AP:

Germany’s parliament on Friday approved a new law that bans switchblades and the carrying of replica firearms.

The law, which takes effect Saturday, is largely an attempt to help police officers avoid accidentally mistaking replica firearms for real weapons.

Under the law, people can still sell, purchase and possess the replicas. Toy weapons that cannot be mistaken for real guns are not affected by the law.

The law also forbids the carrying of any knives with a blade longer than 12 centimeters (4 3/4 inches), and all switchblades.

A fine of up to €10,000 (US$15,000) can be imposed upon people breaking the new law.

Dennis Praeger asks a few questions which have often occurred to me upon reading press reports of these kinds of incidents.

Question 1: Why are murderers always counted in the victims tally?

The day after the mass murder of students at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the headline in the closest major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, was: “6 Dead in NIU Shooting.”

“6 dead” included the murderer. Why wasn’t the headline “5 killed at NIU”?

It is nothing less than moronic that the media routinely lump murderers and their victims in the same tally.

This is something entirely new. Until the morally confused took over the universities and the news media, murderers were never counted along with their victims. To give a military analogy, can one imagine a headline like this in an American newspaper after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: “2,464 Dead in Pearl Harbor Attack”? After all, 55 Japanese airmen and nine Japanese crewmen also died in the attack. …

Question 3: Why are “shooter” and “gunman” used instead of “killer” or “murderer”?

If a murderer used a knife to murder five students, no news headlines would read, “Knifeman Kills Five.” So why always “shooter” and “gunman”?

The most obvious explanation is that by focusing on the weapon used by the murderer, the media can further their anti-gun agenda.

“First they came for the fully-automatic machine guns, and I’d didn’t protest because I didn’t own a machine gun…”

As the BBC reports, even joke guns and toys swords must be registered and stored locked up in today’s Britain.

A Cornish village drama group has had to register a toy gun with the police to comply with health and safety rules.

Carnon Downs drama group in Cornwall have also had to keep their plastic cutlasses and wooden swords locked up for the pantomime, Robinson Crusoe.

Producers of the show called the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) rules “farcical”.

A spokesman for the HSE said the rules were designed to make risks “sensibly managed”.

The climax of the show is a fight in which actors use replica 4ft-foot long plastic cutlasses.

There is also a toy gun which produces a flag saying “Bang”.

The directors contacted police after receiving advice from the HSE and the National Operatic and Dramatic Association.

The HSE have a page on their website called Entertainment Information Sheet 20 which lays down strict rules for the handling of guns, swords and other weapons on set.

Drama group co-director Linda Barker said: “The cutlasses count as weapons even though they are replicas and made of plastic and apparently they could be mistaken for real ones.

“Our only gun was a panto pistol which produces a flag with the word bang on it.

“Our local police at Truro were fantastic and they have registered the gun, the two plastic cutlasses and our six wooden swords.”

She added: “It gets a bit farcical when you are dealing with plastic swords. It is not as if anyone is likely to be scared by them.”

Neighbourhood beat officer Pc Nigel Hyde said: “We have been informed and made a note.

“It seems a bit unusual but other forms of replica weapons have been used to carry out crimes and the consequences have been serious.”

A spokesman for the HSE said: “We do not want to stop people putting on pantos or having fun as long as the risks are sensible managed.”

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

wftv.com reports another incident of insane hoplophobia at an elementary school in Ocala, Florida.

School officials say the 5th grader was brown-bagging it. She brought a piece of steak for her lunch, but she also brought a steak knife. That’s when deputies were called.

It happened in the cafeteria at Sunrise Elementary School. The 10-year-old used the knife to cut the meat.

“She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn’t pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature,” explained Marion County School Spokesman Kevin Christian.

But a couple of teachers took the utensil and called the sheriff. When deputies arrived, they were unable to get the child’s parents on the phone, so they arrested her and took her to the county’s juvenile assessment center.

“And we didn’t handcuff her or treat her like a criminal. But, we took her to the assessment center to be assessed,” said Capt. James Pogue, Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

School officials said it doesn’t matter what the knife was being used for. They said they had no choice.

“Anytime there’s a weapon on campus, yes, we have to report it and we aggressively report it because we don’t want to take any chances, regardless,” Christian said.

But the sheriff’s office said the extreme measures in what some may say was a harmless incident had to do with school policy, not theirs.

“But once we’re notified, we have to take some type of action,” Pogue explained.

The student now faces a felony charge for the possession of a weapon on school property and the principal suspended her for ten days. The parents of the girl could not be reached for comment.

The sheriff’s office has turned the case over to the State Attorney’s Office.

Adam Freedman, in the Sunday New York Times, demonstrates the characteristic talent of members of the contemporary intelligentsia in his facile ability to reduce the discussion of the meaning of the Bill of Rights to an exercise resembling an archaeologist or historian poring over philological treatises on ancient punctuation and orthographic convention in order to guess at the meaning of some cryptic expression found upon a potsherd from a vanished civilization.

Of course, it is only possible to reject the concept of a right of citizens to be armed and able to defend themselves in the first place by achieving a level of estrangement from the philosophical perspectives, values, and ideals of the framers so extreme as to look upon their thought-world as unfamiliar, alien, and irrelevant to oneself, contemporary political life, and current jurisprudence as the outlook and perspective of some Greek hoplite or Egyptian charioteer.

It isn’t difficult in the least to find the meaning of a right to arms in English history, or extensive discussions of a right to arms (for purposes of self defense in both the private and the public sense) in writings of the framers themselves as well as in those of the writers on political philosophy and government who inspired them. One can easily consult the leading earlier treatises (Blackstone) on the laws of England and (Joseph Story) on the US Constitution to determine the nature of the previous status of such a right.

The avoidance of reliance on far more relevant evidence and the resort to the parsing of grammar and punctuation is simply another variation of the old lawyer’s maxim: If justice is on your side, argue justice. If the law is on your side, argue the law. If neither is on your side, pound upon the table.

Minding the Campus:

Troy Scheffler, a graduate student at Hamline University in Minnesota, thinks that the Virginia Tech massacre might have been avoided if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons. After e-mailing this opinion to the university president, he was suspended and ordered to undergo “mental health evaluation” before being allowed to return to school.

Punishment for expressing an opinion is not unusual on the modern campus. Neither is the lack of protest among faculty and students for the kind of treatment Scheffler got. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which is defending the student, reports that it has failed to find a single Hamline student or faculty member who has spoken out in favor of Scheffler’s right to free speech. So far, no protest from has been reported in the student newspaper or in outside internet outlets such as Myspace.

FIRE’s collected links on the case.

The Dennis Township ُPrimary School in Cape May, New Jersey suspended a 7-year-old second grader for drawing a stick figure holding a gun. He gave the drawing to a schoolmate whose parents saw it and complained.

The 7-year-old’s mother thought the official reaction was excessive, particularly since the drawing was depicting a person using a water pistol.

Press of Atlantic City

AP

Richard Munday, in the London Times, notes the impact of bien pensant gun control policies on British crime.

We are so self-congratulatory about our officially disarmed society, and so dismissive of colonial rednecks, that we have forgotten that within living memory British citizens could buy any gun – rifle, pistol, or machinegun – without any licence. When Dr Watson walked the streets of London with a revolver in his pocket, he was a perfectly ordinary Victorian or Edwardian. Charlotte Brontë recalled that her curate father fastened his watch and pocketed his pistol every morning when he got dressed; Beatrix Potter remarked on a Yorkshire country hotel where only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver; in 1909, policemen in Tottenham borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by (and were joined by other armed citizens) when they set off in pursuit of two anarchists unwise enough to attempt an armed robbery. We now are shocked that so many ordinary people should have been carrying guns in the street; the Edwardians were shocked rather by the idea of an armed robbery.

Hat tip to Frank A. Dobbs.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a story demonstrating just how far contemporary urban bourgeois phobia toward firearms can proceed.

In Roseville, doubtless a fashionable neighborhood of Sydney, residents are in a panic over the prospective opening of a sporting goods store.

Up in arms would accurately describe the incensed reaction of Roseville residents to news that a gunshop is to open in their midst.

Last night hundreds were expected to pack a community hall to protest against the approval granted by Ku-ring-gai Council, apparently without notification to those who may have an opinion about such an enterprise.

Andrew Peter, a gun enthusiast and coffee shop owner from Bondi Junction, made an application last month to turn an old printing shop into a sporting goods and firearms store. One of the main reasons for his decision was the estimated 1300 firearm owners who live in the area.

The shop is opposite a community hall that runs a preschool centre. It is also near a bus interchange used by schoolchildren, and some neighbouring businesses say the approval, although legal, is inappropriate.

Lisa Warrand is one of dozens of parents who fear the worst: the potential for an armed hold-up and shootout, or merely having to explain to children who walk past every day why a shop sells guns.

“Roseville has five churches and no pubs. People buy in this area because they want a more family-focused area,” she said yesterday. “We teach children about how bad guns are and yet we are being put into a position where we have to explain why there is a man in the car park carrying a gun bought across the road.”

Sally Cochrane runs the Zest hairdressing salon a few doors away. She concedes that the chances of a hold-up are slim but says it is a risk that should rule out the shop from the neighbourhood. “Children and guns don’t mix. It’s as simple as that, and if there is a robbery then it could be disastrous. I accept that this man has a right to open his shop and to sell guns, but not here.”

Do you feel threatened by this?

Even Western states with strong hunting cultures, no gun control laws, and residents who overwhelmingly vote Republican contain suburban enclaves of liberal insanity.

Chandler, Arizona, a major suburb of Phoenix, is obviously just such a locality. One glance at the junior high school’s web-site indicates immediately that it sees its goal as producing Berkeley Breathed’s Lola Granola rather than Wyatt Earp.

And, in a fashion typical these days nation-wide, the liberal regime in Chandler intends to enforce its politically correct perspective with absolute ruthlessness via “Zero Tolerance” policies. Zero Tolerance, as enforced by American school systems, seems commonly to include “zero connection to reality.” Even a kid’s doodled drawing of a ray gun may be treated as a “threat,” resulting in serious disciplinary action.

East Valley Tribune:

An East Valley eighth-grader was suspended this week after he turned in homework with a sketch that school officials said resembled a gun and posed a threat to his classmates.

But parents of the 13-year-old, who attends Payne Junior High School in the Chandler Unified School District, said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.

“I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” said Paula Mosteller, the boy’s mother. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”

Payne Junior High officials did not allow the Tribune to view the drawing. The Mostellers said the drawing did not depict blood, injuries, bullets or any human targets. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun.

But Payne Junior High administrators determined that was enough to constitute a gun threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension that was later reduced to three days.

The Tribune isn’t publishing the boy’s first name at the request of his parents. …

In the letter, school officials… indicated there would be a zero-tolerance policy toward gun threats.

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the school is not allowed to discuss students’ discipline records. However, he said the sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and threatening words or pictures are punished.

The school did not contact police about the threat and did not provide counseling or an evaluation to the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat.

The Mostellers said their son has no discipline record at the school because they just moved from Colorado this year.

The sketch was one of several drawings scratched in the margins of a science assignment that was turned in on Friday. The boy said he never meant for the picture to be seen as a threat. He said he was just drawing because he finished an assignment early.

School officials issued the suspension on Monday afternoon and notified the student’s father, Ben. He met with school officials and persuaded them to shorten the suspension from five days to three.

That kids’ parents should sue the pants off that school district, and the school board should obviously discharge all school officials incapable of, or merely disinclined toward, distinguishing between drawings and actual physical objects.

Reuters:

It resembles a hand-held electric razor and is available in metallic pink, electric blue, titanium silver and black pearl.

But it gives out a 50,000-volt jolt that short-circuits brain signals and momentarily incapacitates.

Meet the sleek new C2 stun gun from Taser International in Scottsdale, a controversial device aimed mainly at women consumers that has sparked widespread concern among U.S. law enforcement and human rights groups.

Police forces in the United States have been issued with Tasers since 1999 to subdue violent criminals. A pistol-like civilian version aimed at the self-defense market has been available since 1994.

But the new, lighter, brighter designer version, which was launched in late July with a price tag of around $350, is small enough to tuck into a purse and packs the same paralyzing punch.

“We wanted to make sure that it was something that people were comfortable carrying and didn’t make it look like they were ‘Dirty Harry,'” said Tom Smith, the company’s co-founder and board chairman, referring to the Clint Eastwood movie.

“And it does the job.”

But some of the nation’s top police authorities are concerned that the gadgets could easily wind up in the wrong hands. Amnesty International also is opposed, saying it can pose “serious harm” for women.

The C2 Taser, which fires two electrical probes and is equipped with a laser sight, can legally be sold to consumers in all but seven U.S. states. It is largely banned for civilian use throughout the rest of the world.

“If a police officer or a civilian is stunned with a Taser there are a whole array of things that can happen and most of them are very bad,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police in Washington, D.C.

Pasco, whose group represents 325,000 police officials nationwide, said the immobilizing devices should be limited to well-trained law enforcement professionals.

“There’s a tremendous amount of respect and accountability that goes along with a police officer using a Taser,” he said. “This Taser is no more regulated than a hair drier.”

Even the least dangerous weapon, one designed only momentarily to stun, can be supposed to be capable of being used to resist the authority of the state, and is therefore unacceptable to extreme statists philosophically committed to the Leviathan state’s total monopoly of force.

And civilian self defense, any level of physical resistance to victimization by violent criminals. is unacceptable to Pacifist extremists.

A record of hundreds of millions of deaths by government in the last century ought to be sufficient to discredit completely ideologies of extremist Statism, and extreme Pacifism has always been a minority position. So why does the mainstream media insist on treating both of these absurd ideologies as the appropriate standards for evaluating public policy?

The Daily Breeze, last Friday, reported a truly mind-boggling case of institutional insanity, of the sort that nearly always comes out of California.

A fifth-grade promotion ceremony in Rancho Palos Verdes turned into a free-speech battleground Thursday, when students were asked to remove weapons from toys that had been placed on mortarboard caps because of the school’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons on campus.

Each year, students decorate wide caps with princesses, football goal posts, zebras, guitars and other items to express their personalities and career goals. Cornerstone at Pedregal School is the only Palos Verdes Peninsula public school to practice the tradition.

On Thursday, before the ceremony, one boy was told he couldn’t participate unless he agreed to clip off the tips of the plastic guns carried by the minuscule GIs on his cap. Ten others complied with the order before the event.

Parents reacted angrily, calling Principal Denise Leonard’s decision censorship, but the Palos Verdes Peninsula School District defended her.

Cole McNamara and Austin Nakata, 11-year-old buddies who share an interest in all things military, said they put the toys on their hats to support American troops in Iraq.

“I was kind of mad because they just went over and clipped them off and didn’t say anything about it,” Austin said.

His father, Glen Nakata, said he was disappointed that parents were not approached or consulted on elimination of the “firearms.”

“I felt they were keeping the boys from expressing their patriotism, their strong beliefs toward the military,” he said.

Glen Nakata’s father served in the U.S. Air Force. And Austin wants to attend a military academy when he’s older. Cole wants to join the Marine Corps, said his father, Paul McNamara.

To treat the “injuries” caused by the order to remove the offending weaponry, Austin wrapped the plastic stumps in white gauze and painted on faux blood.

The principal pulled Cole aside Thursday morning, handed him a pair of scissors and said the guns had to go. …

In enforcing the decision, the district cited its Safe Schools policy and the federal Gun Free Schools Act of 1994, a federal law designed to remove firearms from schools.

Susan Liberati, an assistant superintendent, said she believes “the principal has interpreted district policy accurately, and we support her in that.”

A copy of the district’s Safe Schools policy obtained by the Daily Breeze includes no mention of toy army men. Students found to be “possessing, selling or otherwise furnishing a firearm” are expelled for one year, the policy states.

Weapons are also mentioned in the board’s “weapons and dangerous instruments” policy that allows only authorized law enforcement or security personnel to possess “weapons, imitation firearms or dangerous instruments of any kind” on school grounds.

Board President Barbara Lucky declined comment on the incident or the policy.

“Sounds like a good question for legal counsel,” Lucky said.

It’s wrong for public institutions to adopt policies embodying extremist and Utopian forms of Pacifism or other doctrines wildly at odds with the religious views and moral philosophies of normal and rational Americans. But it is considerably worse to adopt policies which, whatever their philosophic content, represent pure insanity.

It’s bad enough that we have lots of people in this society so lacking in common sense that they hope to prevent criminal violence by trying per impossible to eliminate the material cause (the weapon), while opposing taking effective action to stop the operation of the efficient cause (the criminal). We’ve reached the point where persons in charge of educational institutions are incapable of distinguishing between real objects and their images. They shouldn’t let people that stupid go out by themselves, let alone trusting them to run any kind of school. The 5th graders have more sense.

Hat tip to Wordsmith from Nantucket.