Hawaii Senate Bill 126 is sponsored by Senator Les Ihara, Jr., 58, a Democrat of Hawaii's 9th District. Not much is known about him except he's of Japanese extraction and he's exceptionally restrictive when it comes to the 2nd Amendment. The Japanese government has stringent laws against guns and knives. Last year, in June, seven people were killed in a stabbing attack on a busy Tokyo shopping street. The attack, coincidentally, happened at the very time Japan's cabinet ministers discussed tightening the country's already tough knife regulations. The assailant, a disaffected 25-year-old factory worker, drove a truck into a group of pedestrians, then got out and stabbing random passers-by with a 5-inch double-edged dagger he bought at a military surplus store. How often I've heard people in this country say, "If he hadn't had access to a gun, he couldn't have killed those people." People in Japan are now saying, "If he just hadn't had a knife...." So where does it end?
Hawaii has some deep Asian roots and many of its leaders aren't wed to the right of self defense that is so much a part of some of the old Anglo-Saxon and European cultures. But speaking of European, there's a nasty trend in the U.K. towards banning anything and everything that can be used for self defense. We're seeing California go more and more in this direction here in the states, too. Thus when criminals take a butter knife and turn it into a dagger, politicians actually sit back and say, "Well of all the sneaky, underhanded...why do you think we outlawed knives with points, you vermin! What we need are tougher laws!" And there's no end to it.
