Tom,

We expected we'd get a lot of responses like that. We were warned that apathy among knife enthusiasts was going to be our biggest challenge.

Eventually we hope to have plenty of answers. Right now there are two bills in New York dealing with knives, which we know about because a member emailed me about them. Probably lots others elsewhere as well. Recently some Wisconsin city police chiefs, including Oshkosh, took it upon themselves to visit Wal Mart and others and told them they'd be arrested if they sold specific assisted opening knives. We know about that because a member tried to buy one of those knives. A store owner in NYC is facing several years in jail for selling some simple one-hand opening knives from Spyderco, Benchmade and others, just like can be found in hundreds of other stores in the city. They also seized his personal knife collection as "evidence." We know about that because the gentleman contacted me in hopes that we could help. I don't enjoy telling them that we don't yet have the resources to do so.

Getting set up with legislative and legal alerts is not inexpensive, but high on our priority list, for obvious reasons. Anyone want to volunteer to do it the time consuming hard way, just email me. There's no question it would help us in our membership drive.

The list could no doubt go on and on, but since it likely doesn't personally affect this individual today, this week, now, he's not threatened and therefore there's a good chance we'd probably never convince him. That's someone else' problem, not his. But, that's really dangerous thinking and seriously shortsighted because precedents make it easier for someone else to accomplish something elsewhere, perhaps where it will directly affect him. You have to look beyond your back yard.

The bottom line answer is that if we wait until it becomes a crisis, then we're sunk. Hopefully, we'll get enough of the millions of knife owners out there with foresight that it won't come to that. That's one reason that the typical NRA member is an easier recruit than the typical knife enthusiast. They understand how this works, how you cannot just wait to organize until the threat is finally obvious and in your face. If the organization doesn't already exist, then it's 100 times more difficult to stop.

Essentially, we have to crawl before we can walk and walk before we can run. All those blank and coming soon areas of thew Web site require either dedicated volunteers with time or money. I have discovered that dedicated volunteers are hard to come by, but we hope that will also change as we grow and more become aware of us. Just getting the word out isn't quick or easy. We all have a day job or two or three. We all have prior commitments we have to keep or work through. I have a SHOT Show report that has to be done along with trying to launch KR and a commitment to do survival presentations the 26th-30th made months ago. We wanted to be at Safari Club Int'l Convention the weekend after this, but every one of us on the KR board has a prior commitment, as do all our current volunteers. Anyone outgoing and well-spoken want to attend Safari Club and hand out Knife Rights buttons and talk to people?

My point is, we're running as fast as we can and trying as hard as we can, but if folks don't have vision and faith, they aren't going to join at this juncture and there's not a lot we can do to change that in the short run. The NRA, AOPA, BoatUS and the like have had decades to build an organization we're trying to build in months and a few years. Rome wasn't built in a day, as they say...


Thanks very much for your support and help.