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Comment by jballer | Hacker News Reader

Why are knives designed to be capable of being used as a murder weapon?

Not sure where you're going with that analogy.

Where I live knives designed primarily for killing humans are illegal to sell, sometimes illegal to own and definitely illegal to carry in public.

That's stuff like commando, flick or spiral bladed knives.

Kitchen, pen or even bush-craft knives generally aren't designed for that but you still can't wave them about in public.

If your analogy holds then are suggesting that if you got caught speeding in a Ferrari or 911 then you'd receive an instant custodial sentence because it was obviously premeditated? That would be the case here if you got into a fight with a spiral knife in your pocket.

I do not think your comparison is valid. Unlike a knife, a car can implement a max speed limit without impacting its usefulness.

The driver’s ability to command a car’s speed gives effect to our rights to self defense, to unrestrained movement, to due process, to choose to break the letter of the law where there are extenuating circumstances, etc.

I don’t find these arguments compelling. You don’t have a right to the means to commit a crime. It’s illegal to shoot a gun on a plane but it’s also illegal to bring one in your carry on. Even if there could be a hypothetical self defense scenario where a gun is advantageous, that doesn’t outweigh the baseline risk.

And yet, you can probably count on one hand how often that has saved anyone's life. But need phone books of paper to count all the deaths it has caused..

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