After reading the MSNBC article, I think that the knife community, manufacturers, merchants, and consumers, need to look at themselves honestly. If knives are advertised as weapons, how can we criticize non-knife lovers if they perceive knives as a threat? I can think of at least two companies, Boker and CRKT, that make references to self defense in their advertising. Also, we knife consumers are constantly talking about knives for self defense. We need to de-emphasize the weapon aspects of knives and we need to emphasize their utility as tools. I realize that many will argue that they have a constitutional right to publicly talk about self protection and defensive use of knives and they are right, however, just because you can do something doesn't make it a smart thing to. We need to work on educating the public as to the usefulness of pocket knives instead of dwelling on their use as weapons.
The second point is that all knife users need to mindful of local laws about the carry and posession of knives. For instance, if autos are illegal in your jurisdiction, don't buy them. If there is a three inch limit, don't carry an AFCK, Carnivore, Military, etc. Don't flash your knives unnecessarily but make it a point to use them in a constructive manner.
Finally, as for Benchmade working to legalize
autos, I think that this is a reasonable long term goal once the public is educated about knives and their use in crime. For instance, it needs to be stressed that most knife murders involve kitchen cutlery. However, I think that at this time the knife industry needs to stress knives as tools and the practicality of manual one handers before they spend too much time on autos. There are
a lot of old stereotypes that will have to be erradicated before the auto issue should be tackled.
