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UC-9 at the Range
On Saturday, 18-year-old Payton Gendron opened fire at a Tops Friendly Markets in the predominantly black Kingsley neighborhood of Buffalo, New York. Over the course of his ten-minute rampage, Gendron murdered ten people and injured another three; he livestreamed the massacre on the platform Twitch. The horrific incident is being investigated as a hate crime, owing in part to a manifesto in which Gendron allegedly justifies the attack as a defense of the white majority against “replacement” by blacks and Jews.
The shooting has already been absorbed into the culture war. Commentators on the left have been quick to argue that the Buffalo massacre is simply more evidence of white supremacy’s grip on the Republican Party, and on American society as a whole. Some on the right mutter about the manifesto’s stranger sections, insinuating that the whole thing is some sort of FBI conspiracy. These efforts misappropriate, or wholly obscure, the bare meaning of these murders. Our response to the Buffalo mass shooting should be that a monster committed a heinous and indefensible act, and that justice demands we hold him to final account. Try him, convict him, and put him to death.
Doing so would acknowledge the basic mandates of morality. Certain offenses are so reprehensible as to be unforgiveable. To fail to answer a vicious, hate-motivated rampage with anything but death is to deny the requirements of retribution.
Just as important, executing Gendron sends a message to those deranged few who will admire his actions: violently enacting your bigotry is intolerable to our society. As I have argued, hate-crime laws can be seen as a set of guard rails, delimiting certain criminal behavior as incompatible with shared values of civic tolerance and respect for one’s fellow citizens. When those laws are egregiously violated, capital punishment can restore the moral order that the law exists to defend.
Punishing Gendron may seem so obvious as to not be worth mentioning. But the fixation on the vulgar political significance of his atrocity reveals our collective inability to think in such stark moral terms. In particular, taking the killer as mere symbol of white America’s depravity waives his responsibility for his actions. It reinforces the therapeutic morality, undergirding most criminal-justice progressivism, that sees brutal criminals as mere products of their environment, rather than freely choosing individuals culpable for their actions. Punishment, the philosopher Herbert Morris once argued, is the way that we treat wrongdoers as fully human, by acknowledging them as morally responsible agents. The moral drama of retribution should therefore be at the center of our analysis.
Politics does play a role here. Capital punishment is, for no particularly good reason, inoperative in New York State. Several candidates for governor have already called for its return in response to the shooting; others might join them. Gendron can also be charged under federal hate-crime and homicide laws carrying a possible penalty of death, just as Emmanuel AME church shooter Dylann Roof was. But doing so would require the Biden administration to undo its death penalty moratorium. If Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is really serious about combatting hate crimes, then it will proceed accordingly.
Outrage is a subject of much public debate these days: whose outrage is appropriate, whose is not, and when outrage ought to play a role in decision-making. In the case of horrific crimes like Saturday’s shooting, however, outrage is a natural moral emotion that points us to a just end. Only a hard heart can look upon the brutal deaths of ten people and not feel it. Putting Payton Gendron to death is simply the state’s enactment of the horror and revulsion that so many feel. Failing to do so would be a rejection of public moral sense and decency.
Knives have been with us for as long as when the first caveman had that eureka moment and thought of sharpening stones and animal bones to kill wild animals. From then on, countless designs and ideas sprung up designed for different purposes. They were no longer just used for killing animals but also for close-combat purposes, whenever needed— like during WWI.
Combatting in the trenches was undoubtfully difficult. The attack, counterattack, and defense were all made on foxholes dug into the ground. What’s more, opposing trenches were usually close to one another. Fighting in the trenches of WWI involved a lot of storming the enemy’s positions brutally close combat. Weapons like long bayonets fixed to rifles proved unwieldy in the narrow trench lines.
What would be the best weapon for close combat in a confined area? Knuckle bar? Knife? How about both? That’s what Henry Disston & Sons, a civilian company making tools and saws, thought when they designed the M1917 trench knife. Inspired by the French Nail knives, it has a long, triangular blade and a knuckle guard on its handle. Henry Disston & Sons were not traditional knife-makers, so the M1917 turned out to be rather flimsy, and since the blade was triangular, it could only stab but not cut.
Shortly after, these deficiencies were addressed with the improved M1918 trench knife. This version has a brass knuckle-duster grip and a double-edged blade. It could be used both for stabbing and slashing.
They still wanted to improve M1918’s durability, ease of use, security of grip, and ease of carrying, so the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) officers and the Engineering Division of U.S. Ordnance brought Mark I Trench Knife to life. It still has the 6.75-inch double-edged steel blade, a cast-bronze knuckle-duster grip that could break a nose and prevent the knife from being taken from the user’s hand, an oversized steel scabbard, and a nasty addition: skull-cracking nut on the pommel.
During World War II, Mark I was used by army rangers, marine raiders, and airborne troops.
There was also the Hughes Trench Knife that was invented and patented by a captain in the United States National Army, Rupert Hughes. His idea was a spring-loaded, foldable knife blade attached to a handle and can be secured at the back of the hand by a leather strap, so the wearer could still grasp and hold other things. A button on the handle can be pressed to release the knife into an open and locked position. It was tested and was unfortunately found to be of no value by the board of testers.
The WWI Trench knife was a fearsome weapon of war. There is debate today over whether or not the Hague Convention bans such weapons.
The wording of the text does not specifically ban combat knives, but outlaws weapons intended to cause “unnecessary suffering,” which is pretty broad. A combat knife with a sawtooth edge would qualify since it leaves a jagged open wound that would be hard to close(at least under battlefield conditions). This might apply as well to triangular-shaped blades which leave a puncture wound rather than an incision-type cut that would also be hard to stitch up and close.
On the other hand, a triangular-shaped blade is superior at punching through several layers of winter clothing where a blade type knife would not. The most simple way to know which type of blade is approved for warfare is to look at the types issued to service members today by their own governments, which do not include those with brass knuckle grips or serrated blades. This doesn’t mean that troops can’t buy a weapon like a traditional trench knife to add to their kit, but they might want to get rid of it before getting captured by an enemy.
