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Do you have any cos-play swords or axes of any kind? Yeah, you've got weapons.

Munchdog, I'm dubious of these claims. But I think statistics will buttress (or collapse) your argument. Do you have any re: "weapons" arrests for things that turned out to be toys? Are we talking 10% of such arrests? 1%? .01%? A couple of well-publicized stories last year? I suspect it's not a significant percentage, and that this charge is driven by politics, not reality.

[Do you have any...]Blank cartridges, bottle rockets, black powder in any quantity?

No I don't. Nor do most people. Among criminals as a whole, I expect the percentage is much higher. (But that's beside the point -- we might actually agree about the morality of applying such correlations to unrelated crimes.)

But here's the point: if that "any quantity" is spelled out in law, and someone has exceeded that quantity, then I for one am glad they're being charged. That's what laws are for. You can argue that the law's improper, but you won't get any sympathy for arguing, "He broke the law, but he shouldn't be charged! He's been arrested for one thing already. Isn't that enough?"

Let that be a tip for all of us, in the form of some of the wisest advice I've ever gotten: If you're going to break the law, break *only one law*. Don't be that idiot caught in a car full of drugs and weapons... with an expired registration.

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