non-knife people with extreme prejudice, copied from blade forum

[druid]

In Amsterdam (which used to be europes equivalent of the home of the free) in the Netherlands, country of our beloved neighbours, a guy has been arrested for carrying a simple SAK. He was on a picknick with his son.
Result: knife confiscated + court case.

He wrote a letter to Victorinox, explaining what has happened to him. Mr Elsener offered him a new knife and promised to send some top class lawyers to defend him in court.

How's that for customer service?!

And what about the Netherlands having legal shops to buy drugs, but arresting a dad who wants to prepare his son's meal with a pocket knife?

Common sense becomes a thing of the past... (or isn't it? if sheeple make up the majority, their sense becomes the common one, i guess...)

[dedguy]

I'm baffled enough by strangely enforced illogical gun/knife laws in the US. Other countries just plain freak me out when I hear about their laws.

[huugh]

Wow, Victorinox certainly deserved my respect.

That case is sick. Police would bugger about SAK while there are drunk drivers, robbers, pick pocketers and all the other stuff they should be concerned with.
But it's much easier and more comfortable to pester civilized people for nothing than possibly unsettled / dangerous drug addicts willing to rob to get money for drugs, isn't it?

BTW how many times were you endangered by someone with a knife vs someone in a car? For me it's never vs million times respectively. And even though I don't call for banning cars - it is not the tool but the person who might be "dangerous".

[dedguy]

Wow, Victorinox certainly deserved my respect.

That case is sick. Police would bugger about SAK while there are drunk drivers, robbers, pick pocketers and all the other stuff they should be concerned with.
But it's much easier and more comfortable to pester civilized people for nothing than possibly unsettled / dangerous drug addicts willing to rob to get money for drugs, isn't it?

BTW how many times were you endangered by someone with a knife vs someone in a car? For me it's never vs million times respectively. And even though I don't call for banning cars - it is not the tool but the person who might be "dangerous".

More specifically how many times as someone endangered someone with a SAK?

[The Deacon]

Find it almost amusing how easily we accept unsubstantiated stories circulating on the internet. Was really hoping one of our many Dutch members would have chimed in on this, either with an explaination of the actual circumstances, or to debunk it. If I were a betting man, my money would be on debunking.

The original post on BladeForums contains no reference to a source, so the first question (at least for me) becomes, does this pass the smell test? Considering the number of Dutch members here, the extents of their collections, the locking folders they post about carrying and using at work, I am inclined to think it does not.

While I would imagine that, in the Netherlands as here, strange things do happen, I would bet that IF the incident in question actually did occur there is a LOT more to the story. One obvious possibility would be that the arrest was the result of something well beyond the mere presence of a SAK. The other is an over-zealous police officer, I know things like that occasionally happen here, not sure if the police there are better trained or not.

[Piet.S]

You are quite right Paul, there is a bit more to it.
Amsterdam as one of our largest cities has more then its fair share of scum.
Some areas, such as the "red light district" attract junks and dealers and the like as moths to the lamp.
Combine this with more then a few happy tourists and you can expect a lot of muggings and other crap to happen.
The general public calls for zero tollerance and politicians and police brass have to come up with something.
One thing they came up with is to raid such an area, every once in a while.
Just lock it off and check everyone on drugs and weapons.
And zero being zero, a knife is a knife.
This is about the situation in which this man got trapped.

I do find this very interesting really because natianal law allows one to carry folders up to 28 cm OAL while local legislation turn you into one of the criminals if you got a Ladybug on your keychain.

Í'll try to keep you updated on this one.

[druid]

Find it almost amusing how easily we accept unsubstantiated stories circulating on the internet.

you have a very good point, and it's interesting to see where one's blind spots are. I consider myself fairly well educated, and I'm fairly skeptical about a lot of things, I studied anthropology in college and part of that discipline involves taking a number of different accounts of the same event, and trying to discern a kind of truth, or an overall reality. Ironically if I had read the story in say the Los Angeles or New York Times I would be skeptical automatically trying to discern bias, and looking for another account of the situation. But when I am fully relaxed and cruising a well-known and beloved website, or worse possibly reading a novel by an author I trust. I tend to take what they or it in the case of website says at face value. The idea that this was simply an urban legend that was repeated, never occurred to me. I just wasn't thinking about it not context at all, it just ''was''. as if my was on a brain kind of autopilot. As it was once said by the rock band sublime. once in awhile you get shown in the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.