Keeping Us Safe from Pointy Objects?

I get as exhausted from the pro-gun nuts as I do from the anti-gun nuts.

I'm pro-Second Amendment (and pro-First Amendment too it should be said), but I've never seen any reason to gin up contrived crisis or demonize folks who have a different point of view about guns because they happen to be a little confused about the nature of violence in America.

I look upon guns a bit like religion -- if you are a Christian or a Muslim, an Atheist or an Agnostic, a North American Reformed Druid or a Buddhist, good on ya. Have fun, but keep your spiritual enlightenment on the other side of the table. No harm no foul, God bless, and Peace Out.

Ditto for guns.

If you have a gun fetish, please feel free do whatever it is you think is right on the issue, but please don't wave your guns or your gun control nonsense around in public eh?

There's a time, place and manner for all things, but I'm pretty sure it's not when I'm in the room!

One reason Second Amendment defenders skeptics whiners on both sides of the aisle are so exhausting to me is that I see preious little evidence either side has read the Constitution, much less looked up the law or the data.

Here's a hint -- the Second Amendment does not mention guns.

This amendment is broader than that, and it's not even limited to citizens.

In fact, based purely on what is written in the Second Amendment, there's no reason a bearded Jihadi, fresh off the plane from Yemen, could not walk through Boston's Logan International Airport with a fully loaded rocket-propelled grenade on his shoulder, the safety off, chanting the first sura of the Koran, while his travel companion screams "death to American running dogs and especially their children!"

Of course, no one actually reads the Second Amendment in that kind of unrestrained way. 

No one.  Not even the National Rifle Association.

It turns out that everyone agrees that whatever the Founding Fathers (and their mothers) intended, it was not to allow foreign nationals fresh off the boat from another country (or domestic terrorists fresh from church sermons and cross-burnings) to walk through our crowded public airports with loaded rocket-propelled grenades on their shoulders.

There's a time, place, and manner for all things, and never mind if that time, place and manner is not spelled out too clearly in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The Supreme Court has been quite clear that while there is an individual right to own a gun, there is not a right to own any gun, anywhere, under any circumstances. 

Time, place and manner.  The Second Amendment is about an individual but constrained right, and has been since we put limits on machine guns and sawed-off shotguns almost 100 years ago.  There is no honest disagreement on this point, from what I can see.

But even if we agree that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual constrained right, does that mean it needs to be unnecessarily constrained? 

Is it too much to ask that we use common sense and reason at least once in a while? 

For example, should the constraints we put on the Second Amendment include knives?

Knives? 

Yep, knives.

Not only do these laws exist, but they are also quite common. 

For example, last summer Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., launched "a major initiative" to reduce the number of "illegal knives" on the streets of New York. 

And just look at the criminal knife dealers he decided to go after!

District Attorney Vance’s investigation led many of the sellers, including Home Depot, Eastern Mountain Sports, Paragon Sports, and four others, to enter into deferred prosecution agreements. The agreements require the companies to turn over all profits from the sale of such knives during the past 4-year period, totaling nearly $1.9 million to date, and to finance a campaign to educate the public about illegal knives

Home Depot? Eastern Mountain Sports?  Paragon Sports? 

These are the criminal arms traffickers that the District Attorrney in New York is going after?  Gimme a break!

Hey Cyrus, don't you know you can make a perfectly good shotgun out of the stuff you can get at any HomeDepot -- a piece of plumbing pipe, a staple gun, and a barrel-bolt hasp lock? You gonna ban those too?

Sadly, this is one more case of over-zealous legislators and law enforcement personnel checking their brains at the door when it comes to the roots of violence.

But wait.... it gets better.

Guess what originally inspired this national ban on gravity knives and switch blades? 

Wait for it.... wait for it... it was a New York city dance musical based on Romeo and Juliet!

A dance musical? Yep, a freaking ballet in the alley!

It seems that when Westside Story came out, all the over-educated white folks with too much money and not enough common sense got terrified that the knife-wielding Puerto Ricans depicted in the play would charge over from Spanish Halem and rob them as they made their way to their limos late at night.

Unbelievable.

Of course to every stupid action there is an equal and opposite stupid reaction, and so now we have.... wait for it ... wait for it .... a new organization called "Knife Rights Inc."

"Knife Rights" is an advocacy group based in Arizona whose founder was ... wait for it... wait for it ... was once mugged at knife point in New York City!

Yahoo!     God bless America.  You couldn't make this stuff up.

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