I just wonder. If you can openly carry a firearm. Could you not also openly carry a sword? Bow and arrow?
I do know that sometimes signs are banned from protests if they use sticks, because sticks can be used as melee weapons. Yet, your right to carry an M-16 in the streets–maybe even into congressional chambers during votes–is wholly protected.
It is completely stupid.
It is legal to carry swords in California, but only if they are sheathed. “Open carry” only applies to firearms here, so bows are okay to be carried around in the open.
California has some of the weirdest rules. It was a felony to even possess nunchaku in the state until as recent as 2022. Meanwhile, you can own a big ass fucking machete and the law specifies that you must open carry it when you take it anywhere, but a balisong is still illegal to possess, concealed or otherwise.
I feel like a lot of the weapon laws were drafted as emotional responses to very specific events, both real and imagined, and nobody ever bothered to go back over the data after the fact to see if the bans actually did anything.
Things were never the same after the 1913 San Luis Obispo Nunchaku Massacre
It was implemented, and I shit you not, due to a fear of roving karate gangs of delinquent youths, when Asian martial arts schools started rapidly popping up in America in the 70s. Needless to say, this fear was as realistic as the Satanic panic surrounding DnD the following decade.
