Huzzah for Nunchakus

[ecosophia]

I'm not sure how many people these days outside of the martial arts scene even remember the nunchaku, the iconic Okinawan weapon that Bruce Lee made famous in the Western world. It started out as a rice flail, a tool farmers used to crack open rice husks before winnowing the husk from the grain; like other farmyard implements, it got pressed into service as a weapon once Okinawa came under Japanese rule and laws that prohibited commoners from owning swords were enforced by the new government; like other farmyard implements, it then got taken up by an assortment of local combat arts that, over time, evolved into the various schools of modern karate. 

(No, it was never a ninja weapon. The people who came up with those cartoon turtles apparently either didn't know much or didn't care much about martial arts history -- all the weapons the turtles use are Okinawan peasant tools that became standard karate weapons; only one of them, the bo (a six-foot staff), was as far as I know used in traditional ninjutsu at all.  The moral to this story is probably not to take advice on martial arts history from adolescent chelonians.)

For reasons that still make me scratch my head, the state legislature of New York banned nunchaku in the state -- as in, you couldn't even have one in the privacy of your own home. Recently, though, a martial artist named James Michael Maloney got busted for having a nunchaku, and sued. His case finally reached a ruling, and the judge found the law unconstitutional, pointing out that the Second Amendment doesn't specify firearms and therefore martial artists who wanted to work out with this elegant and effective device were free to do so. 

This strikes me as good law, and it's also nice to see a certain very common sort of Puritanism -- "it might hurt someone, we must ban it absolutely!" -- get taken out with the legal equivalent of a good hard side kick to the head. Kudos to Judge Pamela K. Chen for a crisp judicial knockout of a law that badly needed clobbering -- and congratulations to the karateka of New York State, who can break out their bootleg nunchaku and get to work learning nunchaku kata for the first time in more than four decades. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I’m female. Is there any way I can get lodge brothers, whom I can help and be helped by, as you were? I’m too old to have a likely chance of marrying in. My grandfather was a Mason, that’s the only family connection I know of.