Clayton Cramer has an amusing tale about “of two Americans being shut up in a room together, and emerging twenty-four hours after, each with a large fortune made by swapping jack-knives.” Apparently bowie knives were often used by Americans as a stand in for currency, to which Sir Lyon comments “it must be admitted, that it lends American trade a certain kind of respectability, by giving it some sort of metallic basis to rest upon.”
I’m hoping this means Clayton is researching the background of the bowie knife, and how it came to be associated with the criminal element. Some of the earliest moves by the pant wetters in America came about over the bowie knife, and then again many years later when the hysteria of the day were switchblades.
Well, I guess I am as criminal as you can be. I own both bowie knives and switchblades. Plus I also own one of those evil black rifles.
But do you own a Bowie switchblade? Does that double your criminality, or is this more of an exponential function?
It turns out that I received a grant from Knife Rights, Inc. to write a law review article about knives as Second Amendment arms. Amazing! Someone is actually willing to cough up money for historical research! (If you don’t count the “historian” work that Gingrich did for Freddie Mac.)
I want a ballistic, Bowie, switchblade. The blade swings out, and then it shoots through the air and embeds itself in the heart of the intended victim, who dies before he hits the ground, but not before he makes a loud gasp for dramatic effect. I’m sure that Hollywood can make it happen. Then our cocksucker congressholes, taking their idiot cues from Hollywood, as they have in the past, can ban it.
I’ve always thought it was idiotic I can carry a loaded gun but not a dagger. A bowie knife would actually be my preference in a clench, and I could cut my jerky with it. Dumb laws surround us.