20 "Outlawed" Self-Defense Weapons Every Steel Town Grandfather Hid in His Lunch Pail

In 1911, the State of New York taught itself a word. You can still see it in the margin of the statute book. Underneath section 1897 of the penal law, a clerk wrote three words to mark what had changed that session: Word "blackjack" new. Before that spring, the New York penal code did not contain the word blackjack. Not because the thing didn't exist. Every man in every mill town knew exactly what one was. The law just had no name for it yet. So the legislature wrote the name in, and then wrote in four more. This is the story of 20 weapons an ordinary working man could carry to a mill gate, and the laws that came, one at a time, to learn their names. It runs from an 1859 Kentucky statute that named the cane-gun, through the 1912 act of Congress that made a folding pocket knife a felony in Washington D.C., to the Sullivan Act of 1911, which reached into the coat of every man in New York State and decided that having something was the same as meaning to use it. The setting is Lackawanna, New York, where the Lackawanna Steel Company reorganized in 1902 as the largest independent steel company in the world, blew its first steel in 1903 with 6,000 men, and gave its name to the city that voted itself into existence around the plant in 1909. Two years later, the law arrived. Every statute quoted here is real, and every source is listed below. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 📚 SOURCES STATUTES 1911 N.Y. Laws ch. 195 (Penal Law § 1897, with the footnotes). Duke: https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/assets/1... 1917 Or. Sess. Laws 804-808. Duke: https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/191... Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., Apr 12, 1912 (the D.C. act): https://www.congress.gov/62/crecb/191... N.Y. Penal Law § 265.01 (the 1911 list, still in force): https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york... N.C. Gen. Stat. ch. 14, art. 35 (loaded cane): https://www.ncleg.gov/enactedlegislat... THE SULLIVAN ACT Sullivan Act, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulliva... D. Harsanyi, The Federalist, 2022: https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/27/... Academic Dictionaries (50% rise in gun murders, 1910-11): https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwik... Sullivan Act, Infogalactic (George Petit le Brun): https://infogalactic.com/info/Sulliva... WEAPON DEFINITIONS D. Kopel, "Bowie Knife Statutes 1837-1899," Volokh/Reason, 2022 (slungshot, colt, sword-cane defined; Ohio's "prudent man" clause; the 1859 Kentucky list): https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/20/... LACKAWANNA Lackawanna Steel Company, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lackawa... Lackawanna, New York, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lackawa... WNY Heritage (largest independent steel co., 1902): https://www.wnyheritage.org/content/a... Abandoned America (6,000 workers, 1903): https://www.abandonedamerica.us/lacka... Historical Marker DB (3,300 ft ship canal; first steel Oct 1903): https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=86107 WYRK (the 1909 vote; "a community in and upon itself"): https://wyrk.com/how-exactly-did-lack... ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⚠️ ON ACCURACY Where sources conflict, this video does not pick a side. The Sullivan Act's dates are disputed (signing given as May 25 or May 30, effective date as August 31 or September 1), so the video says only that it was signed in the spring of 1911 and was in force by that September. Sources also disagree on whether Mayor Gaynor later died of his 1910 wound, so the video says only that he survived the shooting. Items 20 through 15 were outlawed in Kentucky, Washington D.C., North Carolina and Ohio. The video names each jurisdiction out loud. Those laws did not reach New York State.