Quoted from Fleetparadox:
"The correlation between knife and weapon may not be completely causational and reasonable, but it does have a mild relationship fueled by a progression of caution and paranoid. Fear is a strong strong emotion that overrides all the others... So yeah, I agree with you Trout. Theirs is an argument with holes, but holes that one could progress through - with a little illogical fear as the motivator."
I agree with this assessment, fleet. My overriding thought is that key, influential sectors in our own country generate, propogate, and disseminate fear throughout our society. This is often done using real-life situations. The fear that's been instilled in people is then warped into paranoia, via lies and misinformation. This wins much of the population over to the illogical side of firearm and knife beliefs.
One cure for this problem is simple, real-world experience. I know that a knife is a primary tool because I took some survival courses and experienced first-hand the usefulness and benefit of a knife. I built shelters, made fires, prepared and cooked food, as well as many other basic life functions, with a knife. I can judge knives according to their abilities, rather than via a lens of distortion. Yes, knives can be weapons; a more efficacious usage of knives, though, is as multi-purpose, primary tools.
I'm convinced that if more people spent time away from tv, the internet (say it though I shouldn't
) and other cultural trappings, investing that time in some true life experiences, society as a whole would benefit. More people would be able to see through fear-mongering. I'm not so sure that society as a whole is willing to step out of urbania for some wilderness time, though...
Quoted from zozo:
"in a city of umpteen million people, there are certain precautions that are taken for relative risk reduction. Large, densely populated urban centers, where strangers move among each other shoulder to shoulder, where violent crime is a constant issue, require basic precautions. It makes a certain amount of sense to ban open display of potential weapons (regardless of utility as "tools")."
I agree, zozo, that reasonable precautions against violence in large urban centers should be taken. However, I don't wholly agree with the notion that banning or heavily regulating knife and gun carry will truly help curb violence. As has been stated by other posters,
people inclined towards victimizing their fellow man will do so, in spite of laws prohibiting carry of potential weapons. It can't be over-stated that laws which prohibit legal carry of weapons serve only to aid criminals. Here's a quote from a famous man concerning this very issue:
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Thomas Jefferson's "Commonplace Book" 1774-1776
I do agree that widespread violence needs to be counteracted. I don't believe that forced disarmament of the population will help reduce violence. In regards to knives, specifically, they are such a useful tool that forcing people to not carry them affects not only an individual's ability to defend themself, but also their ability to "fend for themself", ultimately making people less self-reliant and more dependant on "the system".
In NYC it sounds like you can carry a pretty big knife legally as long as it's completely in your pocket. What's the problem? You're going to quit carrying knives just because you can't clip it to your pocket?
