(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups: rec.knives, talk.politics.guns,alt.cypherpunks) [Note to Usenet readers. I wrote this for the Cypherpunks mailing list, but decided you folks in rec.knives and talk.politics.guns might be interested too.] Pardon the rant, to borrow a line from Dennis Miller. One of the recent trends which really bugs me, and which seems to be indicative of a major shift in the American system is this: "They" have certain rights the rest of "us" don't have. Who are "they"? - law enforcment - the military - the spies - the secret police The "us" is anyone not in a special group exempted from the ban. (Note: Please don't cite the hackneyed example of how the government has the right to own nuclear weapons but ordinary citizen-units do not. This is indeed so, and I don't even necessarily think this is completely unreasonable...though I now am more inclined to support the right to keep and bear nukes. But, seriously, the issues are not so cosmic as nuclear weapons....the examples I'll cite here are much more mundane, and more pervasive.) Here's an example I ran across tonight, in the group rec.knives: In article <01bc99fa$f7d16420$538a98cf@kevlar>, "James R Thorpe" <kevlar@meganet.net> wrote:
Does the name refer to the blade length.? IE only 2 inches and therefore legal in California. Nice looking knife. What's the blade made out of? daithi
Got mine in the mail, it's a sweet little knife. Better than I expected. Rugged feeling too. ATS-34 Blade, and aluminum handles. Lanyard Hole, where I tied a piece of leather shoestring, and the blade pivot is tension adjustable. The blade on the ones PV Knife is shipping now is a little different than the picture. It has a clip point and hollow grind. It's small but feels bigger than the picture once you get it in your hand. My fiancé even wanted to fondle it. Its a very "grabable" knife. After she cut herself she didn't want to play with it anymore. Not sure why its named CA Special. You can probably get one shipped to you with out any LEO/Military credentials due to the blade length. Jim
Here's what these guys are referring to: There are large numbers of knives and knife types which are forbidden for ownership and/or carrying in California, amongst other states, but which are commonly carried by cops. Some are the evil "switchblades" (a category which may or may not include the thumbhole folders a lot of us carry in our pockets, depending on what the local cops decide). Some are "butterfly" knives. Some are just plain knives which are longer than the local burghers (or is it "burgers"? :-)) have "permitted." In California, there is ongoing uncertainty about whether a fixed-blade knife may be carried openly, which may be "brandishment," or may be carried in a backpack (and hence "concealed")...one analysis noted that it is probably a felony to carry a kitchen knife home from a store, as it is either being "concealed" if in a bag, or "brandished" if not. I guess hiring a delivery boy would shift the felony to him...or make one a co-conspirator in a RICO felony. (Practically speaking, there are few arrests and even fewer prosecutions. Cops have been known to tell people to "keep your knife out of sight and you'll be OK," even though the laws are usually quite clear that this is felony concealment. The law is an ass.) OK, enough about knives. The point is that the term "LEO" means "Law Enforcement Only." Meaning, your local cop is free to buy these items, even for personal use in many cases, but the sheeple are not. My local gun stores have sections marked "Law Enforcement Use Only," and these sections are getting bigger every year. Here are some things which now fall into this "Them" vs. "Us" situation: * Knives. They get to own all sorts of things. We are being limited more and more each year: the allowable knives are getting shorter, the types are being further restricted. (All in a putative move to reduce crime...anybody think that telling T.C. May he's a felon if he carries his Benchmade AFCK is going to reduce the number of knifings?) * Guns. 'Nuff said, as we all have heard much about this. A recent example is telling though--the banning of magazines (clips) holding more that 10 rounds. (Unless already made before some date, and some other details.) Cops and even retired cops and retired military personnel are allowed to buy the 15-round magazines their guns are made to use, but the sheeple are not. (And there are proposals to ban magazines holding more than 5 rounds, to ban detachable magazines completely, to ban semi-automatic weapons, to ban all firearms except "sporting" rifles, and so on.) * Ammunition. Believe it or not, some forms of bullets are now restricted to "LEO." (Usually after some shooting spree, or some mass media hysteria--as with the never-produced "Black Rhino" ammo--there are sudden moves to ban some class of ammo. Cops make sure they are not affected, and,voila, a new "LEO" item is added to the list.) * Martial arts supplies. Batons, kubotans, throwing stars, nunchuks, etc. These are allowed for cops, but not for ordinary people, regardless of training. * Drugs. Aside from the evidence that the CIA and other gov't agencies ran drugs into the U.S. (cf. the usual sources), there are lots of drugs the gov't. dispenses to its own troops, including methamphetamines, which it declares to be contraband in the civilian sector. (Pilots, for example, are given uppers to maintain alertness, but of course a truck driver caught with them faces jail.) * Radio equipment. Certain frequencies are not allowed on civilian radios, and there are related restricitons. (Radio buffs will know a lot more.) Some of this may be for "legitimate" (barf) reasons, to maintain radio security for sensitive operations, but mostly it is not needed (and is bypassable by spies and anyone seriously interested in doing so). Note of course that strong crypto would bypass this issue of banning certain types of electronic equipment. (I am not including TEMPEST equipment as being banned, as this seems to be a false rumor. The TEMPEST research may be classified, but there are no laws that I know of that make it a crime to make a piece of equipment radiate very little RF. In fact, the FCC likes it this way.) * Armor. Especially body armor (aka "bulletproof vests"). I believe there are some restrictions on what may be sold to civilians. * Biological research. There are specific laws making it illegal for private individuals or companies to do research in certain areas without government approval. (I believe the specific law dates from around 1975, and covers CBW weapons and related research. Ditto for nuclear weapons, probably under the Atomic Energy Act or somesuch.) * Crypto, of course. Not yet, domestically, but we appear to be entering an era in which the government and its employees have access to crypto the rest of us are forbidden to use. PGP may have a warning sticker: "Law Enforcement Use Only." I assume others of you can think of examples I've left out. Obviously things like wiretap equipment, etc. are often restriced to law enforcement and spies. At least one of those "007" spy shops was shut down for selling to civilians stuff that cops readily have (I heard this on CNN, but I don't have the details). The danger in all of this is not that there are a _few_ things that we let police and soldiers have that we think civilians should not have, but that _so many_ things are now classified this way, with the number of things so classified growing constantly. This makes for a dangerous society, civil liberties-wise, when industrial companies and shops have two classes of customers: them and us. This stinks. We're not talking about private ownership of nukes. We're talking about a situation where a citizen can go to prison for having a knife longer than 3 inches in his pocket, while cops are free to have them for their own purposes. This stinks. --Tim May -- There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."