My point is that THE LAW is abusing and misconstruing the definition. Some states LEGALLY categorize balisongs as "gravity knives." This doesn't mean they are.
I'll repeat myself: The fact that a knife has been, or will be, LEGALLY MISCONSTRUED as a gravity knife WHEN IT ISN'T ONE doesn't mean the factual, mechanical definition of a gravity knife includes the blade in question.
It means the law is abusive. It means the people interpreting and applying those laws are also abusive. It means those in authority don't give a damn about your civil rights and are simply trying to make the definitions of prohibited weapons as expansive as possible so they can charge you for carrying virtually any knife, which is the point I've been making since I started replying to this thread.
If you can't handle that, you can go right on believing that the letter of the law redefines reality.
It's so refreshing to find someone else who understands this. :thumbup:
If an officer arrests you for having a knife that can be opened by centrifugal force, he is not abusing or misconstruing a definition.
No, he's abrogating other Americans' unalienable individual RKBA and betraying his oath to adhere to the U.S. Constitution. Personally, I think that's much worse than "misconstruing a definition," but that's just me.
It can therefor not be considered invasive because it reflects, however indirectly, the will of the citizens who elected that legislature. If you can't handle that, run for office
I did, in 1974 at age 21, in Monterey County, CA; worse luck, I was elected. I quickly discovered the vast majority of legislators (and the general public) had the same interest in protecting individual liberties as I did in expanding the size of the BATF.
I did. In the late 1980s, I moved from my native California to escape its oppressive anti-gun/knife laws. If you can identity a country where I wont have to live among people who share your beliefs, Ill start packing.
this law was passed by a democratically elected legislature.
So were the Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918, the Fugitive Slave Act, conscription, racial segregation statutes, NFA-34, GCA-68, the 1994 AWB, etc. The fact legislators routinely betray their oaths and enact morally reprehensible and/or blatantly unconstitutional statutes doesn't confer legitimacy on their misdeeds.
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizens constitutional rights it acts lawlessly, and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all. Justice William O. Douglas
All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is the will of the citizens of New York.
The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers and residents of other states have, at best, a cursory knowledge of most of the laws enacted by their legislators. The next Californian I meet (other than an LEO) who knows it's a felony in that state for a private citizen to merely possess a billy club will be the first. To suggest such laws are the "citizens' will" is preposterous.
As far as I know, it has not been brought before the Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds.
Since SCOTUS has consistently refused to grant a petition for a writ of certiorari to hear any appeal of GCA-68 on Second Amendment grounds, how do you suggest New Yorkers can get the court to hear an appeal of NYC anti-knife statutes?
people are inherently incapable of oppressing themselves.
The last time I heard something that ridiculous was when my fifth grade teacher said, "Violence never solved anything." When I finished laughing, I asked her, "When was the last time you saw a Carthaginian?"
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Frederick Douglass, 4 August 1857
Are people seriously charged with this nonsense?
Yes
Regular law-abiding, non-confrontational people who are not initiating trouble?
"Non-confrontational people who are not initiating trouble"? Yes. "Law-abiding" is the problem. Legislators, judges, prosecutors and LEOs in the applicable jurisdictions ignore (as usual) the fundamental human RKBA as well as their oath to adhere to the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment which they adamantly refuse to abide by. In the opinion of such ethically-impaired creatures, the language in a mere statute inexplicably supersedes our supreme law of the land. If a LEO can, no matter the degree of difficulty or artfulness, get a knife with a lockable blade to open through centrifugal force, then the lowly private citizen possessing it is not "law-abiding" and merits arrest.
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