Ninth Stage

Only this time they’re being told by the Wall Street Journal. Scary and quotable lines abound.

Teams design fast deadly ergonomic knives.

[T]the team produced knives whose blades could be flicked open with one finger faster than the widely outlawed switchblade — but were still perfectly legal.

The knives have ergonomic grips and are compact — and they can inflict deadly damage.

The FBI warns the important folks.

In March, a monthly FBI bulletin alerted law-enforcement agents nationwide to “the emerging threats” posed by the knives.

Lawyers are mentioned.

Lawyers for the tactical-knife industry have persuaded government officials that even minor manual movement — no matter how enhanced by levers and springs — separates the knives from switchblades…

Switchblades, ignorant legislators and Lawyers. I predict that the next article will talk about loopholes.

“We have to resist the application of the 1950s switchblade laws to the new technology,” says lawyer Daniel Lawson…
…tactical knifes have remained legal because “the laws across the U.S. are a mishmash because [legislators] really don’t know anything about knives.”

The powerful knife lobby, the AKTI.

Worried that they might face regulatory scrutiny, makers of the new-style pocketknives formed the American Knife and Tool Institute. The trade group credits U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, with persuading U.S. Customs in 2001 to stop seizing shipments of one-hand-opening tactical knives that some investigators considered switchblades.

It’s scary because tool makers are jumping on the bandwagon.

Leatherman Tool Group jumped on the tactical-knife bandwagon in 2005, introducing a full line of tactical-type knives. The most prominent feature on its knives is the “Blade Launcher” mechanism, which lets the user flip a menacing-looking blade out of its handle with lightning speed.

Stopping power for now, kinetic energy on the next go around.

Buck [snip] boasts in marketing materials about the “stopping power” of its tactical knives and bills its “Bones” knife as “bad to the bone.”

The short blade loophole and September 11.

The blades on most of the new pocketknives are less than four inches long, the maximum length that passengers were permitted to carry onto U.S. airlines before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

At the Pennsylvania crash site, 14 badly damaged knife parts were collected, and at least half have tactical-knife characteristics.

The short blade loophole, knives more powerful than a .38 plus a shotgun, and emergency rooms.

…in a widely publicized case, ex-Marine Thomas Autry used a two-inch blade in May to kill one mugger and wound another when he was confronted by five assailants armed with a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol.

“Clearly we are seeing wounds you would expect from a bigger blade from what victims say was a small knife,” says Andrew Ulrich, a Boston Medical Center emergency-room doctor.

Arms race.

Meanwhile, in the race for the next big thing, some companies are competing to make more durable ceramic and plastic knives that can pass through metal detectors.

“Invisible” Glock knives.

Plastic “assisted-opening” knives that flick open with a slight nudge of the blade can be purchased on eBay for $20.

This sounds like another import from Great Britain. We all know how well it’s working for them.

At The High Road via Michael Bane.

Previous knife stories here and here.