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knife laws

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Dalamar:
Saw this while looking for something unrelated. Plain text interpretation of Bottolfson case? Hate legal speak.

"One must be careful when conceal carrying any type of knife in Nebraska, even if the blade is less than 3 ½ inches long. This is because in 2000, the Nebraska Supreme Court found, in State v. Bottolfson, that a knife with a blade less than 3 ½ inches long could still be a “dangerous instrument capable of inflicting cutting, stabbing, or tearing wounds” and therefore illegal to conceal carry. Whether any particular knife should be considered such a dangerous instrument is a question left to the jury at trial, which means that you could be arrested and tried for conceal carrying any knife with a blade less than 3 ½ inches long."

depserv:
I don't think it'd be hard to prove that a screwdriver with a 2" blade or a box cutter or a pencil or even a broken bottle fit into the category of “any other dangerous instrument capable of inflicting cutting, stabbing, or tearing wounds,” especially since no depth of the wounds is given in the edict, and the word dangerous has such a broad range of meaning.  The things I mentioned here are used to produce the kinds of wounds described in the statute fairly often, and so are many other common objects.

The words dagger, dirk, knife, and stiletto are also not well defined, and are commonly used more or less interchangeably.  In fact they are all knives, so why even add the other three names?  Years ago when I was writing for knife and gun magazines I tried to sharpen up the definitions (excuse the pun) and suggested more specific definitions based on historic usage, but it didn't catch on.  This was my suggestion: dagger = double-edge cut and thrust, dirk = single edge cut and thrust, stiletto = no cutting edge thrust only.  Words so loosely defined serve their users poorly, and this stupidly-crafted government edict reminds us of that.   

Instead of playing games like this maybe the legislature should just make breathing illegal, and give the police discretion over whether or not to make an arrest for the violation when they catch somebody breathing that they think might be up to something.  Police know who the bad guys are, and this would give them the power to protect us a lot better.  This makes every bit as much sense as this inconceivably stupid edict regarding concealed knives.

Dalamar:
Libs will never understand that more laws don't put criminals behind bars, they turn law abiding citizens into criminals. Nor will they protect you from criminals who, SURPRISE, don't follow laws.

It's blatantly obvious when there is no ill intent or harm and yet no legislators, judges, prosecutors, etc care.

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