My brother just got back from spending a month and a half in France and he brought me back a couple souvenirs. One of these is my new play-pretty, an Opinel No. 8 knife.
I'd never heard of the knives before he handed me one but he said they were something of a thing over there. @rubido, have you come across them?
I've did a bit of reading about the knives since, their elegant simplicity speak to their history as working or peasant knives. I haven't got to use it yet but it was nice and sharp out of the box and just has a good feel in my hand. I initially thought it had no safety, until I realized that the metal just below the blade was a twist lock. It's got a total of five parts, with a surprisingly light handle made of beechwood.
Sorry for teasing you UK folks, I'm pretty sure carrying one of these on your belt (it comes with a handy pouch/sheath/carrying case) is frowned upon in those parts.
So is there a knife in your area that it's the norm for people to carry? I'm a bit familiar with bolos and kukuris but those are on a bit larger scale. Normally it was Case or Buck knives in my neck of the woods, I'm curious what it's like elsewhere.
I've never known of anyone carrying a blade or a gun in NZ - thing is, if you pulled out any sort of weapon in public, you would have six armed cops coming to see you very soon, so any self defense would be very
temporary. I'm sure they do, but they don't frigging talk about it online!
Interesting. Not even folding knives that are more tool than weapon? Lol, many years ago I was walking through downtown Louisville carrying a K98 (German WWII rifle) and had 13 armed cops surround me and have a little chat. We talked and then they left and I continued on my way with the rifle. Since then they've changed the law so that you can carry concealed weapons without even a permit here.
It's wild to me the differences in attitudes towards knives and guns in various places, has it always been like that in NZ?
NZ has the second highest level of registered gun ownership per person after USA - but they are not allowed to be carried in public.
Even cops hide them locked in cases in their cars and don't publicly carry them.
If anyone reveals any sort of weapon the armed offenders squad will turn up fast.
Many years ago the cops thought I had threatened someone with a gun (long story) and a few hours later I was up against a wall with six armed cops telling me not to move - I didn't move!
Could you elaborate a bit on what exactly that is/entails? Kentucky, the state I live in, has no registered guns, largely because there is no register.
That's wild! My run-in with the cops, nobody ever had a gun in hand aside from me. That's not always the case though, sounds like your run in was kinda like Daniel Shaver's, except you survived the encounter.
After John Podesta flew over here for a few days and set up a big fake shooting in 2019 so that the horsefaced communist puppet could milk it for all it was worth, the government made certain weapons illegal and set up a buy back scheme.
A new national register, is expected to take about five years to capture the estimated 250,000 licence holders in New Zealand.
Gun owners will be required to sign up to the register when they get a licence, get one renewed, or when they buy or sell firearms.
If a licence holder is not on the register after five years, they will have to proactively sign up.
The register will be similar to the one for motor vehicles and will hold the licence holder's full name, date of birth and address, details of their licence number and any endorsements, as well as details about the firearm including its serial number and how it's stored.
The legislation will also require licences to be renewed every five years - at the moment it's 10.
Owners will also have to go through a more stringent application process: showing knowledge about the safe use of firearms and their legal obligations, behaving in a way that "ensures personal and public safety". A licence will also be required to buy magazines, parts and ammunition.
Oh hey, I watched the livestream of that! Watching the whack-a-mole game as they tried to suppress that video was a nice mix of entertaining and frightening.
Registered sounds like a whole lot of yikes. Hell, here you can walk into a gun show and buy a gun without even giving them your name or showing ID. I got my first semiautomatic rifle at age 18 this way (which is legal here, you gotta be 21 to buy pistols though), 'How much?' was the only question asked in the whole exchange.
I was under so much threat over that particular footage that I not only relmoved all links to it on my website, and removed all mention of it on all my Steemit accounts, and still to this day never explicitly talk about IT.
The threat was seven years jail and all my website content hosted on NZ servers removed.
So long before the coronahoax, the horesefaced tranny was keeping an eye on me...
They're definitely a thing here man, every hunter,farmer,man, woman and child seems to have one of these bad boys in their pocket out here in the sticks at least. Alot of the old boys around here have had the same opinel for 50 years.
As for England yeah, sadly a pointy stick will get you in trouble.
I need to stay out of England methinks...
I know old boys like that back in the hills, although what they carry is usually a little different 😎
That is a beautiful blade. Never heard of Opinel but I like it.
I'm not really a knife nerd and don't know what the norms are around here, but my EDC is a Cold Steel Ultimate Hunter. I also have an ESSE-6 handy for camping and chasing the bears away from my food.
Nice! How's that work with the bears? Personally I prefer something a little longer ranged...
Well I ain't gonna lie, every time I pull that blade on a bear there's a good deal of screaming involved as well. Yell 'em away, then stab 'em if they come back.
Gotcha. Lol, the last bear I encountered was in Boulder Canyon, I was smoking cigs and bullshitting with a Saudi engineering student and when I pointed it out he started following it, thought we were going to get to test the old 'you don't have to outrun the bear, just the slowest person' joke.
LOL :D I hope it was a black bear, any other type would turn around and maul you.
Yeah, it was black bear, and smaller than full grown too. I've camped where the grizzlies roam but never actually encountered one, and would rather keep it that way.
The day I meet a grizzly will be the day I finally crack that 4-minute mile :D
Dude you can't even say "glass pieces" in England, they'll hang you for considering protecting yourself with a sharp object. At least that's why we think they kicked us out of the pipe store in Leeds that sells pipes and papers, 'do you have any glass pieces?'
They overreacted. Only reason I think that's it is after he freaked out, I asked 'what did I miss? Is it because I said "glass pieces"?' both he and the other dude walked out from behind their glass showcases to escort me and Pura out the store.
To this day we're uncertain what happened.
They probably just spotted a tattoo and jumped to conclusions. Come to think of it, you get a similar reaction here if you walk into a head shop and ask where's the bongs at? Seems the DEA has listening devices installed in each one and will come in and charge everybody with manufacturing paraphernalia if you don't call'em water pipes...
Are you serious? They're not even like that here. Oh my God, Kentucky's like sooo California in the 80's okaaayyyyy.
That's only a slight exaggeration, well mostly just the DEA part. Since Louisville Metro effectively decriminalized small amounts of weed I don't think they care as much but for the longest time (until maybe 5 years ago) they took that shit way too seriously.
Does it confuse you as it does me? England, I swear those people make special face masks during pandemics to accommodate their cigarette. Locals we would make friends with don't notice cuz it's their Mornal but neither Pura or myself never seen more cigarette butts on the ground anywhere else like London. Gutters, sidewalks, roads, more cigarette butts than anywhere else.
Kentucky, Tennessee. Each state distills and distributes whiskey from here to England and back. Both states farmed/farm and will forever farm tobacco to sell to England and back. Gas station windows are littered with tobacco ads but DON'T SMOKE WEED!!!!! (I meant to shoot the hood of the car only)
You mean London is worse than Kentucky for cigs? I'm pretty sure we're #1 for smoking rates in the country, then again the population density is a bit higher on the Thames.
Used to it was the bootleggers and the preachers working together to keep booze illegal, these days it's the growers and the preachers. Hell, before they started legalizing weed, Kentucky was usually the #2 or #3 state for growing it. Check out the cornbread mafia . At least here it's mostly just noise about weed, in Kentucky a half pound is 'personal use' and a misdemeanor. Indiana and Tennessee are totally different stories though.
First time hearing Cornbread. That sounded weird.
Roun'deez her parts dey act like CBD'll gitcha high mmkay.
Not number of smokers, they're here too. Tobacco country. I'm just talking cigarette butts on the ground. That's another thing, we stayed in several cities throughout UK and only one, Ilkley, had trash cans on the street.
I'd just got in the car with friends we met, we're waiting for Pura to come down. I was literally in the middle of saying how surprised I was with the amount of trash in the streets, I never expected that in England. She said, in her British accent, "Es'thot roight?" And threw her banana peel out the window.
The people though. Dang dude. Southern hospitality ain't shit compared to a Brit.
My EDC is an Ontario Knife RAT I. No clue about what might be common around here. Don’t use a sheath, it’s just in my pocket. I’ve seen Opinel knives on Amazon. Might even be one in my Wish List that I haven’t bought yet?
Nice, how does that treat ya? I normally carry a SOG Aegis Tanto for lively situations and a little CRKT for the more mundane ones but I'm thinking of retiring the CRKT in favor of this one, at least for a bit.
It’s held up fairly well (the pics are from when it was new). Right now it’s the only blade I carry. I should probably also carry a partially serrated blade as they can come in handy.
not normal to carry a knife, but some people do.