‘I’ll see your six and raise you thirty-five.’

Classical reference.

Anyway, a couple of things about this remarkably balanced NYT article on the knife-rights movement:

• It’s remarkably balanced.  I suspect a stealth conservative. Or a closet medieval re-enactor*.
• One flub, though.  Knife-rights activists should not be said to ‘contend’ that the Second Amendment applies to edged weapons (clubs and maces, for that matter); the proper verb should be ‘remind.’
• This bit: A police officer there fatally shot a man in August after, the officer said, he ordered the man several times to drop a knife that he was carrying. But the legitimacy of the shooting has been questioned by the Police Department, partly because the knife, which had a three-inch blade, was found in a closed position near the body of the dead man, who had been using it to carve a piece of wood… is not actually an example of how ‘volatile’ the knife issue is.  As described, it’s an example of bad police training.

As you might have guessed, I’ve got a sword or two in the house – and I know people with a fairly decent medieval arsenal, including fully-articulated and absolutely functional plate mail armor sets.  The fact that nobody almost never hears of people running amok** in this country through the streets with a battle-ax suggests that we’re capable of handling the strain of keeping edged weapons around.

Moe Lane

*Because we’re everywhere.  Incidentally, if you ever want to meet hardcore liberals who are also hardcore 2nd Amendment absolutists then join the Society for Creative Anachronism.  Also an excellent place to meet conservative/Republican neo-pagans.

**I admit that it’s apparently a real problem in Indonesia, which is where the term originates.  I am also reminded by my wife that recently we did have somebody (a television star, apparently), who killed his mom with a sword.