You’ve got to be fucking shitting me.
Something that was just a running joke less than a week ago is now headed toward becoming actual public policy.
“What we want to do is get rid of the perception that it is all right to carry a knife, and get the message to the young kids that it is not OK to have a knife in your possession,” Mr. Early said.
I was half way through writing up a grandiose explanation of how this logic is inherently flawed, but I did that on WTAG last Monday with Mike Messina and repetition makes me feel like a crazy person. Plus WoMag did a wonderful job this past thursday. So instead I’ll just point out that the problem in Worcester is not ‘knife violence’, it’s that D.A. Early and WPD Chief Gemme are two simpletons who possess such a small, provincial world view they’re unable to parse the possibility that they are just ineffectual and more importantly intellectually ill equipped for the job they’ve been hired to do. It is OK to carry knives, just as it is OK to carry guns, regardless of the sophomoric opinions held by our Chief and D.A.. It remains unacceptable to hurt people without cause, but the overwhelming majority of us know that and as a result there is no shortage of laws to deal with such unacceptable behavior. What we do have a shortage of in Worcester are leaders bright enough to realize implements used in any particular act of violence are not the cause of violence.
I can’t remember the last time I left the house without a knife but I believe I was 7 when my Grandfather, then a Worcester Firefighter, gave me my first. It was one of those cheap little chromed keychain pocket knives you used to see at the counter at CVS. Since then I’ve carried all sorts of blades for all sorts of reasons and the only person who has been injured as a result is me. I wasn’t a threat to polite society when I was 7 and I’m not one today but between the official City stance on guns and now cutlery I’m starting to feel as though my city believes otherwise.
Increased marginalization of non-threatening members of society is not the way to build strong ties between law enforcement and the general public.
CHAPTER 269. CRIMES AGAINST PUBLIC PEACE
(b) Whoever, except as provided by law, carries on his person, or carries on his person or under his control in a vehicle, any stiletto, dagger or a device or case which enables a knife with a locking blade to be drawn at a locked position, any ballistic knife, or any knife with a detachable blade capable of being propelled by any mechanism, dirk knife, any knife having a double-edged blade, or a switch knife, or any knife having an automatic spring release device by which the blade is released from the handle, having a blade of over one and one-half inches, or a slung shot, blowgun, blackjack, metallic knuckles or knuckles of any substance which could be put to the same use with the same or similar effect as metallic knuckles, nunchaku, zoobow, also known as klackers or kung fu sticks, or any similar weapon consisting of two sticks of wood, plastic or metal connected at one end by a length of rope, chain, wire or leather, a shuriken or any similar pointed starlike object intended to injure a person when thrown, or any armband, made with leather which has metallic spikes, points or studs or any similar device made from any other substance or a cestus or similar material weighted with metal or other substance and worn on the hand, or a manrikigusari or similar length of chain having weighted ends; or whoever, when arrested upon a warrant for an alleged crime, or when arrested while committing a breach or disturbance of the public peace, is armed with or has on his person, or has on his person or under his control in a vehicle, a billy or other dangerous weapon other than those herein mentioned and those mentioned in paragraph (a), shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than two and one-half years nor more than five years in the state prison, or for not less than six months nor more than two and one-half years in a jail or house of correction, except that, if the court finds that the defendant has not been previously convicted of a felony, he may be punished by a fine of not more than fifty dollars or by imprisonment for not more than two and one-half years in a jail or house of correction.
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When the State refuses to lock up criminals, the best we can hope for is to make it harder for criminals to kill us.
What country is Worcester in, again? This shit would never fly in America.
Like Buck, I’ve always carried a pocket knife and have yet to stab somebody. Actually the thought of stabbing someone has never come to mind. I’m sure there is more of us, non-stabby people, than there are stabby folks carrying blades.
Hey Chief-They can have my blade when they pry it from my cold dead hand.
I usually carry a 14″ machete when I go out. You just never know when you need to cut a path through the jungle.
I keep a knife (the newspapers would describe it as Rambo-style with a serrated edge) in my car. Always have, always will. It’s a common-sense tool that I don’t have to lug around in my tackle box. If that’s illegal, then I’m 1,000 X a criminal.
Poor, silly Liberals will never understand that weapons don’t kill people, assholes kill people.
I don’t own a knife outside of the kitchen, but with all this recent news I better at least BUY ONE before they do get banned by Barbara Haller and Billy Breault here in my neighborhood!