91–100 of 168 posts
I'm not American, but I don't understand, how did this man get those 6 years added in a tribunal? Did he go to court? I mean what kind of legal people put this guy in jail for that? I mean did anybody blink on it? Sure the law is a problem, but I don't see what motivations the justice system can have to apply the law like that, can somebody explain it to me?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The officer said, ‘When I find someone with one of these knives, sometimes I arrest him, sometimes I give him a summons, sometimes I just let him go.’ ” Galluzzo’s partner, Zachary Johnson, also a former district attorney in Manhattan, adds that such discretion is supposed to be exercised by prosecutors, not cops on the beat . “An officer should be making an arrest every time or none of the time,” Johnson says. “Oth…
I don't understand. Why is it fair if that decision just happens a bit further up the chain? What's the difference?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The officer said, ‘When I find someone with one of these knives, sometimes I arrest him, sometimes I give him a summons, sometimes I just let him go.’ ” Galluzzo’s partner, Zachary Johnson, also a former district attorney in Manhattan, adds that such discretion is supposed to be exercised by prosecutors, not cops on the beat . “An officer should be making an arrest every time or none of the time,” Johnson says. “Oth…
I don't understand. Why is it fair if that decision just happens a bit further up the chain? What's the difference?
My brother got charged as a result this law as the police wanted information about one of his friends. It is enforced very selectively too. If you can swing it down very hard and it opens, it is a gravity knife and thus criminal possession of a weapon. It is a bad law, and according to their definition nearly every pocket knife is a gravity knife. There was an effort to repeal it, but for some reason governor Cuomo d…
Most weapon bans are pretty silly and arbitrary. Look at the old AWB... Flash hider? Banned.. Muzzle Break? ok... Bayonet Lug? Banned... Grenade launcher oh sorry I mean “flaregun attachment” is ok as long as you can’t fix a bayonet on it...
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0.6% of the population are lawyers. 41% of legislators are lawyers. Legislators propose, write, and vote on the laws. It's duplicitous to say that lawyers don't propose, write, or vote on laws.
Lawyers should recuse themselves from being legislators. It's a conflict of interest.
It also ties in with the fact that, like it or not, we need lobbyists. Sure, the system is broken, but legislatures can't be experts on everything. So, they need people to explain and even be able to get into the details. They need someone who is a domain expert.
That is, theoretically at least, why we have to have lobbyists. Legislatures should also have a good baseline knowledge of the legal system, with all the details that includes. They need to be very familiar with the legal system which makes lawyers potentially good legislatures.
Potentially... Like lobbyists, there's good and bad with the system. There is potential for good, as much as there is potential for bad. We seem to like to think we are in dire straits and that doom faces us constantly, but we are actually doing quite well. We're not perfect, but we aren't as bad off as the nightly news would have us believe.
Also, people really hate lawyers, until they need one. I'm not a lawyer but I have great respect for some of them.
What's crazy is any folding knife that can be opened with the flick of the wrist is considered a gravity knife. I don't understand how all manner of firearms are legal, but even the most simple knifes are illegal.
All manner of firearms are explicitly illegal in New York City, unless you have a difficult-to-get exemption.
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The article mentions that most of the knives would have been law-abiding when sold, but due to wear, the blade hinge loosens enough that an officer can flick it open.
So it's a compliance issue. Then the law is fine. A person should be responsible for keeping their property legally compliant, be it automobile, knife or propane tank. That said this is a silly law.
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New York abolished slavery in 1799 and New Jersey in 1804. Pennsylvania was first in 1780. What you're 'wondering' is right wing nonsense.
Racism totally existed in “free” states. His argument his the laws were more sneaky about it, since you couldn’t just say “no guns for blacks”
This is a single symptom of a larger issue, namely an excess of laws to the point that any law can be arbitrarily used to prosecute you if you are of an unwanted class, race, etc. Add on top the police quota system and you have a recipe of this type of injustice that runs the gamut, from antiquidated knife laws to the drug war. To me, this is largely a result of lawyers fucking ruining everything they touch, and then…