No. The situation is irrelevant. It is illegal to carry anything for the purposes of self defence.
You deliberately ignored and trimmed out the most important part of your original statement to which geezer was replying: "Work on that basis and you'll be ok."No. The situation is irrelevant. It is illegal to carry anything for the purposes of self defence.
Using something that happened to be close by, or that you weren't carrying for the purposes of SD i.e. mobile phone, is a different matter however.
we have quite bizare laws on " weapons, anything that is designed or sold as a weapon is unlawful to have in a public place, any thing you carry to use a weapon in self defence is unlawful in a public place, including in your car, any thing you just happen to have in your hand or pocket, provided it a) isn't a weapon by design and b) you had no intent to use as a weapon before that point is fine to use as a weapon for self defence...Unless you find yourself in a situation where you really need more than your hands to defend yourself!
I guess situational awareness and good judgement are more stressed in the UK. Here in Arizona everybody carries. Yep. That solves everything!
Which encourages people to carry things which aren't quite weapons but can be readily adapted to such and to LIE to the authorities about it. And everyone knows it's a lie. "Why do you have 1/2 Kilo of keys on your keyring and a chain?" "I have lots of stuff to unlock; it's certainly not for whacking people." "Why are you still carrying yesterday's newspaper?" "I'm a slow reader; it's certainly not so that I can roll it up tight an whack people." "Why are you walking with a cane?" "I broke my foot 6 years ago and it aches sometimes; it's certainly not for whacking people."
well yes, but you don't have to lie, you don't have to answer at all, let alone justify, why you are carrying it. Your intent to use any item as a weapon is a point for the police to prove beyond reasonable doubt, which is the devils own job to do, unless the suspect admits to it
To Clarify:- Work on that basis and you'll be ok means; if you carry nothing (working on the basis that it is illegal to carry anything) you will not fall foul of the law. You will be "ok" "legally".
Ok, sorry, my mistake.
And this is where we diverge. I DO advocate the use of tools for self defense. I advocate their use because of this thing called "disparity of force." "Weapons" (self defense tools) are force multipliers which help "even up the odds" when someone has less strength, less mass, less skill & training, or is for some other reason simply less capable. Let's face it, no matter how well trained you are, someone is better trained. No matter how strong and fit you are, someone else is better, and you are going to get older and weaker and there's nothing you can do to stop that beside just dying.
Personally, I don't really "like" improvised weapons, per se. Why? Because they often make pretty crappy weapons. All tools are optimized for the task they are intended for and are less capable at "off label" tasks. It's like using the base of a screw driver to hammer a nail. Can you do it? Yes, but a hammer works better. Same for self defense. Can you use a tightly rolled newspaper for a club? Yes. But an actually club makes a better club. Improvised weapons are what you are forced to use when you can't use actual weapons for whatever reasons ranging from cost, to legality, to social pressures. Real weapons make better weapons than improvised weapons.
I fully support this.
That's not self defense.We've even had a legislator carry and brandish her loaded pistol in a conference room in the state legislature!
How do you police that though? If someone is a certain size they get a weapon, if they are bigger they don't? And then do you allow the person with weapon to use it on anyone, or only people 15% larger then them?
well yes, its hard to dennie that certain weapons, particularly guns, but to a lesser extent knives have no equal in the improvised class, but after that its a bit blurry, a hammer is a very good weapon as it a screwdriver or a big heavy torch or a length of chain or a heavy studded belt, if you can take it off with out your pants falling down or a tin of bean, anything heavy is a useful weapon.
I guess it depends on what you’re used to. I haven’t known it any other away so I’m fine with it.No worries. So how do you feel about the weapons laws in your neck of the woods. They seem a bit restrictive to me ...but then you don't have nearly as many people getting shot as we do over here. Not really worried about the politics, ...just observing the way things are, ya know.
That's not usually how weapons actually work. Take a knife. Knives do most of their damage through cutting/slashing and stabbing. Neither of those operations actually take a lot of physical strength and being much stronger doesn't usually increase the lethality of a knife by that much.
The level of violent crime between the U.S. and the U.K. is actually closer than most people realize and, depending on how you parse what "violent crime" is, the U.K., may edge out the U.S. But it's still pretty close. And the actual difference between murder rates is, truthfully, pretty slim once you get past the, "Ohmerggosh, the U.S. has, like, twice the per-capita ersumthn!" Per 100,000. And neither nation breaks even the top 25 barrier. And this is also without considering the recent compelling research which indicates that most of the U.S. "violent crime" is actually driven by an extremely small set of repeat criminals, usually in large cities and usually related to gangs. I suspect it is probably true of the U.K. as well but I haven't looked for those studies. What really changes is what tools the criminals use.
You know what, I'd never thought about it like that before.
