Public hearing on safety

Posted on 2009-02-12 18:47:16

Today I attended a public hearing on safety at the University of Maryland campus. My main reason for being there was to state that the proposed bill to ban "weapons" (including all knives) on campus would make me feel less safe as someone who would not be able to have knives. Of course, I have other reasons for opposing this too, mainly that it'd do nothing to improve safety while annoying people who use knives legitimately to cut things (i.e. 99.9% of knife users).

As I nearly expected, my question was the only one they made no attempt to sympathize with. The officer there said something along the lines of "If you use a knife on anyone even if they tried to rob you it's a crime", which is nonsense--hasn't he heard of self-defense? I then mentioned that the purpose of the knife in this situation is not to fight anyone but to act as a deterrent. If someone saw I had a knife, do you think they would rob me? Wouldn't it be easier to rob someone with no defense at all?

Of course, he had an answer for this too: "They could just shoot you." Wow, I didn't think of that. He could shoot me for simply displaying a knife. How likely is that? If they have a gun I'll give them what they want. If they don't have a gun, and from what I've read the vast majority of on-campus robberies don't involve guns, then I'm even with them and they probably will leave.

I liked how this officer was willing to brag that on average the campus is reasonably safe believe but also use fear of a worst case scenario when necessary. It was a nice touch that the campus can be safe when talking to most people but extremely dangerous when talking to others, depending of course on how they wanted to paint the picture.

Don't get me wrong though. The officer as a whole was courteous and helpful, but he did seem a little combative on this issue. It was obvious that most "safety" issues he sees as black and white, not debatable like a knife ban would be.

I'm hoping to attend the public hearing on this because I really can't stand laws designed to appear like something is being done about a problem, especially with the nanny-state qualities of this law. Criminals aren't deterred by weapons laws, especially silly ones like this where the "weapons" have many more uses as non-weapons.

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Last modified on 2009-02-12 18:47:16.