Where's Blues? I want to register a complaint against US Customs.

Uncle,

An example being made for the culprit/culprits would probably goe a ways towards reducing the incidence in the future for everybody. As for the Customs Service- there is absolutely no excuse for the destructive technique used- a visual inspection with a penlight or especially the use of an x-ray machine would have revealed what they needed to know. As to the total lack of responsibility shown towards someone elses property, this occurs in "investigations" of all types by law and regulatory enforcement agencies. These people are forgetting who they work for.

At least the cutting done by Customs reveals yet another example of HI quality materials and workmanship.

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"To know and to act are one."
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bill Martino:
I'm with you, Finn. And just how much contraband can a scabbard hold anyway.
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Click to expand...

I can tell you from vast personal experience that it can hold quite a bit when you consider the wholesale and street values of drugs like heroin or MDMA. Just think, if one kilo of heroin were worth $100K wholesale (before being cut several times for street consumption which only inflates the value), what would the value be if one Ganga Ram scabbard were filled with heroin?
(Do you think some unsavory sort might think the potential gain worth the risk?)

Smugglers of illicit drugs have used any and every method of concealing contraband from frozen fish and prosthetic limbs to filling the body cavities of dead children.

Food for thought.

Yes, it's a shame that personal and commercial items get damaged during these examinations, but if you think that this process can be automated or that the manpower and wherewithal to do so in an unobtrusive manner exists (in sufficient scale), you're fooling yourself. Fortunately, only a very small fraction of the items entering the US are disturbed at all.

And if it weren't drugs being searched for, then there's always chemical and biological agents as well as weapons of mass destruction. This is the world we are living in today.

Of course, you can write congress and tell them to legalize drugs and open the borders up if you think that'll help.

Anyway, I guess I've beaten this poor horse enough and I'll bow out of this thread from here on in. Just wanted to share a piece of the big picture (that I am free to discuss) with those who feel the need to vent and assign blame. The sad truth is that it's just not that simple.

Lock and load, gents.

Blues

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Live Free or Die

Blues' Knife Pix

[This message has been edited by Blues (edited 04-05-2001).]
 
And Pala could have taken care of the problem like he did in Nepal if he'd only known.

Anyone remember the Nepali shipping problem and how it got cleared up?

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joker.gif
"Ayo Ghorapani!"
 
Come to think of it, Yangdu could probably do the job all by herself if she got irate enough. Shoot - she doesn't have the 9"er she took on the bus anymore, does she? Can you imagine what a khukuri that destroys chopping blocks would do to a particle board counter like you find in gov't areas?

Oh God! I just had a flash of what the blade would do to those flimsy counters with just a sideslap. That would wake up the guy behind the counter. ( Evil smirk )!

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joker.gif
"Ayo Ghorapani!"

[This message has been edited by Rusty (edited 04-05-2001).]
 
We have not allocated sufficient resources to customs to do non-destructive searches. These searches are important to our "war on drugs." Therefore it is expedient that the property of US citizens be destroyed without compensation.

My state senator recently sponsored a bill in the state legislature that would prevent police departments from confiscating a citizen's property in the absence of a conviction by a court of law. She tells me in a private communication that the bill went down to defeat because there is currently no acceptable alternative to replace the funds generated by this practice.

A common practice in our judicial system is the "plea bargain," in which an individual is coerced to plead guilty to a lesser crime in lieu of being prosecuted for a greater crime. This is done because our court schedules are "overcrowded."

We incarcerate convicted criminals in overcrowded institutions in which they can expect homosexual rape and other forms of assault that might be considered "cruel and unusual." The reason is that we "lack the resources" for a constitutional form of incarceration.

I could continue to give examples, but I think the commonality of these arguments is evident. We suffer from a moral bankruptcy that allows a cost efficiency argument to justify infringements of individual liberties. Until we are willing to pay for what is important, we will continue to get the results we deserve.

Make some noise, Bill!


[This message has been edited by Howard Wallace (edited 04-05-2001).]
 
Let's not forget the "common sense" bankrupcy. An intelligent non-destructive examination of the knife compared to the scabbard and the scabbard itself would have shown very little opportunity for concealing something in the space between the inside of the scabbard and the leather covering. this smells like a nasty little bit of "someone might be looking over my shoulder no-brain don't give a damn this is more fun it's supposed to be someone else's" stupidity- in other words, abuse of the property of an American Citizen without regard for accountability.

Incidently, due to some farcle that occurred while updating my profile, I must now become Finn.

Finnean

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"To Know and Act are
One"

[This message has been edited by Finn (edited 04-05-2001).]
 
:
I imagine that the good US Customs Agents are much angrier than we are over incidences like this.
All it takes is one bad one to spoil the reputation of many. And this applies to any good public servant who takes their job seriously and most do IMO.
On the other hand there are also those like the one or few, possibly over zealous agent(s), that caused CRKT so much trouble not so long ago and threatened to turn the world of knife manufacturers and knife knuts alike upside down.
Thank goodness that fiasco was settled in a good way and quickly although it no doubt cost CRKT much more than the profits they might have realized that month.
That situation could have impacted the knife world not only very badly but set it back several years if not for good.
We need to keep all the freedoms we have left and hopefully regain many that have been lost.
The laws against switchblade and other knives are so horribly stupid.
It's my understanding that most crimes commited with knives are those of the cheap kitchen variety and Not the high quality knives of all sorts that we knife loveing people buy.


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&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;---Yvsa-G@WebTV.net----&gt;®

"VEGETARIAN".............
Indin word for lousy hunter.
 
Remember the old saying about one rotten apple.

I emailed somebody and told them we get 98 or 99 percent of our stuff. We lose only one or two khukuris out of a hundred in transit and we can live with that.

My main complaint is that when our parcels are inspected by customs agents the items inspected are never repacked but are just tossed into the box haphazard and it is amazing just how many scratches and nicks can be inflicted on handles and scabbards by a wandering karda of good size.

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Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.

Uncle Bill
Himalayan Imports Website
Khukuri FAQ
Himalayan Imports Archives (33,000 + posts)
Himalayan Imports Shopping Site
 
The guy who cut the scabbard open could have just shoved the frog off, and run his knife up and down the seam down the back, then pulled the leather close to all the way off and you'd still be able stitch it back up.

From the look of the photo you put up, Bill, I hope the customs agent's parents will be very happy if they ever get married. They sure produced a child that was lower than a snake's belly ( my apologies to the snakes ).
That was wanton destruction, not out of carelessness, but out of arrogance and spite, superfluous viciousness for the pure sake of destroying something 'cause you want to and can get away with doing it.

I devoutly hope the next one he cuts up, he's sitting at a table as he does it, and accidentally brushes the 20" AK he's set down ( while he goes after the scabbard ) so it lands in his lap point first between his legs.

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joker.gif
"Ayo Ghorapani!"
 
:
And let's hope the AK lands sideways in order to inflict the most collateral damage possible.
biggrin.gif


Just escalateing my little Bro's suggestion to the next level.
biggrin.gif


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&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;---Yvsa-G@WebTV.net----&gt;®

"VEGETARIAN".............
Indin word for lousy hunter.
 
Sorry to see that this happend Uncle. This makes me very mad also. Last time I came back from Japan, I bought one of those replica "airsoft" guns and the U.S. Customs freaked out! I had to I.D. myself as a LEO when two armed agents triangulated towards me. The had to look inside my suitcase and aske what was in it. I told them it was a model/toy gun for training use. They insisted that I open it. (Imagine if I was a real terrorist and had a real UZI instead of a model UZI in it. O.K. officer, I'll open my own suitcase..... then what???)

Recently my mom came back from an overseas trip and she had a toy gun (all plastic and no metal parts at all) in her check in. They insisted that she open it also.

Maybe Blues could fill me in or someone here. What type of equipment do they use now? could they image things that are none metalic nowadays? Weird. Maybe they will freak out over a radio controlled car or tank!!
 
Blues is not an Inspector (thankfully) and is bowing out of this one before the lynch mob and the hanging judge show up.


Blues
(Who's glad he's a Special Agent whose duty is conducting criminal investigations and not the afore discussed examinations.)



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Live Free or Die

Blues' Knife Pix
 
Aw, heck Blues, you want to deny us a little fun now and then?

The last fun we had in Hawthorne was ten or twelve years ago. Had the town's first bank robbery. Guy had just got out of prison, made it the 130 (+/-) miles to Hawthorne and decided to stick up the bank.

Got out the door with the money, walked to the light at the corner, changed his mind and went back to the bank. Couldn't get in ( they locked the door after he left ). Pounded on the door, the manager opened up and let him back in, and they were sitting having a cup of coffee when the Sherrif showed up and stuck his gun in the guy's ear.

They took him down to the Sherrif's department in the courthouse just about lunchtime. Did I mention that we have a District court judge who covers Mineral, Nye, and Esmeralda counties? We have law and motion day every other Wednesday. Did I mention this was on that Wednesday?

Well, we had the judge there, the DA, of course, and the Public Defender was in town. And it was a slow day, they had plenty of time to fit him into the schedule. He waived his rights, pled, and they called in a Deputy to drive him up. The next morning he woke up in max and and decided he'd been robbed.

We made the National news for a record from committing the crime to imprisonment in about 10 hours.

PS - do I have to suggest that Hawthorne, Nevada is not the place to be "offensive"?

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joker.gif
"Ayo Ghorapani!"
 
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