We are so lucky in the USA...

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rpenmanparker

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I'm spending some time in the south of France. Went to one of those medieval shopping villages, Eze, the other day and saw some beautiful knives. I have been looking for a tiny pen knife for ages like one I lost years ago, stainless throughout, the blade, as well as the handle. Just about a 1.5 inch blade. Really tiny. No luck anywhere I have looked. Anyway one of the shops in the village had a Laguiole knife only a bit larger than I wanted with exotic wood handles (I know they aren't really called that.) So I bought one in ebony. Gotta have something. Anyway the girl who owns the shop gave me a little holster for it and reminded me that it was illegal to carry it in France except in the holster. WUT?

Shall we discuss?
 
There's a movement in the UK to ban knives altogether. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we're losing 2A ground everyday in the US; 1st go our firearms, then the knives.
 
I remember when you could carry a knife with a non-serrated blade under 4" long on a domestic flight in the U.S. That was over 15 years ago.

I also remember when having a knife with a blade 6" long, or a tiny push dagger, or a knife that could be "flipped" open in your car in TX was a crime. That was just a couple of years back.

Win some, lose some. The fact that we can still win some is proof we're very lucky, even without considering that we're miles ahead of many other "civilized" countries when it comes to the rights we have.
 
I remember when you could carry a knife with a non-serrated blade under 4" long on a domestic flight in the U.S. That was over 15 years ago....
Non-serrated? Never saw that, or bumped into. Pre-9/11 I carried a 3.95" serrated (not my choice, just the last one in stock) folder onto planes. Not much, first time was a funny accident, but they were cool about it.
 
Non-serrated? Never saw that, or bumped into. Pre-9/11 I carried a 3.95" serrated (not my choice, just the last one in stock) folder onto planes. Not much, first time was a funny accident, but they were cool about it.
In my experience, it all depended on who did the screening. I had different lengths quoted (one screener tried to tell me that anything longer than her badge was prohibited) and various "rules" stated. I finally pulled up the regs after being fed too much crap. That's been a long time ago and I can't say where I found the regs--it's possible I was looking at the rules for a particular airline and not the official regs. Anyway, whatever the source was, it stated that anything under 4" blade length with a non-serrated blade was ok. No rationale provided.
 
it stated that anything under 4" blade length with a non-serrated blade was ok

The regulation was the blade couldn't be longer than 4", but John's correct, there were many individuals and some airlines that added a ban on serrations. The whole palm of the hand and badge length was just the "field test" for the 4" length (ignoring the differences in hand size and the fact that badges came in a variety of sizes).

Anyway, we're getting off the original topic. Knife laws, and their subjective enforcement, in Europe are changing and becoming more restrictive. Much like here, they're a patchwork across the EU and even within individual countries and even cities. Where we have no national prohibition on carrying a knife (with the exception of ballistic knives) we have individual state laws and individual local municipal restrictions. The same is with Europe. It behooves all of us to understand the local and state restrictions here and abroad.

As to the UK banning all knives, knives themselves can't be banned because they're needed as tools, but they are being restricted. You have to have a reason to carry a locking blade folder in the UK (but similar laws on switchblades are on the books here). Scary looking "ninja/samarai/zombie" knives are treated as prohibited weapons. There are government supported knife turn in programs (much like our gun "buyback" silliness) where proud police and parsons get their pictures taken beside a "bin" and with collections of goofy wall hanger trash and random gardening tools and kitchen knives. There's even been proposed they make laws prohibiting points on knives (those proposals have died ... so far).
 
European weapon laws are a fallacy of understanding basic human/animal nature.

Look at all the sword and axe crime there. Yes, they don't have shootings like the one in Vegas, but how often do we read about someone going psychotic and taking a cheap wall hanger sword or an axe to someone.

Selfish as it sounds, if I have to be killed by someone off their rocker please let them shoot me. I have no desire to be hacked to pieces by a piece of crap. Death by BudK is no way that I want to go out;)

Now while in Ireland I was very sensitive to the laws there. The only knife I carried was a nice thick 4 layer Explorer Victorinox. I think I used the scissors once in the week I was there, but I was carrying more for emergency repairs than as a weapon, obviously.
 
A number of years ago i spent some time in England. I was struck by all the news accounts in the daily newspapers about people being stabbed to death. So they had banned guns and people were using knives. Now they're banning knives so people will use bricks and hammers. You can't change human behavior by banning objects. Sad to see what's going on over there but a powerful lesson to us here in the US.
 
Eze is on a hill, above the Cote d'Azur, one of several enchanting regions of Froggy-Land. IMO, worth a visit.

However, the attitude toward self-defense is sad. I have a non-locking folder I bought during one trip to France. Bought others during other trips, but left them there to avoid issues entering other European countries. Good for picnics in parks.
 
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