My attitude is that you ought to know the facts before you make a decision that can have serious consequences.
Secondly, my attitude is that before you put, at the least, your liberty in jeopardy you ought to carefully consider what you have to gain or lose. You have a individual human right to weigh possible consequences against possible benefits.
These ^ statements I can agree with. But they are far different than this one-
My input would be to do what he told you unless you are planning to leave tomorrow. Seriously
That doesn't sound like your advising him to first find out what his rights are, or his legal options, before he decides what to do. It sounds like you were telling him to just give up his rights and submit to some hypothetical threat of harassment. That was my interpretation of your post.
And as far as advising a stranger without knowing all the facts, that didn't stop you, so perhaps you shouldn't criticize others for offering advice.
And what advice did we give the OP? No one advised him to do anything illegal or dangerous. No one said "Hey bro, that cop is a putz. Just do whatever you want and don't worry about it".
Quite the contrary. Several of us gave the same advice- Learn the law. Print out the law. Contact a lawyer if necessary. Have a polite talk with the sheriff. I would hardly consider any of those suggestions to be bad advice that could endanger the OP. Quite the opposite, they might very well sort out the whole matter to the OP's satisfaction.
In my opinion, to tell the OP to just give up his rights, without even trying, is bad enough. But to criticize people for advising the OP to pursue the very simple, reasonable, and lawful options available to him to protect his rights, is something I find extremely objectionable, and the inspiration for my posts.
A few other things I'd like to address-
Since this is a DISCUSSION FORUM, I think it's sometimes necessary to take a person at their word, at least for the sake of
discussion. It's impossible to have any sort of meaningful discussion if you just assume that everything everyone says is a lie. No, we don't have all the facts. NO, we weren't there. But we aren't deciding whether or not to send someone to the gas chamber. So as long as we don't give BAD advice that could endanger someone, I see no harm being done.
I'm willing to give the OP the benefit of the doubt that he's not a criminal, and that he wasn't involved in any criminal activity at the time. After all, I seriously doubt that any LEO would let a suspected criminal, who was up to no good, walk away with a knife. And I can imagine several very realistic ways that a cop might become aware of a person carrying a concealed fixed-blade (clothing moves, printing, cop see's you adjusting it, you take it out to cut something, or maybe they were having a friendly conversation and the subject of knives just came up, and the OP mentioned what he had on him). I'm sure that LEO's know many ways to spot a concealed fixed-blade.
Furthermore, there have been assumptions made that this sheriff is some corrupt a-hole who will commit all kinds of wrongdoing towards the OP if he stands up for his rights. Where is the evidence of this corruption? For all we know, the sheriff could be a nice, reasonable guy who simply got the knife law wrong. This is not uncommon among LEO's, and it's the reason I repeatedly used the word "misinformed" when talking about LEO's in my first post. And again, the fact that he didn't confiscate the knife is evidence that he ISN'T some corrupt a-hole.
For all we know, a little online research, and a friendly chat with the sheriff may be all it takes for the OP to resolve the entire matter in his favor. And who knows, perhaps by educating local law enforcement on the knife law, the OP might be saving other knife owners from having their rights inadvertently violated.
And for the record, although I feel VERY strongly about rights, and the protection of those rights, this is just me enjoying a spirited discussion. Nothing personal, and no offense intended on my part.
