I hate laws written by people who obviously don’t know the material.
In my previous post on weapons in a church, I pulled up the Virginia law on carrying concealed weapons in an attempt to determine whether Virginians are legally allowed to do so today. I didn’t make it out of the 1st section without running into a mistake jarring enough that it derailed my research for a short interval. Here’s Section A of ยง 18.2-308, from the beginning to end of item (iv):
A. If any person carries about his person, hidden from common observation, (i) any pistol, revolver, or other weapon designed or intended to propel a missile of any kind by action of an explosion of any combustible material; (ii) any dirk, bowie knife, switchblade knife, ballistic knife, machete, razor, slingshot, spring stick, metal knucks, or blackjack; (iii) any flailing instrument consisting of two or more rigid parts connected in such a manner as to allow them to swing freely, which may be known as a nun chahka, nun chuck, nunchaku, shuriken, or fighting chain; (iv) any disc, of whatever configuration, having at least two points or pointed blades which is designed to be thrown or propelled and which may be known as a throwing star or oriental dart; or
Emphasis mine. Folks, the “flailing instrument” they’re talking about is properly identified in section (iii) with the terms “nun chahka”, “nun chuck”, or (as I call them) “nunchaku.” This is a nunchaku:
It’s 2 pieces of a hard material, usually wood but possibly weighted plastic or even metal, connected with a short piece of rope or chain. The other term, which I’ve put in boldface, is “shuriken” and here’s some examples of those:
You’ll note that the 2 weapons have precisely ZERO in common. One’s a blunt weapon, the other is bladed. One’s designed to be a melee, hand-held weapon held on to by the wielder, the other’s a projectile designed to be thrown. One’s for close-quarters combat, the other is for ranged strikes. Folks, it doesn’t get more different than this. (Unless you’re gonna make one of them out of Jello, but I digress.) The shuriken belongs in the category described in item (iv), not in item (iii) and anyone who knew the least bit about the topic would know that instantly.
Think about your line of work and ask yourself about the times that you’ve had to create a document on one topic or another. If you’ve got to include something about which you have no training at all, don’t you run the document past someone who does before you pass it up to the boss? I certainly do and I would expect our lawmakers to do so as well. Or, rather, I’d wish they would.
If you know of similar circumstances in another law, drop us a note in the comments and we’ll all have a look together.
