This is a pre-copy of what I wrote for CALIBER Magazine, BLADE and TACTICAL KNIVES Magazine as an Editorial..
It was written with hours of the decision to ban knives while we were all @ IWA.
The final is already published in CALIBER of Germany the July issue:
Fear mongering in the knife world: Government repression
2008 is a year that will stand out in Germany. Yes, many times in history announcements and events came out of Nuremberg that shook the world. March 2008 will rank with any of those: repression of the people and industries that abound around the world and in Germany by an outdated, illogical, and deceptive governmental politician whose only goals are security by propaganda! The German government has in its infinite wisdom let a single authoritarian politician seeking fame and a name declare in its general name that it can solve all the ills of society and internal disturbances by banning the most common of pocket knives and its variants. A few years ago they decided without logic or any rational reasons to declare that because some miscreants, gang bangers and criminals might carry balisongs a.k.a. unique openers, they made them illegal and balisongs were in all forms out right banned. Caught up in this hodgepodge declaration are all the legitimate Filipino Martial Artists and the like who found out through great anguish that the law made no distinction between practice balisongs and live blade balisongs: All balisongs were illegal and banned. Just ask Filipino martial arts instructor Senior Guro Edessa Ramos, a college instructor by day who on her way to coffee at a cofee shop in Germany just across the border from her house in Switzerland was stopped with her martial arts training bag which contained a training balisong. She was cognizant of the law about live balisongs and dutifully tried to be in compliance and NEVER carried a live balisong out of her house but like most was completely unaware of the total ban on
all balisongs live or safe trainers. She was released after much legal ado with a very stern warning.( of course WITHOUT her balisong)
This new ban is even more outrageous. Because of the ban on balisongs, at least according to the German government politicians logic all the miscreants, gang bangers and criminals who can no longer get their knife of choice (a balisong) will move on to owning and misusing the common pocket knife...especially SHO knives and SHO knives with locks. I have no idea how he or they decided this but in a move to protect the poor people of Germany from all these knife rabid bad guys and the attacks sure to follow have decreed the following:
All SHO single Handed opening knives are illegal. Yes, holes, studs, disks, waves, ramps and the lot are totally illegal. WHY? They now illegal for exactly that simple reason of because one can open the knife single handedly. And of course ONLY miscreants, gang bangers or criminals would want to be able to open their knives with one hand. No mention is made that single handed openers save lives, that under duress or injury one can still open a single handed opening knife to save one’s own life or the life of another.
No mention of the fact that for 35 or more years that SHOs have existed, been made and sold in Germany they are not used against good citizens, but for the good of citizens. No mention is made of the fact that almost 100% of all folding pocket knives in existence are Single handed openers. No mention of the fact that millions of law abiding citizens carry Single handed Openers, from civilians, to Police to Military. No mention of the fact that knives are edged tools, that tools are designed to make work easier and Single Handed Openers make working with edged tools easier and safer. The ONLY mention is from a close minded, bigoted politician trying to show his strength by stating incorrectly and assumingly that Single Handed Openers are going to be part of the miscreant, gang banger, and criminal carry!
But this wasn’t enough. To add insult to injury the same German governmental politician laid out the same tired old excuse that somehow folding knives with locks are inherently more dangerous than folding knives with no locks. It is easy to see NONE of these people especially this politician making the laws have ever used a folding knife as a edged tool to do work: prepare food, cut fabric or lines or plants, worked on a sailing ship, worked in a factory or the like. No lock means no fingers: Without a lock all folding knives are inherently dangerous because under stress and duress it is simple to get an inadvertent closing of the blade on one’s finger or fingers. In reality the greatest safety device made was a lock for a folding knife. Knives have had safety locks since Napoleon’s time. Lock backs ruled the early 1800’s through the 1900’s. In the middle to late 1900’s a proliferation of great lock inventions happened. Folding knives were now getting really safe to use as every day tools. So in the name of public safety the Government and its lone bastion of knife sanity, this rogue politician is banning locks to ensure that folding knife users get maimed, cut or seriously injured. The sheer stupidity of this law is overwhelming. Of course stupidity and lack of logic from politicians and governments is nothing new and as a matter of fact this type of inane action is the norm.
Germany has decided to turn back the clock in a dramatic fashion: to a time where Governments make arbitrary decisions and laws not on the common good but on the whims of dangerous politicians. One can only hope this offends German citizens and the EU citizens enough to have new EU and German rulings banning such inane actions, decisions and laws.
To help Germany decide how correct this inane law is I’m sure the loss of billions of dollars in trade and tax revenues should help. The loss of industry and jobs and the loss of shows like IWA which will certainly flee a country dedicated to its destruction and values might point the way to the German Government. Of course cutting off one’s own nose to spite one’s own face seems to prevail more than common sense these days. It must be contagious as well: UK, OZ, and other countries have all forgotten the basic idea of safe tools and ownership and responsible use of edged tools and replaced that idea with repression and blame stating the apparently obvious observation that edged tools cause death, mayhem and crime.
Thank god I live in the USA where it is my constitutional right to bear and possess arms. Thank god for the recent ruling on the Second Amendment and my RIGHT to carry tools for self defense and the inherint right to use said tool!
be safe
Bram
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