It begins.....

S

Steve B.

Joined
May 25, 1999
Messages
668
...could this be the beginning of "knife control"? (Only in Massachusetts...!)

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/051/metro/Few_limits_on_who_buys_knives_online+.shtml

Few limits on who buys knives online
By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 2/20/2001


The message from www.sharpknives.com is clear: Only people 18 years and older can buy knives from the Web site. Not all knives are legal everywhere. And an adult's signature is required on shipments.


But a few keystrokes away is www.bladez.com, where a buyer can order hundreds of knives with just a credit card number and no age or geographic verification.


The largely unregulated world of online knife sales was thrown into the spotlight yesterday when prosecutors said that either Robert Tulloch, 17, or James Parker, 16, bought a military-style knife on the Internet - and allegedly used it in the slaying of two Dartmouth College professors.


The two teenagers were arrested yesterday morning in Indiana, where they were allegedly trying to hitch a ride west.


Dennis McClure, the sheriff for Chelsea, Vt., the youths' hometown, told the Associated Press yesterday that the two youths became suspects because one bought a military-style knife on the Internet.


It is believed that investigators were able to trace the manufacturer of the knife from a sheath left at the crime scene and that they obtained from the company a list of knife purchases made over the Internet.


McClure did not respond to repeated requests for comment. New Hampshire Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin - while neither confirming nor denying the Internet purchase - would not address the issue and criticized McClure for speaking.


Several well-known manufacturers of military- or combat-style knives - including Ka-Bar of Olean, N.Y., Ontario Knife Co. of Franklinville, N.Y., and Busse Combat Knife Co. of Wauseon, Ohio - said they had not been contacted by authorities regarding the crime. But they and knife aficionados who sell knives online said it would not be difficult for anyone to make an Internet purchase of a knife.


James Melvin of www.1stdirectknife.com said he does not sell to anyone under 18 at knife shows or conventions. But on the Internet, buyers' true ages are a mystery.


''I hate to say it, but it's true,'' Melvin said. ''There are no laws about it, but there should be. I wouldn't want my 14-year-old to buy a knife off the Internet.''


Greg Beauchamp, owner of www.bladez.com, said he assumes that those who make credit-card purchases are over 18 because of the difficulty juveniles have in obtaining credit cards.


''I guess there's a possibility somebody could steal a credit card,'' Beauchamp said.


Complicating the matter, laws regulating sales of knives vary from state to state, and even among counties, said Rod Bremer, owner of Columbia River Knife & Tool in Wilsonville, Ore.


''In the knife industry, there is a tremendous amount of ambiguity and lack of definition on those rules,'' he said.


New Hampshire authorities have declined to comment about the weapon used in the slayings.


This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 2/20/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

 
Here it goes again. Those morons just hate it when they cant 'regulate' something. Guess they have NO intention of writing any editorials on what little slime balls would commit such a crime. They simply mention that these 2 killed the teachers, then spend the rest of the article blaming the lack of control on knife purchases. Of course, they begin using terms such as 'military' or 'commando' style knives in a context designed to make people associate them with evil purposes. I suppose if the murders were commited with bats or screwdrivers we would not be seeing similar articles on lack of 'regulations' on buying sporting equipment or mechanics tools.

You know whats REALLY disgusting? These liberal media types discover somebody has been killed. Its my theory that they have NO sympathy for the victims or the families. No, the first thing they do is find out if some 'evil' weapon has been used. If one has, then they all giddy and happy thinking about the inflamatory articles they can write about 'commando' knives and 'assault' rifles. Those POS scumbags are just about as bad as the murderers themselves.



------------------
Richard Todd - Digital knife photography
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Do your site a favor, get quality digital images!!!
New photos added!!!
 
Could just as easily have been any number of kitchen knives availaible in any mall, or the variety available in your local $.99 store, for crying out loud.
 
As a matter of fact, it would most LIKELY be a cheap kitchen knife. Most "knife crimes" are commited in the home with kitchen cutlery. I think the obvious answer to this problem would be legislating that all food must be bought in a pre-cut form, making private ownership of cutlery obsolete. Hell, let`s just make it illegal! Knives are dangerous!
 
Arrests underline unpredictability of violence, specialists say

By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff, 2/20/2001


The two honor students had been called in for a few ''heart-to-heart'' talks with the local police over some suspected mischief, and one had told a friend he had ''no idea'' what he wanted to do with his life.


Mildly troubling, perhaps, but not exactly alarm bells for the unthinkable: that Robert Tulloch and James Parker, known as friendly youths from stable families and engaged in school activities, would end up accused in the fatal stabbing of two Dartmouth College professors.


But as authorities maintained their silence yesterday about what they believe might have moved the youths from Chelsea, Vt., to slaughter Half and Susanne Zantop on Jan. 27, mental health specialists said the case shows that even as violence by middle-class teenagers becomes a national concern, it is almost impossible to predict who will commit it.


''Everyone says, `How could this happen? He doesn't fit the profile,''' said Dr. William Pollack, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. ''There is no profile.''


Dr. Ron Schouten, director of the law and psychiatry service at Massachusetts General Hospital, agreed. He recalled Wayne Lo, the student who killed two people and wounded four at Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington in 1992, whom he called ''a violent virtuoso.'' Schouten, who consulted on Lo's case, recalled that Lo's teachers saw him as sweet, perhaps a bit anxious, but troubled only ''in the sense that many adolescents are troubled.''


The psychiatric specialists stressed that they were not commenting on Tulloch, 17, and Parker, 16, as individuals, particularly because authorities have been tight-lipped, not ruling out anything, from the possibility that this was a random crime to the chance that others are involved.


Dr. Harold Bursztajn, co-director of Harvard's program on psychiatry and the law, said the youths, who were arrested yesterday in Indiana, should be given psychiatric evaluations because of the extreme violence of the killings and because they are at the age when some mental illnesses first manifest themselves.


Pollack, a consultant for the US Secret Service's Safe Schools Initiative, founded after the Columbine High School massacre, said it is misguided to try to define a certain type of teenager who commits violence. Rather, he said, many young men suffer from undetected depression, which may emerge as anger and can lead to violence or suicide. So, he said, parents, authorities, and friends should keep an ear out for unusual statements.


''There's usually something gnawing at them inside,'' Pollack said. ''They're bubbling over with intense emotion which is hard for them to share, but they do share it with someone just before the crime. ... Often that person is afraid to tell someone else, or has no one to tell.''


Even when they do tell, said Dr. Eli Newberger, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard, their friends may not react. He said people should have been worried when Tulloch and Parker disappeared from school around the time of the homicides with the ''flimsy'' excuse of a rock-climbing trip. But, he noted, it's not unusual for teenagers to ignore ''erratic'' behavior from their peers.

 
Good! I hope schools will consider throwing out their stupid "profiling" of the student body to weed out the "potentially dangerous" amoung them. But I doubt it.
 
If the authorities believe a teenager who says "I have no idea what to do with my life" is mentally unstable, they better lock up everyone between the ages of ten and thirty they can find. I think the problem is not so much with the media, liberal or otherwise, as with publicity hungry "experts" who seize upon tragedies of this nature to expound upon their personal theories regarding the degradation of American society. Anyone who describes someone as a "violent virtuoso" sounds like a trashy novelist, not a serious medical expert.
 
Whew! Good thing they didn't use a cinderblock as a weapon... I'd hate for everyone to have to stop building houses, buildings, and foundations because of the wide availability of such violent weapons just 'lying' around under all this property!
rolleyes.gif


What the hell are these sheeple going to do 'IF' they get their way and people actually have to kill their victims by hand? Chop off hands (wait a minute... that's what those 'bad' countries do!)? Outlaw any martial arts or combat experience (wait a minute... what about feudal Japan and the farmers who predated this art/practice?)? Partial lobotomies (wait a minute... What about genetic predisposition and Sociopaths living largely normal lives as compared to a bumbling first time offender... Do we REALLY want a predisposed and masterfully intelligent race of offenders?!)?

Why don't we save a lot of money before this gets out of hand... Acquit the offenders giving them counseling and money for a book tour... Fire all LEO's within a thousand miles because they didn't consult with CLEO the mystical magical wohmahnnn on TV Channel and stop this ugly violence before it occured... Make all the kids go to school naked where they will sit behind hypnotic screens and the teachers will march around offering injections and pills! Uhmmm... Oh yeah... Replace the current government with the current administration of Media Moguls so there is less discrepancy in their stories!

With all the stuff that is wrong with the US the worst is that nobody has any guts anymore!

Wonder if I can get fitted for one of those 'humane' collars when the time comes?
eek.gif


Shawn



------------------
"I didn't do it! Nobody saw
me do it! You can't prove a
thing!"

-Bart Simpson
 
Hey Steve...

The Beginning ???

The beginning of this Anti Knife Bull$hit started Long before this.

Take it back to the Gangster movies, the Bike gang movies where actors like James Dean used Italian Lock Picks..

Movies like Hannibal, Scream, Take your pick,, where knives are portrayed as murder weapons...

How about movies like The Matrix which has been linked to the Colombine<SP?> murders...

How about the AK-47 or the 9mm ???

Where do you think all the bad press came from on those ???

You don't get half as much "Bad Press" from the AR-15 or 45 Colt..

Think about it!!
It's already here.....

Would it be different if they bought their knives from a the Kitchen section a Wal-Mart ???

That wouldn't have even been mentioned in the press

Bombs + Internet = Good News Story
Knives + Internet = Good News Story

I also Highly Doubt that they were bought from a "Knifemaker"

I'd also wager a bet the knives weren't worth more than $20.00 if that...

How old ya gotta be to buy a knife Anyway ???


ttyle

Eric...

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On/Scene Tactical
Leading The Way In Quality Synthetic Sheathing
 
Well, of course there`s an anti-knife bias! I carry several every day; it would be hard not to notice!

What I meant was, sure, most folks who don`t know any better think knives are a dangerous weapon and are content to bite the wrappings off things rather than ever carry a knife. It takes something like minors buying them off the evil internet and using them in the commision of a crime (murder, no less!) to mobilize people to actually DO something about their feeling about knives. And by "do something", I mean push for more restrictive laws governing the sales and ,ultimately, the ownership of knives.

Believe me, Massachusetts is the breeding ground for useless, restrictive laws.
 
Steve,

I agree that you should seriously consider joining AKTI.

The only way that we are going to be able to fight the nonsense is to band together in a rational organization.

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AKTI Member No. A000370
 
I hope that the AKTI will be viewed as a "rational organization" but I have my doubts. In Massachusetts, it will be seen as the NRA-lite and held in the same contempt.

Just out of curiousity, I looked in at the AKTI forum here. I had to go back to Early January to find the last post in that forum. I really figured that the AKTI would generate more interest here than that! I went to the AKTI website and read what they`d been up to recently. Evidently, they assisted in the wording of a law in California. So far the AKTI has helped the knife manufacturing community and it`s board is made up of some of the industries heavy hitters. I`m not sure what it offers the law abiding knife user, though. My NRA membership offers things like insurance, discounts and the satisfaction of membership in an organization that really pisses off Algore and the Klintonistes. I had hoped to see the ATKI take a more visible role in things like reviewing the misguided "Switchblade Act" that dogs us to this day. I`d like to see the AKTI gather data on knife related crime. What percent in done in the home with kitchen knives? What percent is done in the streets with evil locking blade folders? I could use stats like that!

I`m not opposed to the AKTI or it`s membership in the least. I do wish it was a more visible, more effective organization. It`s still a fairly young organization, so I haven`t lost hope that the AKTI will become a major player in the RKBA debate.



[This message has been edited by Steve B. (edited 02-21-2001).]
 
Not so funny now is it? See how it starts, same happened in the UK.

Good luck.

W.A.

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"To strive to seek to find and not to yield"
Tennyson
Ranger motto

A few useful details on UK laws and some nice reviews!
http://members.aol.com/knivesuk/
Certified steel snob!
Founding president and member number 1! Wana join?
 
Thanks General. It`s always sobering to look at the UK, as well as Canada and Australia, to see what can happen when politicos run amuck.

The only difference between our two countries is that in America our right to bear arms is Constitutionally protected (thanks to you all in the UK!). We have the Second Article tp appeal to should it ever come to disarmament.
 
If Clinton was still in office...yikes!

Hopefully W. will help things stay on the right path...

~B.
 
I think any fallout from this incident will be restricted to Massachusetts. Unfortunately, George W. doesn`t have much clout here. This is Kennedy Kountry!
 
It is not very difficult for minors to buy knives from online stores. I'm afraid people just don't care about completing a transaction that states an age. The punishment for such things is nil, and is also not the easiest thing in the world to prove. EBay comes to mind.

But adults are of course innocent in this matter...must be some sort of test out there to prove that adults commit fewer violent crimes than adolescents. Geez.

Anyways...one reason why the weapons are picked on is because it is a broad blame distribution. Why blame one person when you can blame thousands of nameless people who can be stereotyped? The reporter who finds a cherry bomb in a toilet pales in contrast to the one who finds leads to a small terrorist group. The one who finds those leads has easier guarantee of future stories, and they also get accredited for exposing an "underlying" problem.

And unlike many folks, I am not overly disappointed with the US Gov't, but I am disappointed with the people whose actions and ideas have covinced the government to take the steps it's taken. On the other hand, I'm not too fond of the extremist viewpoints of either side either.

But then again...I can understand why uneducated people can have negative opinions of the knife community just by briefly seeing this site or some of the magazines out there...
 
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