Unarmed, Not Disarmed
Recently I flew out of state for the first time in years. I haven’t actually gotten on a commercial flight since I was a teenager. I’ve done considerable business travel, of course, but all of that was by car. I think the farthest I’ve driven is around ten or twelve hours one way. I’ve been fortunate that my interests have all been clustered in the Northeast.
Unsurprisingly, I did not enjoy air travel. Security was my primary fear, and need not have been. I pared down my accessories to the minimum and got through security checkpoints without any hassle at all. I arrived for my flights two hours early, religiously, and need not have done so, for I never spent more than a few minutes in a security screening line.
No, my biggest complaint about air travel is simply the cramped quarters. The planes I flew on for three out of four flights were small 70-passenger puddle jumpers. The last flight was an Airbus, and I had a three-person row all to myself to boot, which was a refreshing change. Given the restrictions on electronic devices I simply read paper books as I sat folded between my armrests like an origami swan.
With these irritations aside, the thing that bothered me about traveling out of state was being so casually unarmed. I don’t mean disarmed. My weapons weren’t taken away; they were simply and inconveniently not part of the process. The result, for any prepared person, is always annoying. You go from being the sort of person who always has a Swiss Army Knife to someone who has to struggle to open a plastic package with his keys.
I spent a few days in Texas, so I took the time to mail a pocketknife and a pair of nail clippers to myself, along with a prepaid label to send both back when I got ready to leave. Pending receipt of my return package, the process worked well — and had I wished no one to know I was armed with a blade, I could have concealed that fact easily because I neither shopped for nor paid for anything potentially lethal there.
Where self-defense is concerned I don’t feel unarmed while carrying only a knife of moderate size. I have considerable training with knives and I’m reasonably confident in my ability to defend myself without them. I’m also not the target demographic of most muggers and ne’er-do-wells, although my status as an out-of-state tourist raises my profile on that score.
Now that New York is squeezing armed citizens out of their permits and banning, registering, and/or c0nfiscating (on a de facto basis, at this point) their long arms, making the transition to being armed-with-a-knife while formerly being armed-with-a-licensed-pistol is not a large step, nor even a terribly painful one. It does, however, highlight those instances in which you are without even that level of protection, such as the time I spent in and out of airports or waiting for my package to arrive.
Our lawmakers will invariably turn to knives now that they’ve succeeded in making gun owners second-class citizens — law-abiding citizens who are nonetheless reviled in the media and frequently lectured by arrogant, hypocritical politicians. When that happens, we can all look forward to that sinking feeling of nakedness that a prepared citizen feels when he cannot carry so much as a pair of nail-clippers.
It’s not a good feeling. It’s not a good feeling at all.
