Move Over, NRA. Meet the Knife Lobby.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/knife-rights-second-amendment
Knife rights activists say the Second Amendment protects your right to wield anything from a bowie knife to a cutlass.
Move Over, NRA. Meet the Knife Lobby.
—By Richard Grant
November/December 2012 Issue
Doug Ritter was carrying two pocketknives and a Leatherman on his belt as he entered a suburban barbecue restaurant near his home in Gilbert, Arizona. "If we were in New York City right now, I could be arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for carrying these knives," he told me as we stood in line at the counter.
Sitting down to carve into a big platter of pork and brisket, Ritter, the founder and chairman of Knife Rights Inc., laid out his arguments for restoring our right to carry switchblades, double-edged daggers, combat knives, bowie knives, stilettos, and cutlasses on any street in America. "Knives are essential tools used by millions of Americans every day, at work, at home, at play," he said. "And on rare occasions, they're also used as an arm in self-defense, or to defend one's family. When the Second Amendment talks about the right to bear arms, it doesn't specify firearms in particular."
Ritter, a 59-year-old survival equipment expert, has carried a pocketknife since he was seven, and he feels naked without one. "It's part of getting dressed, like pulling on your pants in the morning," he said. He started Knife Rights in late 2006 after reading a Wall Street Journal article that portrayed military-style tactical knives as a deadly menace but offered no statistics linking them to any crimes.
His group now has more than 2,200 members. Its legal arm receives most of its funding from the knife industry. Its chief lobbyist sits on the National Rifle Association's board of directors, and its website is strewn with overheated endorsements from the likes of Ted Nugent ("God Bless Knife Rights!"
and NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre.
= new reply since forum marked as read
goes in my pocket each day. I used to carry a Leatherman on my belt. And this is illegal in some places. I had no idea. What bullshit that is, to be illegal.
Knives and their bigger cousins are pretty much everywhere already 
but I did, so let me try again to express my opinion, which is merely that - my opinion.
Edit to add that I realize this OP is about knives...my comment is what brought guns into the mix. My bad.
First, I'm not someone who advocates banning guns, so let's set that straight right off the bat.
You seemed to focus on my comment about the AK47 being offered in pink and other cute bling-like options and likened it to cars.
So, I assumed you were making the "cars are weapons, too" argument. Were you?
Even though cars are definitely dangerous, I don't equate them with weapons, which were specifically designed as an instrument of attack or defense in combat against adversary.
Cars weren't designed to be an instrument of attack or defense in combat against an adversary, though certainly they can be misused -- accidentally or intentionally -- as such.
Anything can be used as a weapon, but was it designed with that express purpose like guns? That's where I'm coming from.
I think anytime weapons are trivialized within a culture, that presents a danger in and of itself.
To me, when adults are posing with Glocks and AK47s for Christmas pictures as just one example of this "culture" I speak of, that seems to trivialize something that shouldn't be trivialized. Even if people posed with hunting rifles I could see that, as the hunting rifles have a purpose. And these aren't people who are into guns as a sport for marksmanship either. They're into guns because the criminals have guns and the government wants to take all the guns. Period.
Even the most careful, well-intentioned gun owner can make mistakes. Tragic accidents happen. But I think this Wild West culture that is growing in the last five years is conducive to more accidents because there's a chest thumping mentality that goes along with it. They want to shove as many guns in the face of any non-NRA person as they can, because it's their right, and it just leads to a lot of unnecessary shit and it is a growing culture in and of itself.
My dad and grandfathers owned guns. We never saw them. They weren't something to be named and showed off. They had a purpose, and the purpose wasn't to be a display of bling like I'm seeing today in people I know. Bottom line: What I'm witnessing is a lot of white people acting like thugs, though these same people view any non-white person with a gun as a criminal. When it comes to the increase in gun ownership and the way the owners behave with guns since 2008, it is my very, very strong opinion that there is a very, very strong racial component to it.
That's my story.
Oddly, this time I wasn't trying to do the cars/weapons analogy so much as an actual color=/=seriousness assertion. I realize I didn't express it well, mea culpa. I don't think making firearms in colors other black or brown detracts from their seriousness any more than offering cars in colors other than Henery Ford's basic black does for cars. In fact, people have decorated their firearms in all manner of ways for hundreds of years, so the phenomenon is nothing new.
Did you know that an AK-pattern rifle makes an excellent hunting rifle? With a hunting legal magazine (semi-auto's have been used in hunting for over 100 years) it has ballistics almost identical to the .30-30 lever-action. But that's beside the point.....
"But I think this Wild West culture that is growing in the last five years is conducive to more accidents..." Except that accident statistics, per capita, are dropping. And I have never seen anyone "shove(ing)... guns" into anyone's face. Carrying openly is not that, any more than two men holding hands and kissing in public is shoving homosexuality in anyones face. Lawful, peaceful exercise of a Constitutional Right should never need to be hidden as if shameful. SOme people have done so as political statements. So what? People do all sorts of things as political statements. Many of them are over-reacting. So what? Again, nothing new under the sun.
And I think your assumption of racism is pretty unfounded. I belong to several gun-discussion boards and the people who get the most support there are minorities and women. Gun control itself has deeply racist roots. Are there some gun owners who are racists? Sure there are. But they certainly aren't the norm. And they get tossed off most of the groups I belong to pretty quickly.
I think one of the problems here is the media saturation. They are the ones truely trying to shove everything in our faces, through every means possible, 24 hours/day. This media-driven perception bias makes even the highly uncommon appear to occur everywhere, all the time. But the perception is not the reality.
That's part of my story. Thanks for your time! 
(sorry, no time to read or respond in depth)
Just wanted to say again that my comments and opinions are based strictly on my very direct observations of others...friends, family, acquaintances....not media related.
My opinions are based on what I'm directly observing; maybe they're not reflective of the situation at large.
It's basically just a matter of blade-size. The blade of a pocket-knife is only 2-3" long and barely sharp enough to cut cooked meat. (Although you could stab someone, it's very pointy.)
I've been carrying a pocket-knife with me wherever I go for all my adult life (except for planes and when there's reason to believe there's gonna be security/bouncers at a venue). It's not about being able to defend myself, but about the reassurance to have a basic set of tools at hand.
Carrying huge blades is like carrying an assault-weapon: If it's about self-defense, why do you need the capacity to kill several people in a short time?
A person upthread mentioned a Spyderco Tenacious (described it as just a "pocket knife"
. I looked up that Spyderco knife online---just reading the description of it made me want to enlist in the Special Forces.
(Sarcasm notice, for those perpetually in need of it.)
There you go again.
(Where I honestly DIDN'T have any reason to believe they'd be checking out the populace, since there have been so few instances of Greyhounds being hijacked and driven into buildings. 
)
Yes they have a lot of convenient tools in them, but many of them are too small and flimsy for any serious work.
I keep a Leatherman Squirt PS4 on my keychain as my little handy tool. It seems more sturdy than it's Swiss Army counterparts IMHO.
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I started doing so at age 15 while I was in high school, after getting beaten up by some surfer bullies.
My current EDC* knife is a CRKT M16-13Z. I like it because it's light, strong, and very easy to open with one hand, and it cost me only $17 from SteepAndCheap.com.
California has very reasonable knife laws.
*EDC = Every Day Carry in the parlance of our time.
Also, most of the comments on the Mother Jones website were painfully stupid. Yes, a pocket knife is just like an H-bomb.
You know, the ones who like to say that if two gay people who love each other are allowed to get married, they should be allowed to get married and engage in polygamy with 10 dogs.
If nothing else it's a direct pushback against the idiocy of cities like NYC and countries like the UK.
But Knife Rights has run into sharp opposition in New York City. In 2010, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. held a press conference showcasing hundreds of "illegal knives" after his undercover investigators had bought dozens at stores like Home Depot and Eastern Mountain Sports. The stores agreed to pay nearly $1.9 million in penalties. An adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the DA for removing "a threat that was hiding in plain sight." Knife Rights is suing the city and Vance for allegedly misclassifying ordinary one-handed folding knives as illegal switchblades or gravity knives. (Gravity knives are not opened by a spring or by pushing the blade out, but rather by releasing a latch that lets the blade "drop" out.)
It's hard to determine whether New York-style anti-knife laws actually make the streets safer. According to the FBI, knives were used in 13 percent of homicides in 2010. Jan Billeb, the executive director of the American Knife and Tool Institute ("Imagine Your Life Without a Knife"
, claims that the overwhelming majority of knife crimes are committed with kitchen knives.
Ritter worries that if "the demonization of knives" continues, we'll end up like Europe, where knives are often strictly regulated. He recalls a trip to England, where folding blades longer than three inches are illegal and you can't carry any knife in public "without good reason." (Self-defense doesn't count.) Ritter was testing life rafts on a sailboat when the ropes got tangled. "The only practical solution was to start cutting some lines loose," he recalled. "The rest of the folks were all connected with marine safety, but I was the only person that had a knife on board. Not even the captain of this boat. When I pulled it out and opened it up, it was like, 'Oh my God, he's got a knife. Look at that thing!' It was a little three-inch folder, just another tool I carry, and truly a critical piece of safety gear on a boat."
Being in "multiple shootouts" like you have been including once where "an engine block" saved your life, makes you very lucky indeed.
Not to mention, extremely brave!
Here in Colorado our concealed weapons permit is actually a Concealed Handgun Permit. So I can carry my XDm 45 with two 13 rd mags most everywhere. But if I carry a knife with a blade longer than 3.5" I'll get in trouble for carrying a concealed weapon.
So I can carry this with 14 rounds of 45 ACP
But not this (3.6" blade)
Go figure.
an inch and a half long blade. If I needed to be licensed for it, I assure you, my tool kit for repairing servers contains things far more intimidating. I haven't gotten stopped on a flight, yet. 
EDIT: Not that I carry my car keys on flights - I can't. I have to check my bag of tools, but my point is that I have things far more *interesting* than a pen knife could ever be in my tool kit as a result of my profession. Doesn't hurt that I am tiny and blond, but still manage to look intimidating while doing so
Scared, cowardly people need their weapons at all times. You never know when a "thug" (wink, wink; to a Delicate Flower it means "anybody browner than I am" will attack you. Delicate Flowers know that, no matter how small or deserted, the streets of Everytown USA are like Baghdad, only worse!
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