My brother got charged as a result this law as the police wanted information about one of his friends. It is enforced very selectively too. If you can swing it down very hard and it opens, it is a gravity knife and thus criminal possession of a weapon. It is a bad law, and according to their definition nearly every pocket knife is a gravity knife.
It was a few years back, but I first learned about this in a documentary that had police officers practicing to flip knives open and teaching each other how to do it with different brands/styles of knives.
Try as I might, I can't come up with an ethical justification for this behavior. They were literally training to make knives do things beyond their design, for the purpose of charging people who had no intent to do anything of the sort with their knives. There's nothing just about that.
If we rethought whatever quota system is in place for arrests it would be a great help. Cops need to make lots of arrests, this is an easy arrest to make, and the cop is a step closer to the quota. It seems to create a system where people arrest people for profit instead of to "serve and protect."
I had typed out a huge response about quotas and how they actually, at least as I have been told, use something more insane. I deleted it, to see if I could be less wordy.
I believe quotas are illegal, at least in many jurisdictions. So, they use something even worse. They use performance metrics. This perversely incentivized ever-increasing arrests, citations, and summons, by becoming a heavily weighted consideration for raises and promotions.
They are, theoretically, supposed to pay attention to those who don't perform at about the average. Instead, they only scrutinize those who are below average. They promote those who have performance metrics that are above average.
A search for 'police performance metrics' is illuminating.
Most weapon bans are pretty silly and arbitrary.
Look at the old AWB...
Flash hider? Banned.. Muzzle Break? ok...
Bayonet Lug? Banned... Grenade launcher oh sorry I mean “flaregun attachment” is ok as long as you can’t fix a bayonet on it...
Most of these are literally based on movies, as I read somewhere. Automatic knives were common accessory of a villain in the movies of the period. Movie silencers allow you to shoot in a library undetected. Others are likely a misclassified "the shoulder thing that goes up" (from Predator?)
In all fairness, muzzle breaks have practical civilian use as a way to reduce recoil for target shooting, while flash hiders just make it difficult for authorities to spot the location of a shooter. Muzzle breaks actually increase the noise level of a firearm, making more detectable than a stock barrel.
> while flash hiders just make it difficult for authorities to spot the location of a shooter.
Flash hiders vent gas to the sides/down instead of straight out so that the shooter isn't blinded as much while firing at night. It does virtually nothing to hide a flash from the person you're shooting at. I get that the articles you've googled say that it hides the flash, but that doesn't make sense logically. It should make the flash a similar size except down/to the sides instead of a cone centered on the muzzle. The gases/gunpowder have to go somewhere.
Flash hiders make shooting at night less terrible.
> Muzzle breaks actually increase the noise level of a firearm, making more detectable than a stock barrel.
Muzzle breaks increase perceived noise for the shooter because the gas is vented towards the shooter and towards the sides. It is not a sound amplifier. It likely slightly decreases the noise in the direction of the muzzle because some of the pressure waves will go sideways/backwards instead of forward.
Muzzle breaks make shooting more pleasant with high powered rifles.
Flash hiders don't actually make gunshots harder to spot, the change the direction of the flash away from the shooter line of sight allowing the gun to be used in low light conditions without blinding oneself, and in modern days allow you to use nightvision devices.
Muzzle breaks don't make a gun louder, the make it louder at the muzzle which is why some ranges don't like them.
Muzzle breaks don't reduce recoil they reduce muzzle rise which is only really useful for follow up shots.
Video games is where I “learned” it. Outfit a gun in, say, Call of Duty or Rainbow Six. Highlight whatever the particular game calls a “flash suppressor”. I’ll bet it says something like “hides your location from other players when fired”, or something like that.
Which of course is not what a flash suppressor does at all.
From what I’ve heard, they’ll even hold it by the blade and flick it so that the handle’s greater momentum swings it open, even if it’s physically impossible to do that with the blade end.
Handle swings out? Gravity knife. They have a very strange understanding of what “gravity” means.
Well, here's a quote from your link that shows that governor Cuomo didn't veto it because he was in favor of putting innocent people behind bars. He actually just wanted the law to be even more clear:
"In response to the Governor’s objections to last year’s bill, this year’s bill removes “centrifugal force” from the definition of a gravity knife and adds “solely” to create a bright-line definition that even overzealous New York City law enforcement and prosecutors can understand, as desired by the Governor. It would preclude the unconstitutionally vague “wrist flick” test that has resulted in over 60,000 arrests and prosecutions in New York City which the Governor himself described as “absurd” in vetoing last year’s bill on New Year’s Eve."
"She still feels sick about the conviction she was compelled to hand out, to a man who was initially stopped by police for being in a city park after nightfall. Although the law was, in her view, deeply flawed, she felt she had no choice but to vote with the majority. Glaser herself carries a Swiss Army knife on her keychain.
“It just seemed like a trumped-up charge,” she says. “And it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s enforced equally across the board.”
This reads like a textbook example discussing the case for jury nullification.
I hear that in New Hampshire, people regularly inform jurors of this feature of the jury trial; but in some places it is illegal to do so. Most places try to rule it out as part of jury selection (which is understandable).
This is a single symptom of a larger issue, namely an excess of laws to the point that any law can be arbitrarily used to prosecute you if you are of an unwanted class, race, etc. Add on top the police quota system and you have a recipe of this type of injustice that runs the gamut, from antiquidated knife laws to the drug war.
To me, this is largely a result of lawyers fucking ruining everything they touch, and then not giving a shit about the lives they ruin by extension (for example, congress and k-street). It's the lawyers that are out of control here. They are the ones who got the bad law passed, they are the ones who keep allowing prosecutions to happen, they are the ones who keep the law from being challenged, etc. It's like lawyers want to be the gatekeepers to the world, but only if you pay them hefty fees. Hell, I even had someone try to tell me I shouldn't talk about GPL licensing because only lawyers understand licensing! I know lawyers are a needed entity, but they seem to have far too much power of the daily lives of people in this sense. You know what really grinds my gears though, is that these lawyers who are often at the heart of almost every injustice (even if by silent acquiescence) always pretend to be such awesome pillars of the community. I think we should start throwing lawyers in jail for such bullshit laws until you hit one powerful enough and watch the bullshit law suddenly disappear.
For anyone who wants to see video of what a real gravity knife is:
It's absolutely absurd that "arrest quotas" are even a thing in America. The job of the police in most first world countries is to protect the people, not make arrests for ludicrous laws. I don't want my tax dollars funding police officers camping out on highways to hand out speeding tickets or arresting random people for having pocket knives on them. No wonder Americans have such an adversarial relationship with the police.
"Arrest quotas" is a bit like voter fraud. It's talked about a lot, there's heavy speculation, but there's little evidence showing it exists in any systemic form.
It's also worth noting in many areas arrest quotas are outright illegal.
What departments do typically do is look at distributions. Say on a Friday evening shift, over the past 12 month period, a typical officer typically has 16-18 speeding stops.
However, during the same Friday evening shift, an offer typically writes 1-2 for the past months. Why? Maybe it's something explainable. Maybe it's the officer isn't doing a good job.
But that's the intent of looking at distribution. It's not to say the officer has to write 16-18, but if it turned out they were slacking off, they may easily see it that way.
Arrest quotas are obviously and undeniably real, they've been documented numerous times in various contexts. The most recent major case of many such examples in NYC was the Adrian Schoolcraft case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
““It’s an easy way to make an arrest. And they’re under pressure to make arrests.” A poster on Officer.com, a verified online message board for law enforcement officers, put it bluntly in 2013 when he advised a rookie to be on the lookout for “GKs”: “make sure they have a prior conviction so you can bump it up to that felony!!!”
So, there may not be quotas, but it’s pretty clear that there is pressure to deliver arrest numbers, especially felony arrests. A different mechanism that drives the same behavior.
But they have to put pressure on cops to make arrests, because if they don't, cops will only make an arrest when someone pisses them off or does something so bad and so public it's going to make the papers.
Speeding tickets are a perfect example. The sergeant has a life outside work - he gets days off, he runs errands, he drives to and from work. And all the while he sees people doing stupid stuff just like the rest of us. So it's hard for him to imagine his officers can drive around for an entire shift and never see someone speeding, running a red light, or making an illegal u-turn.
What do you think your boss would do if you sat at your desk and did nothing all day?
> And all the while he sees people doing stupid stuff just like the rest of us. So it's hard for him to imagine his officers can drive around for an entire shift and never see someone speeding, running a red light, or making an illegal u-turn.
Then they should stop and cite those violations. No one said that the police should not write tickets for minor misdemeanors. The complaint is the practice of using those misdemeanors as a way to pad their productivity, and by extension their department's budget.
Police departments should be a sunk cost. There shouldn't be pressure to make arrests, as an arrest can only be made when someone breaks the law and is caught. Look at the whole Arpaio mess. Sure, Illegal Immigrants are here illegally, but it's a national problem, not a local problem. We've sat complaining (at least we were as of last year before shit got fucked) that the feds are going after medical marijuana dispensaries in CA despite the fact that locally, those dispensaries are by-and-large complying with local laws. An illegal immigrant in Arizona isn't all that different. They may be breaking a federal law, but they're a productive member of their community. They aren't breaking any local laws, and it's been ruled countless times that local police departments should not be enforcing those laws much like a local patrolman can't really arrest and cite someone for treason. It's above their pay grade. When you do have departments focusing on one kind of violation, like treason or illegal immigration, as Arpaio ended up doing, the department pulls resources from other violations, like rape and statutory rape, that are mostly violent crime with victims that want justice for the pain and suffering they endured by their neighbors. Those are the people that should be arrested, and the fortunate (or unfortunate) reality is that a lawful community will have officers that are not "productive".
>The complaint is the practice of using those misdemeanors as a way to pad their productivity, and by extension their department's budget.
The evidence for that is spotty at best, and you're missing the point, which is cops won't write tickets (or make arrests) at all unless they're pushed to do so.
Let me add another example. Where I live there's a massage parlor every other block or so. Everybody knows these places are giving happy endings. If there are a hundred brothels (let's call them what they are) in the city, it's not unreasonable for the police chief to say to the vice squad "You have the manpower to shut down at least three of these places every month, so if that doesn't happen I'll want to know why." That's perfectly legitimate management.
> "Arrest quotas" is a bit like voter fraud. It's talked about a lot, there's heavy speculation, but there's little evidence showing it exists in any systemic form.
This is incorrect. Almost every law enforcement organization in the United States tracks the number of arrests made by each officer, and there is ample evidence that this information is used when making personnel and staffing decisions.
Also, many municipalities track arrests by organizational unit (in NYC it is per precinct), and when management (police chief) requires that mid-level management (commanding officer) "get their numbers up", you have exactly the same incentive to commit fraud that you see in places like Wells Fargo.
Also, rather than taking my word for it, you should look at the many, many, many, many news articles that have been done on the subject. There's the first google hit (http://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/NYPD-Lieutenant-Say...), feel free to look at the first 200 search results for corroborating reports.
>"Arrest quotas" is a bit like voter fraud. It's talked about a lot, there's heavy speculation, but there's little evidence showing it exists in any systemic form.
No it isn't! In New York City, of course there are arrest quotas.
As a matter of fact, NYPD officers will arrest innocent people, on entirely trumped-up charges, just to make quota.
I’m not saying there’s a [citation needed] for every single claim someone makes, but good golly this sure would go better with a link to back what you’re saying.
And by extension the government. Americans have a built in distrust of our government (often for good reason), which is why a lot of policies don’t happen here.
I'm much less concerned with that question than whether or not it should be this way. Personally, I'm not given to throwing my hands up with a "capitalism amirite?"
Lol they're common in other parts of the world too, e.g. in Germany. They dont officially exist, rather informally, and end up in the UN complaining about racial profiling by cops.
Pro tip, avoid German train stations if you're not white.
> Do you mean "avoid loitering at train stations" or "avoid using trains"?
Avoid using the major traffic hubs. No joke. Cops here will even fleece you on the spot sometimes if you're black. They seem to believe that all black or rasta wearing persons are dope dealers.
If the law is broad enough that the law can be "enforced" and used to arrest anyone at any given time for almost any reason, then yes, it absolutely is oppression.
>The officer said, ‘When I find someone with one of these knives, sometimes I arrest him, sometimes I give him a summons, sometimes I just let him go.’ ” Galluzzo’s partner, Zachary Johnson, also a former district attorney in Manhattan, adds that such discretion is supposed to be exercised by prosecutors, not cops on the beat. “An officer should be making an arrest every time or none of the time,” Johnson says. “Otherwise it’s just not fair.”
There is a paper trail and oversite further up the chain. This might improve if officers all wear body cameras, but for now, it can create a situation where some demographics get an unfair amount of attention from the police while unaffected demographics are completely unaffected. Because records are not systematically kept, it is easier for a systematic asymmetry to remain obscured.
Beyond the other answers you've received that mention the paper trail, district attorneys are elected officials and police officers aren't. The citizens of a city choose the district attorney as a proxy to make decisions for them. They don't have that input when it comes to choosing police officers. The competitiveness of local elections and the level to which voters are informed aside, that is an important difference.
not agreeing with it here, but i CAN see a difference: paperwork and accountability. when a cop lets someone go, it happens before the incident has any records that someone could use to audit the decision.
The last thing the world needs is cops that don't have discretion. Imagine when our AI robot overlords are in LE; the number of citations/arrests will go through the rough since most Americans break a law or regulation on a daily basis.
If we have too many laws then the problem is the laws. If cops were arresting white drug users at the rate they arrest minorities, drugs would have been legal years ago.
The "everyone's always breaking laws" trope is a bit tired.
It's like saying "most programs crash on a daily basis because computers are soooo fast and there are soooo many crashing opportunities". You going about your daily business will probably not be breaking laws.
Laws and regulations... Do you ever speed? Do you know how far ahead you're required to signal before making a turn or changing lanes? Is the setback on your house's lot correct for your fence? Is your pet licensed? Did you keep accurate records of all charitable donations on your last tax return?
The list of laws and regulations that are in effect in the US is enormous. Luckily most of them aren't enforced consistently.
Yup, I own a few Benchmades and aside from one with a physical lock[1](which happens to be a "spring loaded, assisted knife", which is not illegal) all of them could be considered gravity knives by nature of their locking mechanism. However things like Kershaw's SpeedSafe[2] and other assisted knives are totally legal and exempt, it's crazy.
The general wisdom in the knife community is to not make a scene or rock the boat if you've got any pocket knife on you and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES use a pocket knife to defend yourself(even under thread of life or limb). There's a metric ton of laws about using knives and weapons(even in self defense, largely tied to gang enforcement) and prosecutors tend to aggressively pursue them. In a lot of cases you'd be under less legal jeopardy drawing a pistol with a CCW than a small pocket knife.
Knife laws are also enforced on a per-city basis(aside from the assisted knives which are generally state-level). So one town might have a length limit of 3" where the next town over might be 3.5". It's almost impossible to not run afoul of some local ordinance.
Long time ago, acquaintance was assaulted/mugged on a platform and defended self with a boxcutter. Subsequently had to go to trial and defend actions. IIRC, took a while to get things cleared even tough it was self-defense. But maybe it wasn't as onerous as it could have been with a real knife.
> I shouldn't talk about GPL licensing because only lawyers understand licensing!
Clearly that person has never read the GPL, all of the legalese is clearly explained in the license. The GPL has always been my go to as an example of an easy to read and understand legal document.
It's not about "reading the GPL". It's about power.
If the only people allowed to decide morality / ethics / legality are lawyers, then they have power, and you don't. This is fantastic for the people in power. Less so for you.
You want to put lawyers in jail because they advocate a "bad law"? It was congress and the president who actually voted for it and signed it into practice, and it was the cops' selective enforcement that is the bigger problem. How on earth did you extract "lawyers are awful" from this?
This is why the 2nd Amendment is an important right to uphold. If one cannot protect oneself against criminal elements, one is vulnerable to be harmed, intimidated, & suppressed.
Outlawing certain types of guns & knives also exposes the population to selective enforcement, civil asset forfeiture, & other means to tyranny.
Of course, there are practical limits, like it probably wouldn't behoove us to ensure that everybody has a right to carry a briefcase nuclear bomb.
It's about creating a cogent system of checks & balances that acknowledges that people oppress each other. A system that acknowledges that politics can be a vehicle of liberation/oppression, that the voting public can be educated/deceived, & that people unite or devolve into tribes.
>If one cannot protect oneself against criminal elements, one is vulnerable to be harmed, intimidated, & suppressed.
That really isn't the first order way one protects themselves from criminal elements. Even if you are Jason Bourne, living in a mad max wasteland you will not live long. Whereas millions of people with zero self defense skills can go through their whole lives never having to defend themselves at all in civilized societies.
It isn't even clear if keeping powerful weapons around in a civilized place is a net win on safety. Yes there is some chance you may successfully defend yourself from criminals, but that is very low, maybe lower than the chance of having an accident or some other negative results of owning the weapon.
> Even if you are Jason Bourne, living in a mad max wasteland you will not live long. Whereas millions of people with zero self defense skills can go through their whole lives never having to defend themselves at all in civilized societies.
This is a false dichotomy. Banning legal gun ownership does not mean a civilized society (i.e. Bordertowns in Mexico) & protecting legal gun ownership does not mean a Mad Max Society.
> It isn't even clear if keeping powerful weapons around in a civilized place is a net win on safety.
The maxim is one of preventing asymmetric power. Legal Gun Ownership is an effective strategy to check the lethal power of the state, cartels, gangs, etc.
Hitler, Stalin, & Mao used gun control to give the state a monopoly on violence. Many societies that have gun control are relatively safe, but many with gun control also devolve into a case where the criminal elements gain power & rule due to a monopoly on violence.
Mexico does not allow legal gun ownership yet Sinaloa, Los Zetas, MS-13, & corrupt Federales own guns. The law abiding population suffers (in horrific ways) as a result.
Chicago has some of the strongest gun control laws in the USA; yet, gang members don't seem to want to follow the law...and the violent crime rates hold testament to the consequences.
Legal gun ownership is one of many strategies to implement. It's a particularly effective safeguard when you have political/demographic/cultural/societal dynamics that are less than ideal to ensure that law abiding citizens have a shooting chance.
Quoting [1] "No Other Rich Western Country Comes Close
Gun homicides per day if each country had the same population as the U.S." See chart.
"Chicago has some of the strongest gun control laws in the USA; yet, gang members don't seem to want to follow the law...and the violent crime rates hold testament to the consequences."
The cat is out of the bag in the USA. Guns are everywhere, and the Constitution permits it. You cannot change a society like that overnight, even with the best will in the world. You can put effort in tightening the grips, apparently like in Chicago, but that doesn't mean its going to be followed. Especially not by criminals. The other part of strict gun laws, is actively enforcing them. One big advantage when you do see a gun in such case is: either its an undercover cop (unlikely) or a criminal (that means: freeze or flight, since you don't have a gun). In the USA you got far too much fight instead of flight, the source underlines that.
> It's the lawyers that are out of control here. They are the ones who got the bad law passed, they are the ones who keep allowing prosecutions to happen, they are the ones who keep the law from being challenged
I don’t think you know what a lawyer is. You’re respectively describing legislators, prosecutorial administrators, and various forms of politicians. These people may or may not be lawyers.
Lawyers are mercenarys, and mercenarys thrive on conflict. It makes perfect buisness sense to create laws to propagate and expand conflict.
Here in germany we have a law, that rules that if somebody dies without a last will- all his belongings are shared in percentage among his decendants - creating the "Erbengemeinschaft". In theory this is a good law.
In reality, this generates even among the best familys,as it allows for a group of decendants to manage the common fortune- especially if a company is at stake, a huge chance for a infinite conflict that lasts until the last of the fortune is used up by lawyers. Its insane and nobody gains from this. Jobs are lost, lives are shattered for nothing, brothers and sisters never talk again to one another- if there ever was a law to ensure enployment of a disgusting profession - this is it. If you wanted peace- the law would be salomonic, slice the fortune instantly, conflict solved.
0.6% of the population are lawyers. 41% of legislators are lawyers. Legislators propose, write, and vote on the laws. It's duplicitous to say that lawyers don't propose, write, or vote on laws.
As the other person mentioned, that's probably not a good idea. The people writing the laws should know about the legal framework. They should understand a wide body of legal concepts, procedure, precedent, and the appropriate verbiage.
It also ties in with the fact that, like it or not, we need lobbyists. Sure, the system is broken, but legislatures can't be experts on everything. So, they need people to explain and even be able to get into the details. They need someone who is a domain expert.
That is, theoretically at least, why we have to have lobbyists. Legislatures should also have a good baseline knowledge of the legal system, with all the details that includes. They need to be very familiar with the legal system which makes lawyers potentially good legislatures.
Potentially... Like lobbyists, there's good and bad with the system. There is potential for good, as much as there is potential for bad. We seem to like to think we are in dire straits and that doom faces us constantly, but we are actually doing quite well. We're not perfect, but we aren't as bad off as the nightly news would have us believe.
Also, people really hate lawyers, until they need one. I'm not a lawyer but I have great respect for some of them.
Congress has specialized, non-partisan staff called legislative counsel. They will take instruction from Congressional personal staff and committee staff and create drafts of legislation. At times, if the Congressional staff choose, outside counsel (K-Street) can be involved in this process. They can provide "model legislation" at the beginning of the process or suggested revisions. This can be very helpful because the K-street counsel is, at times, more expert on various highly technical aspects of the law. It can also speed up getting the bill into a finished place where it can be introduced. There's nothing particularly nefarious about this process, although well-funded, well-connected interests can get bills drafted sooner. But to be clear, Congressional political staff (who may or may not be lawyers) are in charge of the drafting process. Congress writes the laws.
People who can afford a lawyer don’t carry gravity knives. These laws are promoted by middle class parents, who are terrified of everything, but especially of things that are indicative of working class people (such as knives—middle class suburbanites have little use for them outside the kitchen).
I used to carry a pocket knife in in NYC. Nothing huge, just a 3 inch folding knife clipped to the inside of my front pocket. On some random day near Times Square a cop asked me about it. I noted that he checked the hinge to see if the blade would fall under its own weight. I didn’t realize how close to a criminal charge I was. In the end he cited me for $50 because the clip of the knife was visible.
The cop was nice and I was polite and respectful but it should also be noted if I was black I think the outcome would be completely different
The man was looking to imprison you over a ridiculous perversion of a law that no reasonable person would ever conclude they were violating. I don't care about the B.S. legalese justification for it, if a law is that morally repugnant then the man enforcing it bears some of the responsibility.
I'm not American, but I don't understand, how did this man get those 6 years added in a tribunal? Did he go to court? I mean what kind of legal people put this guy in jail for that? I mean did anybody blink on it?
Sure the law is a problem, but I don't see what motivations the justice system can have to apply the law like that, can somebody explain it to me?
It's difficult to tell from the article. Unfortunately in the USA the poor don't have the same ability to defend themselves as the rich, and it often skews along racial lines. We also have repeat offender laws that can catch up reformed criminals as well as repeat ones.
I would say most of the middle class doesn't have the ability to legally defend themselves either. They might be able to, but it's financially catastrophic. You can pay a lawyer to plea for you, but if it goes to trial, it could be in the 10s of thousands. It all depends on how long the prosecutor can draw out the trial. Also keep in mind while this is going on, you've probably been fired, so you don't have any income to pay for it, so it depends on how much you have saved. (You probably won't get a loan with no job).
Well, that is the problem with the system. There are many vague laws but with this one, not only certain policemen try hard to apply it to people, but they also get supported by the judges. It shouldn't be hard to distinguish between the original knives banned by the law and a broken pocket knife. That people get punished for just owning a broken pocket knife makes it look very intentional.
So, we have a combination of lawyer politicians pushing total nonsense laws and posturing before the public, some cops looking to make arrests as sadists to attack innocent people, and a lot of lawyers -- judges and prosecutors -- out to be with the sadistic cops to throw as many innocent citizens in jail as possible.
So, with this situation: (1) Stay the heck out of NYC. (2) Try to stay the hack out of NYS. (3) Stay the heck away from cops. (4) Look the part of the powerful, upstanding, responsible, politically influential citizen. E.g., don't drive an old car. Etc.
Ah, a lot like what a lot of wild animals in the jungle have to do -- stay out of areas with potential attackers, stay away from potential attackers and generally out of sight and to any potential attacker look strong.
So, right, NYC is a jungle with vicious wild animals; cops, lawyers, and lawyer politicians are among the most dangerous wild animals in that jungle.
Can some lawyer on here explain how this law is not plainly in conflict with the Second Ammendment? How can a city just decide they don't like knives? In part of the article, someone describes these knives as "dangerous weapons" -- well, yea, that's the idea ...
The courts haven't yet decided whether or not the "bear arms" part of the second amendment means you have a right to carry arms outside your home.
Wrenn v. DC recently ruled in favor of that interpretation, and DC is now deciding if they want to try to take it to the supreme court. The 9th circuit found otherwise in Peruta v San Diego, so there's a good chance SCOTUS takes it if appealed.
It wasn't decided that there was a right to bear arms outside of a well-regulated militia until the Heller decision, which is quite recent and the court chose to make a narrow determination based on the circumstances of the case (which is common).
As I understand it, the dispute is over the meaning of 'militia'. At the time, the 'militia' was considered to be any able-bodied male under the age of 40, and under the law's current definition of the militia, any able-bodied person between 17 and 40 is considered to informally be part of the militia (as opposed to the national guard, who are formally part of it)[1]. The question is whether 'militia' means just the national guard or includes the 'irregulars' who would've been expected to fight despite not formally being part of the military.
I think it's useful to view these laws as a way to get around the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt."
The actual societal problem -- the one that's been illegal forever -- is robbery. But it's hard to catch robbers. If they aren't caught in the first few minutes, there's a good chance they get away for good.
When the police stop somebody and find a knife on them, they might think "this person is probably using this to stick people up." The legislature can't pass a law that says "conviction for robbery requires now requires only probable cause", but they can try to achieve the same effect by making it illegal to carry a knife.
This makes me so mad. Posession of a pocket knife used for work ruins 6 years of a mans wife...and I tell you. We know this was used on the poor or the brown.
The guy in the story received the "maximum sentence" of 6 years just for carrying a knife? I think there is more to this story than stated in the article. That being said, vague laws can be abused by the state to criminalize anything or anyone the don't like.
They explain in the article. Because of his prior convictions, his charge was "bumped up" to the next level.
They also say in the article that police officers are told to look for prior convictions (presumably over the radio when they check identity) so that they can "bump up" the charge.
IANAL, but in such an absurd knife case, on the jury, why not just vote to acquit, for innocent?
As I understand the situation, a juror can vote whatever based on whatever, for any reason or no reason, and never give their reason.
So, for a nonsense knife case as in the OP, really just a way for a lot of lawyer politicians to posture before the public and a lot of other lawyers to throw innocent citizens in jail just for the jollies, why not just vote innocent?
Massachusetts General Law (Part IV, Title I, Chapter 269, Section 10) includes a long paragraph that describes a variety of knives as dangerous weapons.
I was on a grand jury that considered a spring-assisted knife charged under this statute. Our legal guidance was to have the ADA read this dense paragraph out loud. A majority voted to indict.
tl;dr: racial profiling and quotas. It's just an exploitable law (if using a dubiously-stretched interpretation) which is a handy pretext for arbitrarily arresting people.
The title is essentially wrong, in that it's not the law itself that has landed people in jail, it's the police wilfully mis-enforcing it.
That said, shouldn't the retailers be prosecuted for being in legal possession of the item prior to sale? They legally own all of the products in their inventory
The article mentions that most of the knives would have been law-abiding when sold, but due to wear, the blade hinge loosens enough that an officer can flick it open.
So it's a compliance issue. Then the law is fine. A person should be responsible for keeping their property legally compliant, be it automobile, knife or propane tank.
Keeping an automobile or propane tank in poor maintenance is likely going to end in an innocent third party being harmed. Not keeping your knifes sharp and properly "detented" is only going to wind up hurting the person who owns that knife.
Oops, I have a Luftwaffe paratrooper's knife.[0] Yes, an actual gravity knife. But I doubt that I'd ever carry it on the street. It's worth too much, for one thing.
What's crazy is any folding knife that can be opened with the flick of the wrist is considered a gravity knife. I don't understand how all manner of firearms are legal, but even the most simple knifes are illegal.
Ok, I'm about halfway through this "novella", and while I find the story itself very pertinent, I still haven't seen it define what a gravity knife actually is -- what differentiates it from other classes of knives. Admittedly, I've taken to half skimming, as I didn't intend to make a significant time investment in learning this.
Here are some pertinent -- essential -- details, from mid-way through the article. First, I guess I should add that the article talks earlier about the problem of knives being perhaps deliberately mis-classified as gravity knives (without actually defining this).
Gravity-knife arrests may be popular for another reason. Most, like Neal’s, result from simple observation of a “pocket clip,” often readily visible. All officers need to do is keep their eyes peeled, and they can add another misdemeanor to their tally — or, if they’re lucky, a felony.
Matt Galluzzo, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, now a defense attorney in private practice, says that for many officers, a gravity-knife arrest is simply a hard collar to pass up. “You don’t have to fight the guy, you don’t have to chase him,” Galluzzo says. “It’s an easy way to make an arrest. And they’re under pressure to make arrests.” A poster on Officer.com, a verified online message board for law enforcement officers, put it bluntly in 2013 when he advised a rookie to be on the lookout for “GKs”: “make sure they have a prior conviction so you can bump it up to that felony!!!”
Most of the D.A.s in the state “have never prosecuted a gravity-knife case, or haven’t prosecuted one in 30 years,” according to a spokesperson for the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York. Even just beyond the city limits, gravity-knife prosecutions are exceedingly rare. While the population of the Bronx is roughly equal to that of Suffolk County on Long Island, the Bronx prosecuted more than 10 times as many likely cases in 2013 as its counterpart across the water.
Even worse, critics charge, is that officials have prosecuted knife users aggressively while doing little to address the source of those same knives, which are sold openly at reputable retailers all over the city. New York State assemblyman Dan Quart, a Democrat from Manhattan, says there’s an obvious contradiction at play: “You can walk in and purchase one of these knives over the counter,” he says, “and then walk out and get arrested.”...
The racial breakdown of stops is also striking. Of the thousands of arrests that resulted from stop-and-frisk encounters, 86 percent of the total involved black or Hispanic suspects. And a Voice analysis also shows that white suspects are significantly more likely to be let go, even when they’re caught carrying knives. Only 35 percent of white suspects found with knives — virtually any of which might meet the NYPD’s ecumenical definition — are arrested, while 56 percent of black and Hispanic suspects are ultimately booked.
Ah, and finally, a definition of what a gravity knife is:
The original gravity knife — the type legislators targeted when they banned them half a century ago — bears no resemblance to the kind that landed Richard Neal and thousands of others in jail over the last decade. Developed by the German military for use by paratroopers during World War II, the idea behind a gravity knife was simple: An unlucky parachutist who found himself in a tight spot — tangled in a tree, for example — would be able to access the knife even with injuries or limited mobility. Simply press a button and the blade would literally fall out of the handle and lock in place...
The legislature didn’t target gravity knives at the time — they were still rarely seen in the U.S. But after switchblade bans went into effect, the knife industry saw an opportunity. Even though they were nearly identical in design, gravity knives lacked a spring, a key characteristic of the newly illegal switchblades. So manufacturers stuck with warehouses full of worthless knives simply removed the springs and went on selling, calling the new products “gravity knives.”
Cops get a bad rap, but the DAs haven’t come under fire. They knowingly ruin many many more innocent lives than cops. And unlike cops who may shoot in a poor split second decision, DAs knowingly and willingly destroy the lives of the innocent for their own personal gain. It’s time we put blame where it is due.
I have read quite a bit about innocent people who were convicted and later released. In pretty much every story the prosecution kept fighting to the end even against overwhelming evidence. Only one prosecutor apologized to the exonerated person.
I don't know what the culture is in prosecutors' offices but it seems they have lost touch with common sense and the real purpose of their work.
> What we as citizens can do is demand that elected officials hold DAs accountable for their wrongful convictions
Way to pass the buck. In 47 states, district attorney is an elected office, not an appointment. If we want better behavior from district attorneys, we need citizens to be better at monitoring that behavior and holding them accountable.
Given the injustice of justice, "wrongful" won't do much. "Unreasonable" would be a better standard.
E.g.: have a retrospective sample of cases analyzed and ranked by independent reviewers; punish those deemed unreasonable; reward those deemed reasonable (explicitly regardless of the law at hand).
Better yet, fine lawmakers that voted for laws involved in the convictions. Doesn't have to be a lot.
New York (State and City) has an obsession with blaming weapons (and potential weapons) for crime, they have a web of arcane and nonsensical laws which tend to penalize common people who want to believe that the laws are reasonable, and are surprised to find out just how unreasonable they are. The officials of course love these laws. They've made the public so wary of "weapons" that it's valuable for them to invent as many "weapons offenses" as possible.
I wonder if New York's approach to weapons laws has roots in their switch from slave state to free state (which was late for the region) like so many laws in other states. Texas took until the '90s to manage to annul their prohibitions on the concealed carry of handguns (they were no-issue up until 1995) which were clearly initially intended to be enforced selectively against the emancipated.
Racism was a major factor in the public's wariness of the emancipated slaves, so it's part of it. Either way, new laws intended to be selectively enforced against emancipated slaves and other undesirables are a feature of the 1800s (and to a lesser extent, the early to mid 1900s).
That was what I was getting at.
By "late for the region" I meant compared to their neighbours to the North and East (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, The Vermont Republic†) and Pennsylvania.
† Not a state at the time, for the obvious reason of being an unrecognized secession from New York, for the purpose of (among other things) abolishing adult slavery.
Why isn't this enough to get all the cases thrown out under the 14th amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law?
Black and hispanic people are prosecuted while white ones were not? Owners of corporate persons were personally liable under criminal charges while chains only had to pay a fine?
It's the Village Voice, which is a pretty bad source, but I've read most of the article anyway, expecting a definition of 'gravity knife' at some point and now given up.
This is a deeply-researched, well-written exposé on a troubling, ongoing injustice.
But you're giving up after two paragraphs, badmouthing the publication, and the author, because they don't start with the glossary?
FWIW, "gravity knifes" are defined when the article turns to the legal situation. In making readers wait a bit, the article may actually be trying to recreate the thoughts of these people caught up in the law: "WTF is a gravity knife?"
But, wow, it must suck to be a good journalist these days with these sorts of readers.
No. As other posters have mentioned the definition appears at 3,376 words through. Have you read the article for yourself, or did you just make up 'two paragraphs' to attack others?
It's not a 'well written expose'. It's clickbait hiding the meat of the article 3000 words deep for more ad views at the expense of a working narrative. You could happily title it 'guess what this obscure new york law is' and then made a series of slides hiding the answer on the tenth.
Spring assist folding knives don't meet the NY definition of a gravity knife even though they are easier to deploy than many thumb stud knives. They can be purchased in the city.
"Under Penal Law 265.01, a gravity knife is defined as any knife that opens with “the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force” and has a blade that locks into place by means of a “button, spring, lever, or other device.”
Courts have interpreted that to mean that any knife that can be opened with a “wrist flick” — a movement something like what a fan dancer might do — qualifies as a gravity knife. A long list of court cases have turned on exactly that question, which seems straightforward enough."
I think spring assisted folding knives do meet this definition, and the article also does mention many folding knives sold in the city also meet this definition
You've give up far too early, the definition is in the article:
"Courts have interpreted that to mean that any knife that can be opened
with a “wrist flick” — a movement something like what a
fan dancer might do — qualifies as a gravity knife.
A long list of court cases have turned on exactly
that question, which seems straightforward enough."
Yeah, I the description of the law is buried pretty deep in the article:
Under Penal Law 265.01, a gravity knife is defined as any knife that opens with “the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force” and has a blade that locks into place by means of a “button, spring, lever, or other device.”
It's not a switchblade. That's like calling a handgun a 'rifle with a shorter barrel'. There is a distinction between a switchblade (which opens at the operation of a switch or button), a gravity knife (which opens as you described),and a spring assisted knife (which has a spring but not one strong enough to open the blade on its own).
It's dangerous to mix and match words when describing an item that could or could not get you in a heap of trouble for carrying and or possessing in your particular jurisdiction.
Agreed it’s not a switchblade, it differs fundamentally in that it doesn’t have a spring and is not automatic. You take that thing, remove a bit, have this thing.
Wikipedia:
A switchblade is a type of knife with a folding or sliding blade contained in the handle which is opened automatically by a spring when a button, lever, or switch on the handle or bolster is activated. Most switchblade designs incorporate a locking blade, in which the blade is locked against closure when the spring extends the blade to the fully opened position. The blade is unlocked by manually operating a mechanism that unlocks the blade and allows it to be folded and locked in the closed position.
Wikipedia itself contrasts gravity knife with switchblade (as of time of this comment):
A gravity knife is a knife with a blade contained in its handle, and which opens its blade by the force of inertia or gravity. As the gravity knife requires gravity or spinning motion to propel the blade out of the handle, it differs fundamentally from the switchblade, which opens its spring-propelled blade automatically upon the push of a button, switch, or fulcrum lever.
I’d think the distinction should be design intent: the Buck knife and Home Depot knife shown in article photo are not designed to actuate through a spring or gesture. A gravity knife, like a switchblade, is. So certainly closer to a switchblade without a spring rather than a locking blade folding knife.
In Africa we called these knives that were not fully automatic but required a gesture “flick blades”. Some of them are not folding, they slid straight out (or down, gravity assisted) and had a double edge like a dagger. Many of these could become switchblades again if you disassembled them and added a spring.
I also agree with you the enforcement interpretation sounds like they want it to mean any knife you could possibly shake to an open and locked position.
There have always been methods to skirt laws on these sorts of things. My personal favorite from a conceptual standpoint was the knife, whose sheath dropped away, rather than the blade coming out. https://www.google.com/patents/US4523379
Wait a minute, I have one of those and they're hard enough to open two-handed, your arm would break the sound barrier before you could flick this thing with enough speed to open it one-handed. Is this really considered a gravity knife?
Flicks aren't required. The thumbhole on the blade is there specifically to enable a one-handed opening, and would likely therefore qualify as a "gravity knife", whatever we might think of such a classification.
According to the article, flicks are the requirement. It's a long article and they don't get into it until quite a ways down.
One handed would be okay, so long as it can't be flicked open by officers who practice flicking knives open on a regular basis and have pretty much perfected the art.
But, yes, the flicking is a requirement - according to the article.
Grab the blade and flick it while holding the blade. The weight of the handle will pull it open (at least partially). That is enough to qualify under this law unfortunately.
You can't really hold the blade, the blade in mine is so recessed that you can only open it by putting your thumbnail in a notch on the blade, but which is pretty hard and takes effort. I can definitely not hold the entire thing from the bit of blade that protrudes.
There was an effort to repeal it, but for some reason governor Cuomo decided to veto it. https://kniferights.org/legislative-update/new-york-gravity-...