Are Hatpins Enough?

PUBLIC SAFETY Are Hatpins Enough? Worried about muggers and other molesters, a pretty Manhattan secretary named Arlene Del Fava armed herself with a switchblade knife. She was just in time. While walking home a fortnight ago, she was attacked by a man who, she suspected, was a rapist, and she fought him off with her knife. Result: the police arrested him--and her. Reason: New York's stiff Sullivan Law bans switchblade knives. Up for trial this week, Victim Del Fava, 27, faces a maximum penalty of seven years in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Whatever her fate--and in a city warmly sympathetic to her plight, it is not likely to be harsh--Arlene Del Fava's arrest stirred angry questions about the kind of weapons, if any, that ordinary citizens may carry for self-protection. Quite apart from whether most efforts at self-defense are even legal (TiME, June 26), the answers depend on a wide variety of confusing weapons laws all over the U.S.

In Miami, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., any law-abiding citizen can freely buy a pistol and stash it at home. But carrying it on one's person, even openly in a holster, requires a permit that police rarely issue. Not more than 20 Washingtonians are so licensed. Many states ban almost any "concealed" weapon, including blackjacks, brass knuckles and even slingshots. Although tear-gas Pen-guns are legal in most states, the notable exceptions of New York, Illinois and California cover the nation's biggest, most perilous cities. It is often illegal to carry even a water pistol loaded with some eye-stinging chemical like ammonia.

Oddly enough, Arlene Del Fava would have gone scot free had she packed a hunting, carving or penknife --any type other than a switchblade or gravity knife, which snap open at the flick of a wrist. If the owner can prove lack of illegal intent, New York's Sullivan Law allows possession of dirks, daggers, razors or stilettos. But the law, which has no visible effects on criminals, requires hard-to-get police permits for pistols, even when they are kept at home. Flatly forbidden is the mere possession of any billy, blackjack, bludgeon, bomb, bombshell, firearm silencer, machine gun, metal knuckles, sandbag, sandclub or "slungshot" (slingshot). The arsenal is so well-stocked that choice is inevitably confusing. Arlene Del Fava, along with many another New Yorker, has decided that from now on there is only one side arm that will keep her safe from both cops and robbers--"a hatpin like grandmother used to carry."

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