on the hardened criminals. Innocent people pay for that ineffectiveness of dealing with crime. Often with their life. If we felt with criminals in a more serious way, the fear of the law will keep some punks, just punks instead of them graduating to the felon class.

I appreciate your taking the time to reply. Wouldn't the death penalty (one that is actually applied as a matter of course, rather than "extreme" cases of violence) be more to the point though and have at least equal power of dissuasion to would be punks?

 

[soc_monki]

I feel the government should take away everyone's knives and give them to me for "safe keeping."

Personally, I feel we need to reintroduce chivalry, honor, and dueling, whether with blade or pistol. Screw social media beefs, you gotta problem, name a time and a place. Each party bring 3 friends as witnesses and to officiate. Then again, as someone trained in martial arts and fencing, well I am rather confident in a duel of rapiers.

Then it devolves into The Sandbar Fight and everybody starts fighting and dying. LOL

 

[David Mary]

Mutual combat as a means to "resolve disputes" is selfish and irresponsible, and hurts more than just those injured in the duel.

 

[David Mary]

Oh and for the record my vote was "Nope". For this and other reasons.

Pointy things and edged weapons are already in all those places. In spite of the law.

 

[Arathol]

​

Yeah, the Wild West was just so polite and civilized.

Actually, most modern conceptions of the Wild West are from dime novels, Buffalo Bills Wild West Show and Hollywood movies. People were not getting shot down in the streets by fast drawing gun men on a daily basis, banks were rarely robbed by masked gangs, stage coach and train robberies were the exception rather than the rule. All these things were prominent in the news at the time because they were not something that happened regularly, not because they were every day occurrences. The James-Younger gang was much publicized at the time, and their downfall came at Northfield Minnesota when citizens got out their rifles and stopped them from robbing the bank.
Showdowns in the street outside the saloon were few and far between, in fact there are very few documented "showdowns". In fact many places didn't allow guns to be carried in town. The duel between Bill Hickock and Dave Tutt is probably the most widely known such event and is the basis for many subsequent dime novel stories.
Much of the more popularized violence was between the cattle barons who claimed large areas of land and homesteaders who came there later after the Land Act of 1862 gave them the right to settle there. The Johnson County war was a well known incident that ended by military intervention but hardly the norm. The Lincoln County War in New Mexico between rival cattle barons, where Billy the Kid made his name, has also been the basis for much of the Wild West myth.
Indian attacks on settlers were infrequent, in fact many tribes developed a trade relationship with the settlers. The violence came when the military decided that the native people had no right to be there and showed up to drive them out or wipe them out.....

 

[Arathol]

I've been very disgusted at the lack of effect our joke of a criminal justice system has on the hardened criminals. Innocent people pay for that ineffectiveness of dealing with crime. Often with their life. If we felt with criminals in a more serious way, the fear of the law will keep some punks, just punks instead of them graduating to the felon class.

This...........
You have no idea just how hard you have to try to actually go to jail....Get arrested? Thats a joke, you're back on the street in a hour or so. Even when (or if) you get sentenced they don't let you stay any longer than it takes to get you through the classes to get reformed.
As a first hand witness to the effectiveness of our current penal system, I think that the stock and pillary on the town green should be re-instated. Gallows in the square outside the courthouse, hangings at noon on Sunday after church. If you're in prison, you should be put to work. Chain gangs, doing things like cleaning drainage ditches ala Cool Hand Luke. Prison should be a thing to be avoided and feared, not a vacation home.

 

[The_Iron_Joe]

That doesn't work with many who have the criminal mindset. I have heard first hand accounts from people who have "been there, done that" what inmate programs are really for and how they work. Take the classes, get "reformed" and get so much time removed from your sentence. However, its a system administered by the state, and as with any such government social reform system its easy to game. Once you know how to behave in front of the instructors, what you need to do to show "progress", and how to tell them what they want to hear its real easy to just breeze through and exit the penal system as a "reformed" person. The administrators don't care as it is a way of reducing inmate population and in turn cost of incarceration, reducing the prison guard staffing requirements, closing prisons etc as cost saving measures.

Without touching too heavily on the fact that I feel you somewhat support my thoughts when you say "what inmate programs are really for and how they work" except to say that I think the intention of such programs should truly be for those who WANT to actually improve themselves and be better, rather than for the sole benefit of a for-profit prison system, I think I agree with your overall sentiment.

I do agree that those kinds of people exist, but like I said in that same post you quoted...

"Crimes committed against others (violent or otherwise) are generally symptoms of underlying issues. Until the root causes of these sorts of actions are addressed and mitigated to the greatest extent possible..."

There is a need for these kinds of personalities to be removed, yes, but wouldn't it be better to prevent their existence in the first place? (The dangerous and malformed personalities, not the people themselves, of course!) If we accept that people are largely shaped by their environment and up-brining, shouldn't we be trying to prevent the kinds of situations that led to them becoming a liability to others well being in the first place? I think it's better than trying to clean up the mess afterwards.

I have to believe there is no 100% foolproof way to "fix" every single person who needs help, or prevent them from propagating violent lives. But I think that trying to address these issues at a fundamental level would provide a much better "sucsess rate" rather than only relying on potential punishments as a solution, and I'm certainly not arguing that we shouldn't have some form of punishment for those who do wrong. None of this is an easy fix and none of it could happen cleanly. Unfortunately, I think there will always be some percentage of the population who will take advantage of others for their own gain, regardless of the circumstances.

 

[David Mary]

There is a need for these kinds of personalities to be removed, yes, but wouldn't it be better to prevent their existence in the first place? (The dangerous and malformed personalities, not the people themselves, of course!) If we accept that people are largely shaped by their environment and up-brining, shouldn't we be trying to prevent the kinds of situations that led to them becoming a liability to others well being in the first place? I think it's better than trying to clean up the mess afterwards.

This, 100%, but everyone is going to have a different idea what that means. In my opinion, the entertainment industry is a huge part of the problem, glorifying all kinds of aberrant behaviors, even making "good guys" out of thieves, assassins, and other unsavory characters.

 

[TheEdge01]

Nope!!! People die everyday regardless of restrictions.

 

[The_Iron_Joe]

This, 100%, but everyone is going to have a different idea what that means. In my opinion, the entertainment industry is a huge part of the problem, glorifying all kinds of aberrant behaviors, even making "good guys" out of thieves, assassins, and other unsavory characters.

As much as I love the classic PC game, Thief The Dark Project... I won't say you're wrong about that! Although personally, I find story arcs that takes such unsavory characters through "redemption" scenarios are satisfying to experience.

 

[David Mary]

Perhaps and I have no problem with such a narrative. But there are equally as many if not more that do not provide the "crime is wrong" reinforcement, and instead train us to empathize with the bad decisions of bad actors because of the circumstances which prompted them, and even encourage us to hope they get away with it.

 

[DMG]

Mutual combat as a means to "resolve disputes" is selfish and irresponsible, and hurts more than just those injured in the duel.

it seems to be happening anyway. putting some rules in place and not sending more people to prison sound good to me. How does it hurt more than those injured in the duel?

 

[Arathol]

Without touching too heavily on the fact that I feel you somewhat support my thoughts when you say "what inmate programs are really for and how they work" except to say that I think the intention of such programs should truly be for those who WANT to actually improve themselves and be better, rather than for the sole benefit of a for-profit prison system, I think I agree with your overall sentiment.

Yes but the problem is its available to all and mandatory for some. Those who want to go through the program and fix their lives will do it, but there are far more that use the system solely as a means to get out of jail. How do you tell the difference, and what sort of prerequisite qualifications could you possible apply without immediate legal challenge? What is made available to one must be made available to all. Best solution is you go to jail and serve your time. Do the programs after when there is no longer any incentive to abuse the system. If the court sentenced you to 5 years, serve 5 years, not 6 months then go home because some shrink thinks you are "fixed" or because the politicians say that prisons are too expensive.

There is a need for these kinds of personalities to be removed, yes, but wouldn't it be better to prevent their existence in the first place? (The dangerous and malformed personalities, not the people themselves, of course!) If we accept that people are largely shaped by their environment and up-brining, shouldn't we be trying to prevent the kinds of situations that led to them becoming a liability to others well being in the first place? I think it's better than trying to clean up the mess afterwards.

Problem is the social programs available to all actually promote the environment and up-bringing that you refer to....

 

[scdub]

Great, thoughtful, polite responses folks!

Thanks for that.

I certainly understand where the dualists and hand-choppers are coming from, but I for one hope that’s not the direction we go as a country/species. I just don’t think people have enough control over themselves to make extra-harsh punishments a viable option if we want less violence.

If I was holding the magic wand for awhile I would transform jails/prisons into much safer/kinder places, where people that were able to be rehabilitated could actually receive that kind of help. Simultaneously, jails and prisons would be MUCH more difficult to get out of in cases of violent crimes and particularly repeated violence. Multiple violent crimes (or even just one in some cases) would get you life in prison, but even for those folks it would be as safe and kind as possible - not for their benefit, but for the benefit of their families, their guards, and imho society in general.

I’d also be drastically expanding social safety nets so that poor folks wouldn’t see these new safe prisons as the best/only way to escape their poverty.

Alas nobody is giving me the wand, but it’s nice to imagine…

 

[Bob Denman]

I my perfect World: I'd have have original Thompson machine gun, and be married to a rich nymphomaniac...
There's an old saying:
"Wish in one hand, and crap in the other. Guess which one gets filled first?"

 

[not2sharp]

In popular culture:

In the 1957 film 12 Angry Men, there is a famous scene in which Henry Fonda pulls a switch blade out of his pocket and shows it to the other jurors. Why would such a quality film include such a plot device, unless we understand that knives it the courtroom were not such a big deal at the time. The same with Blackboard Jungle (1955) which became the poster child for universal switchblade bans. Again, ban switchblades, rather than knives in the classroom.

Then there was the famous Twilight Zone episode Terror at 20,000 feet ( starring William Shattner), first aired in 1963. As Shattner takes his seat the passenger behind him can clearly be seen draping his firearm over the back of his seat...Again, no eyebrows were raised by that behavior back then.

We didn't even have metal detectors at airports until the late 1970s.

Times have changed and IMHO not for the better. The wave of policy decisions implemented to divert attention away from the criminal actor towards inanimate devices have made all of us much less free and less safe then we have ever been. It has been a strategy for indoctrinating people to the idea that dealing with crime should be reserved exclusively for the authorities and that the communities role is to passively accept the abusive criminal environment, and the overbearing loss of liberty. It has been a long time since anyone has reported that the police in our country had to intervene to save a child rapist from a mob of neighbors intent on hanging him from the nearest tree, or since anyone had delivered a slightly bruised robbery suspect to the local constable. Today most of us know well that crime is something that we are intended to stay out of. We neither act as good Samaritan, or witnesses, nor even desire to serve on juries unless we are coerced. When we have a crime wave it is no longer about our failure as a community, but rather a policing issue and the fault of some distant external authority. We lack a sense of ownership and are much the worse off for it.

n2s

 

[David Mary]

it seems to be happening anyway. putting some rules in place and not sending more people to prison sound good to me. How does it hurt more than those injured in the duel?

Love anyone? They love you back? Want them to live on with hatred in their hearts after your death by mutual combat? Rhetorical "you", not you DMG.

 

[UncleBoots]

Common sense knife control is important. If you disagree, try holding a knife between your toes, and see how far you get.