Feds ban Assisted openers and Flick knives

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Let's use the disgust we feel and turn this thing around. Thanks for leading the charge, Doug.

Professor.
 
what a nice fathers day present,destroy the knife industry,the knife carrying public,& creating more unemployment.ive been carrying knives for 30 years & i'm not stopping now.
 
I'll be writing letters saturday. This type of stuff always makes me feel hopeless and depressed. I suppose that is the wrong attitude.
 
dcycleman said:
I'll be writing letters saturday. This type of stuff always makes me feel hopeless and depressed. I suppose that is the wrong attitude.
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Have faith...I think it is a matter of working through the fear that's being produced by this and having patience.

I've been a knife collector for 30 years and there's no way I'm going to give up anything in my collection. My knives are MY property as well as the cups and saucers in the kitchen are.

My wife reminds me her folks went through Prohibition in the 30's, and if you wanted liquor there was ALWAYS a way - and then when the goverment realized how much it was costing them in lost income combined with the high cost of enforcement they reversed the ruling.

Point is: we need to relax on this thing and see how it pans out. I've got my letters written and ready to mail out tomorrow, as most of my friends have by now.

Can you imagine Benchmade, Spyderco, Emerson and others going out of the knife business? The loss of income and tax dollars, then homes lost due to jobs lost? Someone's truly insane if they don't see what could happen here.

If I can't own a gun or a knife I'll have to start prepping my dinner with rocks or something...seriously, what's next...turn in my kitchen knives?

Patience patience...
 
. . .Can you imagine Benchmade, Spyderco, Emerson and others going out of the knife business? The loss of income and tax dollars, then homes lost due to jobs lost? Someone's truly insane if they don't see what could happen here. . . .
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We just saw GM totally renovated and Chrysler sold to FIAT -- Do you really think TPTB in DC care about a couple knife manufacturers?

They're just spreading the pain, it's only fair :rolleyes:
 
jkarp_53 said:
If I can't own a gun or a knife I'll have to start prepping my dinner with rocks or something...seriously, what's next...turn in my kitchen knives?
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Not a bad idea considering the majority of knife related attacks are caused by them. I have a hard time understanding why people are scared of a 4" folder when they're using a 9" chef knife.
 
I just got an email from the NRA basically calling for support against the proposed knife regulation.

So it seems the NRA has joined the fight, maybe that will be enough to knock this down.
 
5.56 said:
I just got an email from the NRA basically calling for support against the proposed knife regulation.

So it seems the NRA has joined the fight, maybe that will be enough to knock this down.
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It'll at least be enough to get some Congress critters to shoot off some letters to CBP, which may or may not stop this.
 
Even with a Democrat-controlled Congress and President, it appears that when the NRA talks, people listen. This is great news, and will almost certainly make people wake up and take notice.
 
It is sad that this Government Agency is so concerned about what knives we can or cannot have, but they couldn't figure out how to deliver bottled water after a Hurricane...
 
I just sent my letters to my Senator and Representative.
Really though, I think we're screwed.
I've never owned an assisted-opener. My Spydercos seem to open pretty fast, and the wave seems to open faster than any assisted opener could. If Homeland Security really does come down and say that all one-handed openers are switchblades, then that will move me from being a guy with a slightly libertarian bent to something considerably more radical in my political activism.

I know the "cold dead hands" expression is often used, but that is exactly the way I feel about this. I'm a 43 year old family guy who stays out of trouble. I'll carry any damn knife I want. If I get busted, I will consider it an act of civil disobedience and will take my lumps and start carrying the next knife in my collection.
 
That largely sums up my feelings as well. I've written my Senators and Representative too, but since they're all somewhere to the left of Chairman Mao, I don't expect it to do any good.

My definition of a "bad law" is one that turns decent, honest people into criminals. By that definition, this ruling certainly qualifies.
 
I called my senators office and my congressman, and told them I needed help to fight this thing (in addition to my letter to customs).

After a long conversation with the senator's aide, and a long email to her in which I asked her on the senator's behalf to call Customs and make an inquiry from the senator's office along the lines of, "What are you thinking?"

I heard back yesterday that they were in contact with customs, and they promised to let me know the results.

Think of what could happen if the bureaucrats started getting dozens of calls from senators and congressmen. Could be more heat than they are willing to put up with.
 
For some of you that did not know all about this I should relate a news story from Indy. This is not related to knives but it is related to the new homeland security laws and policies. Last summer in Indy the same people that run x-ray machines and the security checkpoints at the airport in Indy were in downtown Indy at a bus-stop. According to how the language reads for the (and I am not sure who has jurisdiction over the airport security checkpoints) NTSB or equivalent has the jurisdiction over all transportation and that includes municipal mass transit systems. One of the local heads decided to prove a point and he had his airport security people run a checkpoint as people were boarding a down-town buses at bus-stop in Indy. People actually had to empty their pockets and then were given the "wand" treatment as they boarded the buses. They confiscated a lot of knives that day. People just don't realize how serious the power the authorities have now under the guise of homeland security.

They squashed the story it never reached the national level.....I saw it on the morning news and it was not ran in the evening best to my knowledge. I remember watching the morning news dumbfounded and only thing was running through my "Papers, papers please, zeig heil!!"
 
bear1889 said:
For some of you that did not know all about this I should relate a news story from Indy. This is not related to knives but it is related to the new homeland security laws and policies. Last summer in Indy the same people that run x-ray machines and the security checkpoints at the airport in Indy were in downtown Indy at a bus-stop. According to how the language reads for the (and I am not sure who has jurisdiction over the airport security checkpoints) NTSB or equivalent has the jurisdiction over all transportation and that includes municipal mass transit systems. One of the local heads decided to prove a point and he had his airport security people run a checkpoint as people were boarding a down-town buses at bus-stop in Indy. People actually had to empty their pockets and then were given the "wand" treatment as they boarded the buses. They confiscated a lot of knives that day. People just don't realize how serious the power the authorities have now under the guise of homeland security.
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That's some BS right there. :thumbdn:
 
dcycleman said:
why cant people be left alone?? Why do the smallest, dumbest percentage of the population decide what the majority of us are allowed??
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They're not the dumbest percentage of the population, the dumbest percentage of the population would be those who voted them into office.
 
Actually, I just spoke with friends in the dept. This was apparently on the plate while Michael Chertoff was still in, it's just coming up now through Customs' own inner workings. Current administration really had nothing to do with it.
 
I wonder how many more cases like this we will soon see after this ruling :


OAKLAND - LAWFUEL - American Law Newswire - United States Attorney S...

Prosecutions
North America
Source: US Department of Justice




Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007



OAKLAND - LAWFUEL - American Law Newswire - United States Attorney Scott N. Schools announced that Spyderco, Inc., a Colorado corporation, pleaded guilty and was sentenced today to mailing butterfly knives, which are nonmailable, to pay a $75,000 criminal fine, a $125 special assessment, and to forfeit all such knives seized by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement from its corporate offices in Golden, Colorado (estimated to be valued at over $400,000). The guilty plea and sentence is the result of an investigation by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE").

In pleading guilty, Spyderco admitted that from June 2005 through January 2007, it had mailed butterfly knives, after importing the knife components from Taipei, Taiwan, through the Port of San Francisco and the Port of Oakland, to Golden, Colorado. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol had issued a ruling to Spyderco holding that these knives fit the definition of "switchblade knives" as an imported knife "with a blade which opens automatically by operation of inertia, gravity, or both" and were therefore not allowed into the United States pursuant to the Switchblade Knife Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1241-1245, and were further not to be mailed in the United States.

Spyderco agreed to issue a Notice of Recall on its internet site for these butterfly knives and to mail this recall notice to reasonably identifiable customers. Spyderco also agreed not to import, transport, distribute, manufacture, sell, introduce, or attempt to introduce into interstate commerce knives defined as switchblades under the Switchblade Knife Act, in violation of the law.

The sentence was handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Wayne D. Brazil following the corporate guilty plea to one violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1716(j)(1), a class A misdemeanor.

Maureen Bessette is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case with the assistance of Cynthia Daniel. The prosecution is the result of a one year investigation by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Further Information:

Case #: CR0700203WDB

A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.
 
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