I love it.AFJailor wrote:...When he got out of prison he started studying martial arts...so much that now he has to register himself as a deadly weapon... I am really curious if anyone has ever heard someone make claims of this before and also if anyone knows where this old wives tale comes from.
And you betcha I've heard it. Having first begun martial arts in 1966, I've heard a lot.
Absolute myth in the U.S., of course.
Well, let me rephrase that: it is absolute myth that registration of one's hands and/or feet is required by any governmental or law enforcement entity. Unfortunately, that's not to say unscrupulous martial arts "masters" might issue--for a fee, of course--certificates that indicate the bearer is so amazing that his or her body is registered as a deadly weapon.
Maybe it's just economics or the changing decades, but I am far less trusting, even less respectful, than I was when I moved back to the States 30 years ago. Now, seemingly, there are almost as many martial arts schools as there are Starbucks.
In the '80s what I found vulgar were the mega-dojo chains in multiple cities trying to adopt what was then the health club hard-sell model, one that presented a cookie-cutter form of...something: generally a genericised form of Shotokan or Taekwando.
But what started happening in the '90s, after the mega-dojo business concept proved unviable, was even more disturbing: people founding and naming their own systems of martial arts and promoting themselves accordingly to "grand master"...in seemingly every neighborhood of every city in the U.S.
These small schools started springing up like Orville Redenbacher's popcorn. And even a (slightly) more informed public had a hard time chipping through the obfuscation to determine who was real and who wasn't. (Hint: By a landslide percentage, most self-acclaimed "masters" are not. Check the bio very closely.)
Yeah, this subject obviously pushes my buttons, but I'll try to keep it relevant.
Asian fighting arts really didn't creep onto American soil in any public way until the early 1960s. Other than small pockets of practitioners, the Judoka were probably the only semi-familiar figures exercising arts from the East. Novels, movies, and TV began to change this by the mid '60s.
Novels, movies, and television give us such a trusted, factual view of the world, don't they?
Here's how I think the myth of registering yourself as a deadly weapon began. IMHO.
Harken back to WWII when Joe Louis was boxing's heavyweight champion of the world. I think he reigned from 1940 to 1949. Professional boxing then wasn't much less outrageous than professional wrestling is today. It was a fairly common practice in promoting big matches to have the local constabulary on hand to "register" the boxer's hands as deadly weapons. Carried absolutely no force of law, of course. It was publicity.
Concurrently, in post-WWII Japan, those skills determined to be a martial art were rendered illegal. People who were known to be experienced in these fighting arts had their names recorded. To my knowledge, this lasted only a few years into the post-war environment. Thank goodness we didn't forever lose that body of knowledge to legislation. This is the closest I know of actual registration of an individual's hands and feet as deadly weapons.
As the Asian fighting arts promulgated through the U.S. in the '60s and early '70s, it's understandable how a myth of having to register oneself as a deadly weapon might have come about. Too, for several years some pretty bizarre elements of mysticism and fantasy were associated with martial arts, some drawn from original folktales, some just plain fabricated. Besides, the hands-as-deadly-weapon thing made for great fiction.
Could your two-time felon actually have thought his body was registered as a deadly weapon? Absolutely. If so, look no further than his dishonorable--and most likely undertrained--"master."