Of course! Funny, I actually knew about those. I think I got stuck on the mental image of someone with a katana down their pant leg.
maybe they’re just happy to see you
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When guns are illegal I will then consider caring about this.
Pedants everywhere can rest easy knowing that technically you can call them knuckles, because you can punch someone with them.
[quote=Letterkenny] Well, a person has two knuckles.
Figure it out.
A person has three knuckles.
You figure it out.
A person’s got two knuckles, okay? - One, two.
Three.
You forgots about the little knuckles underneath the fingernails.
Well, see now, that’s not a knuckle, though, Dan.
To be a knuckle, you gotta be able to punch somebody with it.
You can’t punch somebody with the knuckle underneath the findernail, can you?
Can too.
Well, you’ll be looking pretty fuckin’ silly.[/quote]
Men.
On a lizard-brain, subconscious level, most women are instinctively afraid of men (both known and unknown) because society has given us ample demonstrations and examples throughout human history that we very much should be afraid of your gender.
If it was just a fucking “straw man,” and not a viable and persistent existential threat, we’d have burnt that bitch to cinders, ages ago.
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“knife guy” / “mall ninja” is totally its own class of nerd and totally spottable across the food court
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That negotiation tactic sounds like extortion. Many people aren’t aware that saying “do X or I’ll go to the police” can be considered extortion.
I think someone who’s dumb enough to attempt to rape a woman then sue her for assault for macing them is not smart enough to phrase their proposal in a way that isn’t going to generate a felony.
(Witness tampering is also a big no no!)
I don’t actually like the term “non lethal weapon” 
Even a baton or brass knuckle can kill, and you shouldn’t use them unless you fear death or serious injury. But I agree women should be able to carry them, especially in a society that may deny them justice or compensation through the courts.
In a way, it shows how we view women’s bodies as property that some would have them let themselves be attacked then seek justice after, like you would try to lock up someone who shoots a thief carrying off a TV. They’re two very different scenarios.
I was referring to you. Your screen name is a reference to a weapon. You’re always going on about the weapons you own - or trying to convince people to own them. Like just now trying to interest me in those nasty pointy knuckles. Or about the minutiae of different types of weapons.
My brothers own guns - they don’t obsess or talk about weapons like some do - that’s why they’re less scary to think of as owning them. Because they aren’t owned by them.
You know who really sits around thinking of people doing violence- people who buy lots of weapons. It’s their purpose- violence.
And you know who is implicitly threatening everyone else? People who go on incessantly about the weapons they own.
That’s their purpose- to let people know that they’re capable of serious violence. It’s right there in your screen name.
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Fun fact;
I personally own a set of the pointy kitty knuckles posted above, and I have a blade or two that I carry on me.
In the past, I’ve owned a kubaton, a taser and even a cool black Afro-pick that had a blade hidden inside the hilt. As time went on, and each weapon was lost, broken or stolen, I replaced them. But collecting them as ‘toys’, a fetish, or a form of psychological compensation has never been my jam.
I keep one or two close range defensive weapons on my person for the same reason I’ve taken self defense courses; just in case I ever need to physically defend myself against an attacker, but with ardent the hope that I never actually have to put my knowledge/weapons to use.
I don’t horde, I don’t brag, and I don’t fantasize about theoretical ‘hero/badass’ scenarios; I’m just trying to do what little I can to help ensure my continued survival.
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Sword canes are illegal to carry in pretty much every State in the Union. YMMV if you’re outside Murca.
Perfect timing. These babies will come in handy when angry duped homeowners go after unlicensed incompetent foul-up “plumbers”.
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Suing people for defamation is pretty common, I believe Trump has threatened to “go after” the women who came forward and mentioned he’s a groping assaulter. Yes, it absolutely is extortion, but, considering these are people who attempt rape, not sure why the lesser charge of extortion would be frightening. They may not be smart enough, but if they can afford an attorney, I believe the attorney can phrase it in a way that they can “legally” file a defamation suit. Though it really is a form of extortion, even if it doesn’t meet the legal definition.
“Non lethal weapon” probably means nerf guns, and not much else.
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Plus they’re idiots. A smart gun owner doesn’t brag about them, since you’re advertising there’s 10k+ worth of stuff unattended when you’re at work.
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Women of my mom’s generation considered hatpins to be potential improvised weapons…
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I wonder if your friend knows mine, also a participant.
Meanwhile in another corner of the interwebs, this:
The home page is hilariously written and whoever wrote it in-character did a pants-wettingly funny job.
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Many ordinary, everyday objects can be used as weapons, if need be.
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My sister used a pair of ice skates that way when she was a teenager walking home from the rink.
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With some of the self-defense advice I’ve been given, that might not be a bad idea…
Ok. Not disagreeing.
In this example in the article we have mention of a woman who was arrested for carrying something for protection - presumably against men. I am all for women using what ever means they deem necessary for protection. Arresting a woman for a Kubotan keychain that also qualifies as a “brass knuckle” isn’t protecting women.
Searching google I found there were several articles about how the type of cat-esque kubotan I posted above has been getting people in trouble with the law. They buy them online and don’t think twice about it possibly being illegal. They aren’t brass knuckles, enough though they legally qualify as brass knuckles as defined.
I don’t think woman should be arrested for owning these devices they feel they need to carry for what ever reason. That’s all.
Oh it certainly is. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen the guy who has not one but two CCW badges. I’m not pretending they don’t exist.
But none of my clothes are “tactical”, and while I probably have a flashlight and pocketknife on me, you probably won’t see them. I don’t have pictures guns on my shirts (blasters don’t count) other than one I rarely wear in public and a Cowboy Beebop shirt with Ein front and center. I don’t have tattoos like all the cops have now a-days or even stickers on my car. Pretty milquetoast all the way.
It references a song by the Electric Hellfire Club, which is a reference to the name the papers gave the Son of Sam, which does reference a gun. I suppose that isn’t helping my case. I picked this user name out 20+ years ago when I was into Vampire the Masquerade and needed a cool, dark handle while I waxed on about how dark and angsty life was. I used it in IRC groups for a long time as well as a pen name when I wrote for the largest paintball magazine in the late 90s and early 2000s. I still have former IRC friends who know me better by my handle than my real name. I like it and am keeping it.
I don’t talk a lot about anything I own, though you might be able to dig up a photo or two I posted somewhere. But I believe you have no idea what I own or what I carry because I haven’t said (other than a flash light and pocket knife mentioned above.) In general I try to mention things about other people or are generalities, as I would rather keep some details private. Like in this thread I haven’t even talked about myself as no one has asked. Which I think speaks volumes.
My point was to give a different perspective because it seems like a lot of people are content with viewing people as insulting stereotypes instead of learning about actual people and why they do or think things that maybe different than what your used
I am not trying to convince anyone to own anything. I do have in interest in letting people in general have the option to own things. The whole point of posting the Kubotans is because - that is what we are talking about. That is what was getting people running afoul of the law and why it was changed. Do you think women should be arrested because they have a plastic cat looking key chain they got on Amazon?
Great. Most people are like your brothers. I am probably more like them than you seem to guess. I don’t go bringing up this topic at a casual dinner. But this a forum where topics are discussed - the topic here is the legality of brass knuckle like devices. May I be afforded the luxury of talking about them?
Really? So what is “lots of weapons”? Do your brothers own enough to be considered violent? I need to know the limit to see if I fall under that category or not.
I am sure if this is the tape measure we are using, then clearly my dad thinks about violence a lot because over 70+ years on this earth he does own a lot of guns. Only I think he mostly thinks about fishing and his garden. The most anger I’ve ever seen him at a person would be some pretty crazy drivers in Texas. Other than that, I’ve never seen him raise his voice at anyone, and certainly not act in a threatening manner (yelling at the kids doesn’t count). There was one time he yelled a teenager for tearing into a parking lot with lots of kids around.
If I am incessant about anything, it is about the right to own weapons. We all have rights and causes we champion here and I’ve never suggested to anyone they should stop even if I don’t always agree with it.
pinches bridge of nose
So, I have no reason to believe this isn’t how you feel. So I am taking it at face value. I am also going to try not to take it personally. But it’s a little hard not too.
So let me get this straight - because of my screen name, and the fact I am pro the right to own weapons, and it is known that I own weapons (though not the details), that makes me “capable of serious violence”?
Do you honestly feel that isn’t just a little - a teeny tiny bit unfair?
In this dialogue I have been encouraging people to ask their friends who might carry one of these Kubotan devices or pepper spray or whatever to have a first hand example of why someone might carry for defense or not - instead of only the vision you have in your head of what these people look like? Everyone has their own stories and reasons for things, and I think some of the characterizations on this thread are unfair and my goal is to - even if you disagree with it - at least come away acknowledging that maybe the stereotypes echoed here aren’t true everywhere.
So - I obviously I’ve failed because I left the clear impression that thanks to my screen name and my zealous defense of people should have the rights to defend themselves, I’ve left people with impressions that are so far from reality I am just gob smacked on how we got here.
So the only thing I think I can do is start over: (This will be meandering, because how do you explain to strangers who the hell you are? I’ll just do it as it comes to me.)
Hi. My name is Steve. I am 40 something years old and the two things I love most are my daughter and Boba Fett (and definitely in that order). I have a degree in Graphic Design and consider myself a failed artist and have a job doing production design getting stuff ready for print, or setting things up for variable print on a website. Pretty boring.
From 0-4 I lived in a small farm house in north central Kansas, and from K-7th I lived in a town of ~4000 people in east central Kansas before moving to a town of ~10,000 in south central Kansas. I went from being the smartest kid in school to one of the smarter kids in the school (big fish in a little pond to little fish in the big pond). Still I tended to kinda coast through school. Underachieving.
I loved everything weird - did it have laser and swords? I was in, no matter how garbage it might be seen as today. Ralph Bakshi’s Hobbit, Battlestar Galactica, The Hulk (who I didn’t know was green, as my TV was B&W), and of course, Star Wars. Somewhere I got a hold of the D&D Basic Set and started to make dungeons for me to crawl my way through. I tried to get others to play, but either people weren’t interested or it got smacked down by the parents thanks to the Satanic Panic. But man, I loved swords. Drew them all the time, made up fancy names and stats, etc etc. Also magical stuff like staves etc. I remember making what would be similar to very basic animated gifs on the Apple IIe in basic with like a staff that lit up, or a sword with a glint twinkle. And like most boys my age I loved Star Wars and would play army and cops and robbers - all that sort of nonsense.
This love of D&D lead me into comics. My friend had a paper route and could afford to buy Transformers and Iron Man and a few others. He let me sub some times which would give me enough to get a couple now and then. Then he ended up moving and I took over his route. That’s when I found out they made Dungeons and Dragons comcis. I was in hog heaven - they actually had three, Advanced D&D, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. This spiraled out of control into a sizable habit that lasted until I think my first year of college when Paintball and a girlfriend took priority.
Oh I should have gone into some STEM field, but what I really wanted was to be a 3D animator. But I never found a school around here that would teach it, so I shifted to Graphic Design, with also hopes of making comics ala Rob Liefeld (Curse Liefeld for deluding some of us that more than one hack could make it huge.) So if anyone is looking for life advice, skip the arts fields unless you are really, really good and can put forth the gumption to claw your way to the top. But I always had an art bug that I got from my mom who did quilting and oil paintings. I used to do a lot of art stuff in 4-H and even won Reserve Champion one year for this pastel of a wood duck. When I was real little I found a large clam shell at the lake, and painted a rainbow inside it, and got 3rd place at a county art show. Fun fact - I LOVE organized palettes of color.
So other interests? I love geology and fossil hunting. The kiddo loves minerals too and we like to go to gem and mineral shows. I hope to take her to Arkansas to go quartz mining. My mom used joke if I have 2 of something I had a collection, and so I have many hobbies that I have retained some interest in, and some I just still have the stuff. Like sea shells, stamps, action figures, RPG books (especially West Ends Star Wars, the older D&D, and Vampire), non-sports cards, books about art, science, and Star Wars, Star Wars anything - before focusing mainly on Boba Fett, rocketry, microscopes, and comic drawing. For awhile I did some boffer sword LARP kind of stuff.
Oh, I was that dork in a trench coat with a Malkavian vampire pin and a fedora in high school. M’lady. (I never said that.)
I went to a JUCO in Hutchinson, and then finished up at Kansas State before meeting the girl I would marry, moving to KC, and I’ve been here ever since. My kid was born 13 years ago to this day (Happy Birthday) and she is The Most Well Behaved Kid on Earth ™. Though her mom and I divorced about 5 years ago.
So - what about weapons/violence? Well my dad did introduce me to shooting at a young age with the typical BB gun. I would later hunt small game with him like rabbits and birds. I don’t actively hunt anymore, though I did go deer hunting with him 7 or so years ago. We seemed to do more of it together back when we were at the smaller town because 1) there was gravel pit people went to shoot at and 2) My dad was the country weed man for a time, and thus knew a lot of farmers, so he always had places to fish and hunt. I did a little bit of that and skeet shooting in high school, but in college I got completely hooked into paintball. I played every weekend, I went to large tournaments with teams that we created with friends online, and played at places like the Skydome in Toronto. I got to know a lot of the people in the industry, and eventually began writing for Action Pursuit Games as well as taking photos with my Canon A1 (ack - another hobby!).
Eventually I started having pain in my leg and then my back. They thought it was a bulged disk and I had a surgery. It didn’t fix it. I tried living with it. I had these bumps in my groin removed. Doc didn’t know what it was, but called it a “nothing burger”. Years later they finally figured out I have a rare version of Neurofibromitosis and I have this huge mass of tumors growing down my left sciatic nerve. The one in my thigh is bigger than one of those large summer sausages. It will most likely never get better and I just have to manage it with pain pills. I used to manage it with other stuff like Gabapintin which I think in hindsight hurt my memory, and helped lead to my divorce and didn’t help with the depression I would later develop. Thanks to these tumors my left leg is dying with atrophy, so I limp and if I have to walk or stand more than 10 min I will want to bring my cane with me.
But anyway - once I got the diagnosis and the tumors had grown large enough, I never played paintball again. Which is a bummer - I had a huge collection of old markers that I ended up selling off. I am still friends with a lot of my old IRC buddies. One guy I used to do work for in paintball, Tom Kaye, is a real Renaissance guy and he is doing stuff with dinosaurs, including using lasers that shine over various wavelengths to get details in fossils to show up that regular light won’t show. Pretty cool stuff.
But paintball isn’t violence - its a game. When did I get back into fire arms? Since I couldn’t play paintball I pivoted back into shooting, staring with a .22 target pistol. The thing about shooting is it can get expensive. So some years I would be pretty active, and some years I could count on one hand how many times I went out. I like going skeet or trap shooting and beating my friend with a shot gun that was made in 1917 or so. For awhile I was doing USPSA which is action pistol shooting. Its timed shooting on a small course and pretty fun. Easy to learn, hard to master. I know people who are unbelievably quick. But that too is all sport and rec shooting, not violence.
Violence. Ok, I am sure got into scraps with my siblings, horseplay with friends, and some bruises in sport and play. To be honest even though I was tall, I was not good at sports. But all of that would have ended after high school, so let me tell you about the violence I’ve been involved in since then:
I’ve never punched anyone in my life. I’ve never brandished a weapon at anyone, be it gun, knife, bat. or shaken a fist. I’ve flipped someone off on the road, but I don’t make that habit. I’ve been mad before, but never to the point of anything other than yelling. I’ve never actually yelled at my kid, which given how much I was yelled at, is i bit surprising.
I have been punched! I was 18 and in the wrong place at the wrong time and luckily they were happy with pouring water on me, taking $5, punching me in the head a couple times, and laughing while we skedaddled.
I did take 2 semesters of Karate as a PE elective in JUCO. The scrawny, scraggly bearded Honors English teacher was a freaking black belt, who knew? I know the most basic of punches and blocks. It was more for the PE credit and to help limber me up.
I took 2 semester of Riflery in the basement of the ROTC building at KSU. Got an A!
What else. Oh in High School when I went to the “big city” I took a fixed bladed knife with me due to a rumor (Urban Legend I am sure - now) I had heard about the Mall and figured I’d rather give myself a fighting chance. Though I had been carrying a pocket knife since 3rd grade. Never used it. Never had to. When I went to college it just stayed in a box. But I’m being honest, so there you go.
And finally since we are painting the whole picture, even though I don’t believe I’ve ever explicitly said it here - yes I have a CCW and I do sometimes carry. I don’t do it all the time, and usually when I do it is when I am going out with the kiddo somewhere like a movie or something. This isn’t out of inept fear and I have zero dreams of being the hero or playing Rambo. I don’t fantasize about using it anymore than I fantasize about using a hammer to hammer a nail (not at all). I never want to use it for defense, and breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t live in an area that is that bad. But I know how to use it, have it properly holstered, and would rather have it and not need it than the reverse.
And that’s it. I don’t have gun stickers on my car. I have one shirt that came with a purchase. I don’t go around acting tough or macho - I find all of that stuff stupid. Plus it is hard to look tough with a limp and an Aggretsuko shirt.
What other questions do you have for me?
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i… i can’t tell if this is a joke
