Sunday, January 15, 2012

Legislative Round-Up (1)

Get along, leetle Doges! While legislators generally approve of messin' with you more, every once in awhile, they slip up and propose the reverse.

Such is the case with SB0006, which proposes to do away with Indiana's archaic "automatic knife" law. Yeah, yeah, you're visualizin' teenagers with slicked-back hair, leather jackets and switchblades; but the fragile knives were never the problem.*

It wasn't the problem but that was what got "fixed," leading to oddities like my one-hand-opening Kershaw (like this, but partially serrated) being as legal as sunshine, but a cheap, dull letter-opener with a 2" flip-out blade that releases with a button being Banned By Law -- oh, and widely-sold at many temporary venues.

(Meanwhile, fixed-blade and folding knives of, well, any size you like, continue to be widely available to America's Troubled Youth, who still appear to favor fists and blunt objects when harming others -- and scorn bans.)

Looking at this mess, State Senators decided to try actually fixing it, rewriting a law that only encouraged contempt for the law. (They're still going to ban knives that fling a spring-loaded, detachable blade, a nasty gimmick thunk up by WW II Germans and carried on by the USSR. Not used by hoods and punks.)

It looks like the rewrite just might make it through, too.

Let your Senator in the Statehouse know you favor SB006 -- unless you're still worried about those kids from old musicals?
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* Gee, Officer Krupke, they're socially diseased! West Side Story wasn't a documentary; even many legislators actually realized that. Sadly, they thought Blackboard Jungle was.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Texas has an interesting law regarding automatic knives.

You can legally own one, but you cannot carry an automatic if you have two arms!

If you have only one arm, carry is okay.

When working on my ham antenna 40' up on the tower, I found an automatic knife quite handy. I have two arms, but I was on my own property ;-)

Rob K said...

I'd like to see IC 35-47-2 repealed altogether. There is absolutely nothing in that entire section of any redeeming social value, or any use in fighting real crime. Don't wear body armor while you embezzle from your company, kids! It's a crime!