Was the Haitorei ever repealed? In 1870, the first Sword Abolishment Edict (廃刀令, Haitōrei) banned farmers and merchants from impersonating samurai and wearing swords in public. In 1876, the second Sword Abolishment Edict followed, banning even former samurai from wearing swords in public. As a result, carrying swords in public became reserved for either current military or police personnel or a small select group of people that retained samurai status (mostly ex-daimyo). Nowadays, carrying swords in public is regulated by the Japanese Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law (銃刀法剣類所持等取締法). Regulated here means forbidden, as any blade longer than a specified length (15 cm for single-edged, and 5.5 cm for double-edged) is prohibited from being possessed or carried in geneeral. As far as I understand the main parts, nowadays you can only obtain a license to possess a blade longer than 15 cm, but not one to carry a sword (or firearm) in public. You can also transport your sword to perform the reason you have obtained the license for, e.g. to training, or for other justifiable reasons, e.g. to maintenance, but you can not carry it (openly) in public. However, that modern law was first enacted in 1958, and while it is a spiritual successor of the Haitōrei and even earlier Sword-hunts and gun control legislation, I fail to find a note of repeal at the start of the modern text, which would note that the Sword Abolishment Edict would be replaced by the modern law. Am I missing a law in the legislation line, or is the Haitō edict still good law and valid?
Japanese Wikipedia and Google Translate pointed me to the &quot;Act on the Arrangement of Laws Related to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister's Office (Act No. 203 of 1954) No. 4.&quot; A Japanese government website and Google Translate seemed to confirm that Act No. 203 of 1954 (Showa 29) explicitly abolished a law/regulation entitled &quot;Prohibition of outer band swords wearing uniforms such as military uniforms, police officers, etc.&quot;, which seems to be the Haitorei (the same name also shows up on the Japanese Wikipedia page about the Haitorei). This law took effect on July 1, 1954. At the time of its enactment, civilian ownership of weapons was controlled by the Ordinance Concerning Firearms and Swords (Ordinance No. 334, 1950), which was issued at the direction of Allied occupation authorities (SCAPIN 2099).
Clauses (a) and (c) are potentially relevant. You have to look in the Rules &amp; Regulations to see what exceptions are permitted. Although firearms and especially shotgun shells are of a "dangerous, flammable or explosive character", it is reasonable to believe that when stored properly, they do not unreasonably increase the danger of fire or explosion, and would not be considered hazardous or extra hazardous by any responsible insurance company. On the latter point, you could ask any responsible insurance company if they would consider such shells to be hazardous. While in ordinary language simple possession of a firearm is not a threat of violence, the wording of clause (c) is open to a wider interpretation, since acts considered to be a threat of violence include displaying or possessing a firearm, knife, or other weapon that may threaten, alarm or intimidate others. The fact is that many people are alarmed by the simple existence of a weapon, so simply possessing a weapon could be interpreted as a "threat" in this special sense. Since you are not in the position of having signed the lease and now need to deal with the consequences of this clause, the simplest solution is to explain your interest, and ask them if having your gear in your apartment would be a violation of the lease. Be really clear about this and get it in writing in some form, if they say "no problem". Then either pick a different place, pick a different hobby, or find a separate storage facility.
WWII Supreme Court Cases During WWII, the Supreme Court dealt with three main issues in their cases on Executive Order 9066: curfews, exclusions, and internment of persons with Japanese ancestry. In the lesser-known Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States case, the court had to determine whether imposing a curfew on those of Japanese descent was valid. The main constitutional issue ended up being the effectiveness of the Fifth Amendment in providing for due process of law in times of war. In the end, the court decided that a curfew was indeed justified. Following this, the majority of the court found in Korematsu v. United States, that the exclusion of those with Japanese ancestry from certain military zones (in this case, the West coast) was also constitutional. In their decision, they heavily relied upon the Hirabayashi case. The question of internment of people with Japanese ancestry was not actually decided constitutionally. Another case, a habeas corpus case, Ex parte Endo might have resolved it, but the Court concluded this case in favor of Endo without going to the constitutional level. A day before this decision was announced, the government suspended Executive Order 9066, leaving the question unresolved. In these cases, Justice Frank Murphy's opinions stand out. In Hirabayashi, he sternly warned of the racism involved, but felt that the curfew was indeed justified. However, in Korematsu, he evidently felt that the exclusion was without basis and dissented, calling the majority opinion &quot;legalization of racism.&quot; Current Law In theory, these cases still stand. This is because they haven't been explicitly overruled, and the changes to the constitution since Hirabayashi aren't relevant: Amendments XXII and XXV have to do with procedural issues with the office of the President, amendments XXIII, XIV, and XXVI are related to voting rights, and XXVII addresses Congressional salaries. The constitution for the purpose of a similar order is thus unchanged, and so should theoretically be covered under Korematsu &amp; Hirabayashi. However, its effective status as precedent is shaky. For one, it has been widely condemned, and courts would likely avoid using Korematsu &amp; Hirabayashi if possible, or attempt to make a distinction from them given a slightly different order. Second, the convictions against Korematsu and Hirabayashi were overturned in the 1980s based on evidence being possibly concealed by the government. This was confirmed by the Department of Justice in 2011. However, this is an error of fact, and as such the ratio decidendi (legal reasoning) used would still technically stand as precedent. Lengthy Update: The Supreme Court has since declared Korematsu incorrect in Trump v. Hawaii. However in doing so, the court explicitly distinguished the two cases. Thus, many consider the declaration to be obiter dictum, i.e. an aside that is non-precedential. I'll quote the relevant portion so that readers may decide for themselves: Finally, the dissent invokes Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944). Whatever rhetorical advantage the dissent may see in doing so, Korematsu has nothing to do with this case. The forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority. But it is wholly inapt to liken that morally repugnant order to a facially neutral policy denying certain foreign nationals the privilege of admission. [...] The dissent's reference to Korematsu, however, affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious: Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—&quot;has no place in law under the Constitution.&quot; Additionally further muddying the issue is that the judgment directly moves from referencing Korematsu to referencing concentration camps. But as noted above, Korematsu dealt with exclusion, not internment in concentration camps as is often popularly believed (though Murphy's &amp; Roberts's dissents dispute the distinction so the Trump v. Hawaii judgment may implicitly be validating this). Korematsu paragraph 20: It is said that we are dealing here with the case of imprisonment of a citizen in a concentration camp solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States. Our task would be simple, our duty clear, were this a case involving the imprisonment of a loyal citizen in a concentration camp because of racial prejudice. Regardless of the true nature of the assembly and relocation centers—and we deem it unjustifiable to call them concentration camps with all the ugly connotations that term implies—we are dealing specifically with nothing but an exclusion order. Future Challenges If another such order occurred, it would almost certainly reach the Supreme Court. The Court would then have to adhere to, reconcile with, or overrule Korematsu &amp; Hirabayashi. In Hirabayashi, the following key piece of reasoning was given (and quoted in Korematsu): Whatever views we may entertain regarding the loyalty to this country of the citizens of Japanese ancestry, we cannot reject as unfounded the judgment of the military authorities and of Congress that there were disloyal members of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained. We cannot say that the war-making branches of the Government did not have ground for believing that in a critical hour such persons could not readily be isolated and separately dealt with, and constituted a menace to the national defense and safety, which demanded that prompt and adequate measures be taken to guard against it. Regardless of personal beliefs, it is hard to argue the logic behind this particular statement (mainly because it is so broad, in my opinion). However, these &quot;prompt and adequate measures&quot; would still have to be weighed against the Fifth Amendment. Additionally, we now have a historical example of what may happen if race-based exclusion were allowed, and this could inform the justices' decision. A completely different way that such an order could be ruled unconstitutional could be through separation of powers violations. It could be ruled that Congress cannot constitutionally delegate the powers expressed in Executive Order 9066, but this is rare. It was mentioned in Hirabayashi, but the court did not consider this issue, saying that since Congress agreed with the order, this point was moot. Conclusion Though the letter of the law suggests that another order like Executive Order 9066 is possible, in practice it would face significant hurdles. Such an order would likely face challenges based on the Fifth Amendment and almost certainly make its way to SCOTUS. Then, it would be up to them to decide. I'll end with this quote from the late Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, of course, Korematsu was wrong [...] But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.
It is not obvious that is it illegal in Washington state. Everett WA has local ordinances against "lewd conduct" (there are versions of this at the state level and in most municipalities). Having sex and masturbation are included in the class of "lewd acts", and are also included in "sexual conduct". An activity is "obscene" if three things are true. First, the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, when considered as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest and when considered as a whole, and in the context in which it is used, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. I think having sex or masturbating could pass these two tests. The third condition is that the act explicitly depicts or describes patently offensive representations or descriptions of... [sex, masturbation, or excretion] The prohibition is more narrow: A person is guilty of lewd conduct if he or she intentionally performs any lewd act in a public place or under circumstances where such act is likely to be observed by any member of the public. If lewd conduct were completely illegal, you could not excrete or have sex withing the city limits. Now we have to turn to the definition of "public place": an area generally visible to public view, and includes streets, sidewalks, bridges, alleys, plazas, parks, driveways, parking lots, automobiles (whether moving or not), buildings open to the general public, including those which serve food or drink or provide entertainment and the doorways and entrances to buildings or dwellings and the grounds enclosing them, and businesses contained in structures which can serve customers who remain in their vehicles, by means of a drive-up window Focusing not on the probable intent but on the words, it is primarily defined as "an area generally visible to public view". Your house qua building is probably generally visible to public view, as is a public toilet or hotel. The inside of your bedroom is probably not generally visible to public view, nor is the inside of a toilet stall. While the building is probably a public place, a closed stall within the building does not meet the definition (nor does a hotel room). It might however qualify under the clause "or under circumstances where such act is likely to be observed by any member of the public". The statute does not give a definition of "observe", but under ordinary language interpretation, observation may be seeing or hearing. Silent sex, masturbation or defecation might not qualify as being public. Obviously, excretion in a stall of a public bathroom cannot be a lewd act, presumably because the average person does not generally consider ordinary excretion as appealing to the prurient interest: but there could be contexts where it does. Another avenue for prosecution is the Indecent Exposure state law which is when one intentionally makes any open and obscene exposure of his or her person or the person of another knowing that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm. It is totally non-obvious that sex or masturbation in a toilet stall is "open". There is a slippery slope regarding quiet sex or masturbation w.r.t. knowing that the conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm. Because the contexts where sex and masturbation are not clearly spelled out by statutory law, the matter would depend on how courts had interpreted previous cases. There have been arrests in Washington of people having bathroom sex, but I don't know if anyone has ever or recently-enough been convicted for having quiet sex out of view in a toilet stall, or similar place. There is a potentially applicable case, Seattle v. Johnson, 58 Wn. App. 64, which seems to involve public sex, and the conviction was overturned because the complaint was defective, in not including the element "that the defendant must know 'that such conduct is likely to cause reasonable affront or alarm'". It is not clear from the appeal what the act actually was – it probably was for public nudity. There is also an decision by the state appeal court division 3 (not publicly available) in Spokane v. Ismail which, in connection with a charge of public urination declares that "A toilet stall is not a public place. The center of Riverfront Park during the lunch hour is a public place", in connection with an ordinance just like the Everett one against public lewd acts.
I think it would depend on how a jury viewed the "challenge" to her audience. The general rule for self-defense in Texas is that the person needs to reasonably believe that force is immediately necessary to protect herself from someone else's use of force. I think a jury would find it reasonable to believe that someone forcefully attempting to steal your gun was planning to use it against you. More importantly, the law generally presumes that that belief is reasonable if the person is being robbed, assuming that she isn't otherwise engaged in criminal activity. Since openly carrying an AR-15 is -- as far as I know -- legal in Texas, I think she'd probably be fine. But: The law also says that the use of force is not justified when a person consents to the other person's use of force, or if the person has provoked the other person. So now you have the question of whether the student's challenge constitutes a provocation or consent to the use of force. I think you can make a decent argument for provocation, which means that "the defendant did some act or used some words intended to and calculated to bring on the difficulty in order to have a pretext for inflicting injury." Neal v. State, No. 12-14-00158-CR, 2016 WL 1446138, at *11 (Tex. App. Apr. 13, 2016). You might also make out a decent argument for consent, which doesn't necessarily seem to require that the parties exactly spell out the rules of engagement, just that there is some kind of agreement between the two parties. In one case, for instance, a defendant tried to argue that a fight had gone beyond the rules because one party used a chokehold and knocked the other out. But the court said that the only actual rule agreed to was that there would be no weapons used. Padilla v. State, No. 03-07-00513-CR, 2008 WL 5423139, at *2 (Tex. App. Dec. 31, 2008). That makes me think that as long as there's consent to some kind of fight, you don't necessarily need rules, though you do need to abide by them if you agree to them. So what's the scope of consent in this case? If we say that she's agreed to the use of force by challenging people to take something from her, and she hasn't said how you can do it, can you do it by any means you choose? I don't think a court would let someone shoot her to get it, but maybe they would be allowed to pry it out of her hands. So all of that is a long way of saying that this is a tricky question, and that any decision would probably depend a lot on the specific facts of who she was talking to, what exactly she was saying, how she was carrying the gun, and so on.
Article 175 of the Criminal Code says: A person who distributes, sells or displays in public an obscene document, drawing or other objects shall be punished by imprisonment with work for not more than 2 years, a fine of not more than 2,500,000 yen or a petty fine. The same shall apply to a person who possesses the same for the purpose of sale. This has been interpreted to require pixelization, blurring, censorship bars, or other means of obscuring genitalia. See the 2013 guilty plea by publishers of Core Magazine for an example prosecution under art. 175 for insufficient censorship. The law apparently does not reach material that is produced and edited and sold outside of Japan (even if filmed in Japan). See e.g. the discussion of Realm (1976) in Kirsten Fischer, The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan, p. 198-199: [the film] was not prosecutable because of Ōshima’s innovative production strategy ... He had imported the film stock from France, shot the film in Kyoto, and then exported the undeveloped film back to France, where he developed and edited it and finally distributed it internationally, including importing it back to Japan. A &quot;heavily cut form [was] eventually screened in Japan.&quot;
Not with that license Your post makes clear that you have a sports license, not a hunting license. In that case, it was delivered in accordance with R312-40 of the code de la sécurité intérieure: Peuvent être autorisés pour la pratique du tir sportif à acquérir et à détenir des armes, munitions et leurs éléments (...): 1° Les associations sportives agréées (...) 2° Les personnes majeures (...) Sauf dans le cadre des compétitions internationales, ces armes ne peuvent être utilisées que dans les stands de tir des associations mentionnées au 1° du présent article. A license to acquire and own arms, ammunitions and related elements (...), can be granted to: 1° Accredited sports associations (...) 2° People older than 18 (...) Except within the framework of international competitions, those weapons can only be used in shooting ranges of associations mentioned at 1°.
This web site has collected up a number of state anti-mask laws. It is useful to know that the purpose of the tactical balaclava is face protection. The anti-mask law of California prohibits mask for escaping identification in the commission of a public offense; Florida likewise limits it to criminal-like conduct and some sketchy "equal protection" situations (presumably anti-Klan legislation). Georgia generally prohibits masks but takes the tack of listing exceptions, including "traditional holiday costumes" and "for safety reasons". In Louisiana it is prohibited to wear a mask to conceal identity, but there are enumerated exceptions, including Halloween and Mardi Gras (no surprise), or for religious reasons; we can assume that if Lousiana SWAT teams wear tactical balaclavas, the legal basis is face-protection. It would appear that in Minnesota, SWAT team members cannot wear a mask until winter: A person whose identity is concealed by the person in a public place by means of a robe, mask, or other disguise, unless based on religious beliefs, or incidental to amusement, entertainment, protection from weather, or medical treatment, is guilty of a misdemeanor In New York, the anti-mask law seems to be subsumed under loitering, which includes Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities; which could be narrowly construed to outlaw wearing of balaclavas by SWAT teams (they are masked, they congregate and remain in public with others masked men, it is not in connection with entertainment.