Do school zone knife exclusions violate the 14th Amendment? In the US, most if not all states have some kind of law(s) in place that prohibit the carrying of knives in school zones. While most states define a knife as a weapon by edge length, I can not find any legal definition of what constitutes an edge or what constitutes a knife as a weapon in regards to school zones. Many things that some people may call a knife are not weapons at all such as palette knives, butter knives, oyster knives, etc. Palette knives are even required school supplies for many schools that have an art program. Then there are things that look like knives, like nail files, letter openers, etc., which are not called knives, have no cutting edge, but which I've heard of people getting in trouble for purely on the grounds that they &quot;look like knives&quot;. There are also many tools that have an edge sharp enough to potentially cut or stab but not things that people would call a knife, like keys, chisels, box openers, saws, screwdrivers, etc. Many of these tools are allowed on school property by maintenance personnel and are required class materials in certain courses like wood-working, and keys are literally carried by everyone who drives into or through a school zone. Then there are also &quot;blunted weapons&quot;. &quot;Wall-hangers&quot; are decorative swords, daggers, etc. that look like they could be real weapons, but are blunted for safety, and so have no effective cutting or stabbing edges. Similarly, a fencing rapier also looks like a full length sword, but has been blunted and is required equipment on school campuses that have fencing teams. On top of all of this, a handful of states, such as Louisiana, don't even have edge length restrictions that differentiate a short-bladed &quot;tool&quot; from a long bladed &quot;weapon&quot;. So the question is: with all the ambiguity and exceptions, are there any rulings in place that would allow a reasonable person of at least average intelligence to determine what constitutes the crime, and if not, could knife restrictions in school zones be considered void for vagueness under the 14th Amendment?
School administrators have the right to try to express the law in seemingly simpler language, but they do not have the right to enforce their misstatements of the law. The law of Louisiana does not refer to knives at all Carrying a firearm, or dangerous weapon as defined in R.S. 14:2, by a student or nonstudent on school property, at a school sponsored function, or in a firearm-free zone is unlawful... &quot;Dangerous weapon&quot; is defined so that it &quot;includes any gas, liquid or other substance or instrumentality, which, in the manner used, is calculated or likely to produce death or great bodily harm&quot;. The law does not exhaustively list the things that count as firearms or dangerous weapons, so every individual is held responsible for knowing what the courts have held to constitute &quot;dangerous weapons&quot;. A novice interpretation (not relying on case law) might lead to the conclusion that a speargun is not a &quot;dangerous weapon&quot; (perhaps on the theory that it is used underwater to spear fish), but a reasonable interpretation of &quot;dangerous weapon&quot; suggests that it is a dangerous weapon because it can be used to kill a person. The same is true of a pencil, as well as a dog. You can turn to this article for an example of the dangerous weapon status of a dog, a propos Louisiana v. Michels, where defendant was &quot;armed with a dangerous weapon&quot;. That court recited previous case law to the effect that &quot;the dangerousness of the instrumentality because of its use is a factual question for the jury&quot; State v. Munoz, 575 So.2d 848, 850 RX 14:3 also states that The articles of this Code cannot be extended by analogy so as to create crimes not provided for herein; however, in order to promote justice and to effect the objects of the law, all of its provisions shall be given a genuine construction, according to the fair import of their words, taken in their usual sense, in connection with the context, and with reference to the purpose of the provision which means that if faced with a novel application (dog, pencil, or speargun), the jury can decide based on &quot;context and purpose&quot;, not just narrow words. The article points to a law review article by a lawyer involved in the 1942 codification of Louisiana criminal law that &quot;the code was to be read as a civilian document, not a mere compilation of common law rules&quot;, thus the code is shorter and uses plain language. The article then reviews a number of previous rulings on the scope of &quot;dangerous weapon&quot;, starting with Louisiana v. Calvin where it was ruled that teeth and fists are not dangerous weapons, even though you can kill a person with your fists. It therefore turns out that a &quot;dangerous weapon&quot; must be an inanimate object, under Louisiana law. A knife can be found to be a dangerous weapon, as reported in this opinion (deportation dependent on a prior criminal conviction for felony aggravated battery, specifically referring to R.S. 14.2(3) and deeming a knife to be a dangerous weapon). Since that conviction is no being appealed at the state level, details of the knife-usage are omitted, so all we know is that a knife was used. Insofar as box cutters were the essential weapons that brought about the airplane hijackings on 9/11, it is not unreasonable to at least consider that they are within the scope of &quot;dangerous weapon&quot; (I would not, but that's a matter for the jury). A butter knife or especially a pencil cannot reasonably be deemed to be &quot;dangerous weapons&quot;. But there doesn't seem to be any case law specifically addressing these objects. If a pencil were actually used as a weapon, perhaps the jury might find that a pencil (so used) was a dangerous weapon. However, the question is about a law forbidding the mere possession of a dangerous weapon, eliminating how it was actually used from the calculation. It is extremely unlikely that I would get arrested for driving past a school with a screwdriver in my car.
The "how" part is, get the legislature to pass a law. LA. REV. STAT. ANN 15:542.1 says Any adult residing in this state who has pled guilty to, has been convicted of, or where adjudication has been deferred or withheld for the perpetration or attempted perpetration of, or conspiracy to commit, a sex offense as defined in R.S. 15:541 or a criminal offense against a minor as defined in R.S. 15:541 shall be required to provide the following notifications (1) Give notice of the crime for which he was convicted, his name, residential address, a description of his physical characteristics as provided in R.S. 15:542(C)(1), and a photograph or copy thereof to all of the following: (a) At least one person in every residence or business within a one-mile radius in a rural area and a three-tenths of a mile radius in an urban or suburban area of the address of the residence where the offender will reside upon release, including all adults residing in the residence of the offender Also, school superintendents, landlords, park superintendents. The law does not require ringing doorbells. The police do not actually follow convicts to make sure they do it. You would have to contact police and convicts who have some experience with this to know how it works practically: the law is what it is.
Self-Defense is an active Defense for Homicide (note, this is the legal term for taking a life. Criminal Homicide and Justified Homicide are two subsets of Homicide and are denoted by illegal actions and legal actions. Homicide as a result of Self-Defense is a Justified Homicide, regardless of the weapon, so long as it was applied with the minimal amount of force required to stop the criminal harm to oneself). Suppose you use a taser and the current causes the attacker to go into cardiac arrest and die. Your intention in using the taser was to stop the criminal from injuring yourself, your property, or another person or their property (defense of others). Even though the Taser is non-leathal, it's more like less lethal. Death by Taser is uncommon, but not impossible or rare. It would be handled as a defensive use of a weapon (same as if the attacker was killed by a gun) and processed as such. Pennsylvania is a Stand Your Ground State, meaning that in a public place, you do not have a duty to flee if your attacker approaches you in a public place, you do not have to prove that you could not flee in order to claim self-defense. However, if you pull a weapon and your attacker decides to flee, you can not give chase and kill him upon capture. You also need to have a reasonable expectation that the attacker is about to use deadly force (this normally means having sight of the weapon or what would reasonably look like a weapon i.e. a realistic toy gun without the orange safety cap would be reasonable). You also cannot claim self-defense if you were engaged in another crime when the attacker approached you (i.e. If you rob the Krusty Krab and the Hash Slinging Slasher approaches you with a knife, sucks to be you cause you don't have a right to be in the Krusty Krab after closing.).
No. I can't give a more detailed answer without reference to a specific statute. But just about every state anti-bullying statute in the U.S. restricts the definition to...well, bullying. There is a good summary of state bullying and cyberbullying statutes here. The laws are varied, but they invariable contain words like "harassment", "abuse", "threatening," "fear," and "hostile environment." Would it be possible to "cyberbully" someone on Stack Exchange under some of these statutes? Sure. You could do it in comments; in answers; even in questions. "Question: Is Bill in my algebra class a dork, or a tool?" Comment: "This is a terrible question, and I'm going to burn your house down. Downvoting." You could probably fit something like that under some of the broader statutes--although they still for the most part haven't been tested for First Amendment issues. But I don't know of any statute broad enough to include downvoting a question or answer, on a site people post on knowing that the whole purpose of posting is to allow their posts to be upvoted and downvoted. If there was such a statute--and again, I don't know of any--it would almost certainly be unconstitutional. There is no law against hurting people's feelings, at least in the United States, and a law that allows people to seek legal redress for someone saying "I disagree with you" is pretty much the poster child for a First Amendment violation.
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.
RS 14:95.2 applies to everyone, and defines a particular kind of crime. The housing contract overlaps that law in a small way: the legislature did not make it a crime for a student to possess a firearm in his dorm room. But the university makes it a lease condition, in the same way that having a pet is not a crime, but is grounds for terminating the lease.
You were trespassing The community college is a public institution but they can decide what part of their land you can walk on and in what circumstances. Just like the military is a public institution but they don’t let you walk across their shooting ranges. To be clear, in the absence of clear “no dogs allowed” signage, you were not trespassing until you were told about the policy. At that point, you were legally obliged to remove yourself (or more precisely, your dog) from the campus as soon as possible. When you refused to do so, you became a trespasser. It’s trivially easy to find out who you are. One photograph, one reverse image search they’ll know everything about you right down to your shoe size. Even if you don’t use social media, I’m sure some of your family and friends do. In most US states, trespass is a misdemeanour and also in most states members of the public can arrest someone who is committing a misdemeanour in their presence. They can use reasonable force to do so and can hold the arrestee until they can transfer them to the custody of a law enforcement officer. Admittedly, this seems unlikely but it is possible. If you have caused damage, you can be sued. It seems that your discussion with the college staff was somewhat protected so the loss of productivity of those staff members is a loss that the college suffered and that they could sue you for. Again, not likely but possible. Alternatively, they could just report you to the police who may or may not bring charges. Note: this assumes the dog is a pet. If it’s a disability assistance animal, it can’t be excluded. See: Are sidewalks on a university public or private property? Can a local government charge a fee to enter a public downtown area during an event? Trespassing or Public Property? Is a mall considered a &quot;public place&quot; for copyright purposes?
In this context, the phrase "there are no equitable considerations that would require the court to reduce or deny reimbursement for the parents" largely refers to defenses to claims arising under the law of equity as applied historically in the chancery courts of England, and more recently, to claims of a type that would have been brought in equity courts if there were still a separate equity court system. Two of the more common equitable defenses are "unclean hands" and "laches". The equitable defense of "unclean hands" applies when the person seeking relief has engaged in misconduct of some kind in the same transaction. For example, if "the student was denied a FAPE at their public school placement" because the student had previously been expelled for beating up another kid (especially if this had nothing to do with the reason that a FAPE is needed) or because the parents ignored a deadline for filing the application for a FAPE at their public school of which they had reasonable advanced notice, that student's parents might be denied reimbursement under the doctrine of unclean hands. The equitable defense of "laches" applies when unreasonable delay on the part of the person seeking relief causes prejudice to the person from whom relief is sought even in the absence of a date certain deadline or before a date certain deadline expires. For example, suppose that "the private school was an appropriate placement" but it had tuition three times as high as two other private schools in town. If the other two less expensive private schools had vacancies for months after the student was denied a FAPE at their public school placement, but had no room for new students a week before school started leaving only the much more expensive private school with any vacancies, the request might be denied, or limited to the amount that would have been paid if the parents had applied to other private schools more promptly, under the doctrine of laches. Other equitable defenses include the duty to mitigate damages (e.g. there might be reimbursement for private school tuition, but not for late fees and interest that could have been avoided), impossibility and impracticability (e.g. no public or private placement is capable of addressing the fundamental problem that the child is in a catatonic state), acts of god/force majeure (e.g. the student was denied a FAPE because the school was destroyed in a hurricane and the school district had to shut down the schools for everyone for a semester), implied waiver or estoppel (e.g. after the student was denied a FAPE the student was enrolled for regular classes at that public school without complaint and without trying to find a private school placement), spoliation (e.g. the records needed to determine eligibility were intentionally destroyed by the applicant before the hearing), fraud as a defense and not a claim (e.g. the parents lied in their reimbursement application), payment (e.g. the student was denied a FAPE by two schools and already received reimbursement from another one and is not entitled to a double recovery), release or accord and satisfaction (e.g. a settlement agreement was already reached with the school denying reimbursement or agreeing to a particular reimbursement).