The 2nd amendment in’t about guns. It’s about arms. Brass knuckles are an arm. This law had no legal standing.
Arguments about how they are used are missing the point. It does not matter one bit who uses them or how. What matters is that these arms are protected under our laws. If you want to ban them, change the 2nd.
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The Second Amendment is the only one in the Bill of Rights that actually explains the rationale for it existence: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.”
So it seems like an originalist interpretation of the Amendment would be to allow the kinds of weapons a militia member might use against an opposing military. Not sure how useful brass knuckles would be in that kind of situation.
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For me with every law there has to be some analysis of what good the law is doing and whether that good justifies the costs and harms done by the enforcement system.
First, I truly doubt a brass knuckle ban is doing a whole lot of good. I don’t think arguments for gun control spill over well to brass knuckle control because brass knuckles aren’t terribly unique in their ability to cause mayhem or damage. Gun advocates often say, “In other countries people go on stabbing rampages”. It’s a facetious argument against gun control because guns are different than knives, but it’s a rational point when you talk about banning brass knuckles. It’s like nunchuck bans… banning a weapon that is almost certainly less effective than a baseball bat because it was in kung fu movies is idiotic.
My number one concern about readily available brass knuckles is that idiot young people wouldn’t realize how dangerous they actually are and would seriously injure each other while just playing around.
But it sounds like people were actually being arrested under the law, and the harm and cost of doing that adds up really fast.
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You think the cops care whether a weapon is legal or illegal in the hands of a black person? Ask Philandro Castile how well that went.
It just means that if the cops aren’t super-triggered by this hunk of metal enough to shoot, any charges will mysteriously also have “with a deadly weapon” appended.
White people, especially rich, white people skate on all sorts of charges all the fucking time. It’s not weapons. The racism is built into the whole goddamn system. Whether or not something is legal or illegal to possess is beside the point.
So nice try, but that don’t work.
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An arm is any weapon that can be used by one person. Originalist construction ideology is great and all but your use of the preface as a diving tool to determine the scope of the ammendment is not only pointless, it’s also meaningless. The preface clause explaining why the amendment exists does not effect the actual prohibition against the government from passing laws abridging the right to bear anything considered an arm.
If you do not like it, change it. But arguing it doesn’t mean what it says is something already settled by the courts. We have established what an arm is and the scope of the prohibition on creating such laws.
- Brass knuckles are still largely illegal, so that is going to severely limit the number of people using them for defense, and make actual use pretty close to nil. It is like asking for examples of people using an illegal switch blade for defense. Or an example of using a conceal carry for defense 30 years ago when the only people who could conceal carry were cops.
Simply put - very few people are carrying them because they are illegal, and even less are going to report they used an illegal weapon for defense.
- It seems from the articles I’ve read that it wasn’t actually brass knuckles people were carrying, but those hard plastic and metal cat kubotans that encase two of the knuckles. These are illegal under this law. It was noted these items are found more and more in places like Courthouse check points, which means more people are carrying them on their key chains etc. The cops though actually seem ok with people owning these: The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the state’s largest police organization, said Wednesday it “supports Texas women and girls being able to physically defend themselves.”
- The “Keys in your hand” method is an impromptu Kubaton. Just about every adult has some keys they could use this way. Here you can find several examples, including one from BB last month. So clearly the principle of a hard object in a fist is a viable defense measure.
(note some graphic photos, fyi)
Epilogue) Theoretically they could have crafted a law that allowed these cat kubotans, but still banned actual brass knuckles, but politicians seem pretty inept at well crafted laws.
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Then I’m really confused how we had a nuclear arms race with the Russians.
There are lots of places where brass knuckles are legal, yet we’re still discussing “innocent people fighting off attackers with brass knuckles” as a hypothetical because no one seems to have found one example of such a thing happening anywhere, at any time.
Is this the kind of argument where you find the word used in a different way and attempt to apply a special definition which you feel should supersede the legal definition of the word?
Yawn.
There exists precedent whereby arms is seen by a justice or judge as only covering what is used in a military setting. In fact, there is a case going on now (US v Miller) in which they use the State v Buzzard case from AK to establish that the 2nd only covers militia.Such an argument from you may have been persuasive. Unfortunately you went for the more childish and easily dismiss-able response.
They assuredly do not.
I made my admission up above regarding the close range weapons that I choose to carry with the full knowledge that not all of them have always been legal in certain states at certain times.
We must pick and choose our battles carefully, and assess the risks involved accordingly.
That said, attempting to use POC as an excuse for keeping certain weapons legal is some weak sauce.
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If legal definition is your thing, here’s an article that cites a number of legal cases affirming that brass knuckles do not constitute legally protected “arms” in relation to the second Amendment.
One of the earliest is “English v. State”, 1871. The court-affirmed argument against such weapons’ supposed protection under the Second Amendment reads in part
No kind of travesty, however subtle or ingenious, could so misconstrue this provision of the constitution of the United States, as to make it cover and protect that pernicious vice, from which so many murders, assassinations, and deadly assaults have sprung, and which it was doubtless the intention of the legislature to punish and prohibit. The word “arms” in the connection we find it in the constitution of the United States, refers to the arms of a militiaman or soldier, and the word is used in its military sense. The arms of the infantry soldier are the musket and bayonet; of cavalry and dragoons, the sabre, holster pistols and carbine; of the artillery, the field piece, siege gun, and mortar, with side arms.(p.477)
The terms dirks, daggers, slungshots, sword-canes, brass-knuckles and bowie knives, belong to no military vocabulary. Were a soldier on duty found with any of these things about his person, he would be punished for an offense against discipline.
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Even in many states where it is legal to OWN them, it is still illegal to carry them. While I’ve personally never heard of anyone owning actual brass knuckles, I know people who have carried those cat kubotans, which is WHY this law was changed.
Just because we can’t find example of someone using them for defense (with short google searches, hardly exhaustive), the number of examples of people fending off others with keys shows it is a viable defense method. How is one able to dismiss that the concept can work?
How can one defend a law that makes carrying these cat kubotans illegal with the potential of lock up and/or fine or a tacked on charge because they bought a $10 key chain on Amazon “just in case”?
Perhaps a compromise would be keeping actual brass knuckles illegal, and allowing the cat kubotans to be illegal. But I find it absurd that a woman can get in trouble for carrying a pointy bit of plastic to feel safer.
Yeah. While it never hurts to remind people that the whole system is racist, that doesn’t automatically invalidate whatever law we’re discussing. No one is going to suggest we repeal murder laws because black people are disproportionately like to be convicted (even though they are).
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Because “brass knuckles used to assault innocent people” is a real and documented phenomenon, whereas “brass knuckles used as a defensive weapon” is still a hypothetical.
Well, I could tell you an anecdote about a woman I knew back in college who used a pair to slug a guy who was trying to take advantage of her after a frat party, but it’s just that; an anecdote.
I know that it happened because I listened to her story, where she admitted that she’d just gotten really lucky with her punch… and then that following Monday, the perp in question showed up to our lab class, late wearing dark sunglasses to cover up the huge shiner he was sporting. But no one ever reported anything to my knowledge, and no official complaints were registered, so there’s nothing on record.
It seems the woman in question didn’t want to deal with the misogynistic judgement that automatically comes with even an attempted sexual assault, nor did she want to be penalized for defending herself with a weapon that wasn’t legal in the state at that time. The would-be rapist likely didn’t want to have to explain to the authorities what his intentions had been, or to admit that he was bested by a woman whom he’d been trying to overpower. (Nevertheless, his rep as a predator still preceded him for the rest of his time at my alma mater.)
Because of the questionable legality of certain weapons and the unquestionable disparity of the US legal and penal system, you’re unlikely to find much if any concrete documentation that those aforementioned weapons are ‘useful for self defense.’
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Of course, those precedents are completely destroyed by the simple fact that the USMC issued brass knuckle weapons as arms for soldiers in WWI making them officially arms of a soldier. Simply put, it’s not hard to find ignorant judges.
And you will find just as many upholding the idea that arms are not specific to the duty of your soldier.
OK - Fair point that brass knuckle attacks are real.
What also is a real thing is people getting in trouble for carrying a pointy bit of plastic to feel safer. Can we at least acknowledge that?
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Any resistance to an occupying force will probably be an underground “resistance”, not pitched battles of men lining up to shoot redcoats in the woods.
Small, silent, concealable weapons would absolutely be useful resisting an occupying force.
Really stretching the definition of “a well regulated militia” here.
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“I insist we stick to the legal definition of ‘arms’ as they relate to rulings on the second amendment! Wait, not THOSE rulings…”
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And you’re stretching your interpretation of the constitution since the supreme court has definitively ruled for personal right to own firearms
The Second Amendment provides Americans a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments, the Supreme Court ruled Monday
