"I'm not a lawyer" and why that doesn't matter

I've occasionally been asked if I'm a lawyer given my long history of legal research into knife-carry and similar weapon laws. The answer is a "No, but that shouldn't matter."

First of all, I am just words on a screen. I could claim to be a lawyer, cop, or judge, and just be lying. You have no reason to trust any authority I could claim, nor should you. My words should be able to stand in their own.

Second, the general public often places too much trust in the authority of "expert" opinions from lawyers as well as police officers. Both often don't know these laws very well because their day-to-day work is focused on other areas. Cops are notorious for lying about knife laws when asked due to mistrust of citizens being "armed," or straight up getting it wrong even to the point of arresting people for a law that doesn't exist (and subsequently getting sued and fired). And lawyers rarely know much about them unless they are some kind of specialist in that area of law. I've point-blank asked a lawyer to their face what the knife regulations are of their state, and they've replied "I have no idea. I'd have to look it up."

Do you know who else can "look it up?" You can! It's easy, and that's what I did. I got fed up with friends and coworkers telling me "what they heard" and determined to find out the truth for myself.

Every criminal law regarding weapons is available to the general public. They are not secrets. I used to read the big leather-bound law books in my local library at no cost. Now you can find every federal, state, county, and city weapon law on the internet with a couple of simple keywords. Usually just by typing your state or county's name and the word "code." What's even better is that most states also have their appeals and supreme court decisions (aka "case law") on the internet as well, and text-searchable.

That is how I gathered the information on this site. My goal was to condense everything I'd learned from reading all of this stuff over a few decades, and write it out in plain language so it would be easy to understand.

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