CT Supreme Court Rules 2nd Amendment Covers Knives and Batons
To me one of the most hypocritical aspects of some gun control meansures and their proponents has been how non gun yet still effective tools of self defense are also proscribed almost anywhere but the home. Often with more severe penalties like guns.
For instance if I got caught carrying a pistol absent any confrontation or other law violation I would face a misdemeanor. However if I’m out walking with a good strong cane and a policeman asks me why I carry the cane it’s a trap. If I say “bad knees” I’m fine. If I say bad neighborhood I just incriminated myself with a felony weapon possession charge and likely conviction.
Hat tip to gunssavelives.net for publishing the following important decion that quite logically concludes the second amendment is not just about firearms. It’s about arming oneself against a criminal attacker. “Bear arms” means defensive weapons of various kinds.
That site is a CCW/2nd Amendment advocacy site and may have little some of you would agree with. It might even anger you. Apologies in advance.
Stipulated this might not be a source you like but this particular nugget of legal thinking is worth the effort. So maybe skip those guys and just read the decision.
This widespread acceptance of batons within the law enforcement community also supports the conclusion that they are not so dangerous or unusual as to fall outside the purview of the second amendment. To this end, the fact that police batons are inherently less lethal, and therefore less dangerous and less intrinsically harmful, than handguns, which clearly constitute “arms” within the meaning of the second amendment, provides further reason to conclude that they are entitled to constitutional protection. Cf. People v. Yanna, supra, 297 Mich. App. 145 (“[T]he prosecution also argues that Tasers and stun guns are so dangerous that they are not protected by the [s]econd [a]mendment.
However, it is difficult to see how this is so since Heller concluded that handguns are not sufficiently dangerous to be banned. Tasers and stun guns, while plainly dangerous, are substantially less dangerous than handguns. Therefore, [T]asers and stun guns do not constitute dangerous weapons for purposes of [s]econd [a]mendment inquiries.”); D. Kopel et al., supra, 47 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 184 (“[K]nives are far less dangerous than guns. Any public safety justification for knife regulation is necessarily less persuasive than the public safety justification for firearms regulation.”).
Indeed, expandable batons are intermediate force devices that, when used as intended, are unlikely to cause death or permanent bodily injury. For these reasons, we are persuaded that the police baton that the defendant had in his vehicle is the kind of weapon traditionally used by the state for public safety purposes and is neither so dangerous nor so unusual as to fall outside the purview of the second amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.
[T]he prohibition against transporting a dirk knife and a police baton to a new home constitutes a significant restriction on the right to possess those weapons in that new home. Indeed, aside from an outright ban on possessing those weapons, it is difficult to conceive of a greater abridgement of that right than a restriction that bars the use of a vehicle to transport either of those weapons from one home to another.
Moreover, under § 29-38, it is unlawful for an ordinary citizen, like the defendant, to transport those weapons from the place of purchase to the purchaser’s home. As a consequence, the statute’s complete proscription against using a vehicle to transport the two protected weapons deprives their owner of any realistic opportunity either to bring them home after they have been purchased or to move them from one home to another. In fact, at oral argument before this court, the state acknowledged that, in light of that statutory prohibition, there may be no lawful means of doing either….
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