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No actually, he's right. Many knife laws were created specifically to target minorities.
For instance, the gravity knife ban that's in place in many states exists because the state of New York realized that poor people who wanted to carry a safe, concealed knife on them were using gravity knives due to their low price making them more accessible than other folding and automatic knives at the time. New York saw a bunch of minorities carrying gravity knives, figured that they must be a "gang weapon" and banned them, and about half the other states followed suit immediately after. Some states have since reversed course on this obviously racist law, but many are still holding out. The ban has nothing to do with the safety of the knife, it's only because lawmakers were afraid of armed minorities.
Yes, like gun control laws and the Black Panthers. My point was that guns are the overwhelming choice of violent offenders over and above knives, regardless of race. And it's a general truism that more violent "street crime" is perpetrated by and against those of lower socioeconomic status in the US.
I use "street crime" here because that's how it's labeled in federal statistics AND because if we counted violent crime done through economic imperialism and corporate thuggery, it would dramatically alter that picture.
Nevertheless, saying that poor and abused people use knives and not-poor white men (implicitly, by way of being contra to the former) use guns is a sub-optimal and vaguely racist way to structure that sentiment.
That weapons restrictions are heavily rooted in a history of racism and moral panic in the United States isn't lost on me. Even more complex when you add in the shifting terrain and definition of "whiteness" during the 20th century, e.g. Irish-, Italian-, Jewish-Americans et al., especially in the context of early and mid-20th century weapon regulations.
I don't disagree, but I think maybe we interpreted his comment differently, as the way I read it was the other person making exactly this point. I took his comment to be explaining from the perspective of one imposing such a law, as opposed to a belief they're presenting as their own.
Yup! A couple other examples I can think of are stilettos and switchblades being banned shortly after Italian knife makers picked up on the trend, under the guise of being "mafia" weapons. One excuse they often go for is that the blade can be deployed too quickly, which is BS; you can give a 10-year old kid any old folding knife with thumbstuds, and with 5 minutes of practice they can deploy it just as quickly as any spring-loaded knife.
It's a tale as old as time. Any time the feds see a group of people arming themselves, and they're not white (or not white enough), they'll bend over backwards coming up with any justification to strip them of their defenses.
My understanding is that the "mafia" thing is also why short-barreled rifles, silencers, and machine guns are heavily regulated. I'm pretty thankful for the latter, but the first two seem kind of silly to me at this point in time.
And then the poverty issue returns when we consider that the regulations require the purchase of a $200 tax stamp for the above. A chunk of change to be sure, but the price has never changed since its inception of these regulations in 1934.
An adjusted tax stamp for one of those ATF items in today's dollars would make it about $5,000 for each stamp. You can see how, in 1934, that effectively kept certain types of weapons and accessories out it the hands of the poor.