Maurice,
So you can carry a pocket knife there. Good, there may still be hope. I suppose a knife or a ball bat as a weapon depends upon the intent of the bearer. Nail clippers could be a weapon if you plan to use them that way.
You say you could "Google" US laws on knife carrying. Impossible, and I sure hope it stays that way. There are untold thousands of jurisdictions here, each one making their own laws to suit the wishes and needs of the community. Some of these are very small and to get a copy of the local code you have to go down to the mayor or the clerk of court office, if you can catch them open.
In some places it is illegal to have a gun. In Kennessaw, Georgia the head of household is required to have a gun. Likewise for everything else. The way it should be. You can do things on the street in San Francisco or Key West that will get you arrested in a hurry where I live.
You can say "in NZ, its the law". It doesn't work that way here, and that is the very best feature of our system, a feature the rest of the world should consider for adoption.
In NZ you have, I suppose you have mayors and provincial governors and these jurisdictions may have their own staff and even police, but the funding for these jurisdictions comes from the national government so that is where their loyalty lies. In the US even the smallest incorporated jurisdiction raises its own revenue. Likewise for the individual states, they even have their own military, the National Guard.
Our problem is the national government, the most corrupt on earth. We need great systemic change there, but locally, we have the best system that exists.
That is a very mistaken and almost 19th century attitude you seem to exhibit when you imply that folks in the rural tropics are "uncivilized". One hundred or even fifty years ago that would be true, but not now. Many of them have traveled extensively, probably more than you have. And I bet most of them know lots more about NZ than you know about their locale.
Almost every family has somebody who has worked abroad, maybe on a ship where they have been in every port everywhere. Some of the kids go to the city for a college education and you have TV, books and newspapers. I have met quite a few folks there living in a shack, but who are voracious readers.
Decades ago folks like this were very unsophisticated and had little understanding of the outside world but that is not the case any more. They are well aware of what the outside world has to offer and they don't want any of it.
No mines, no oil wells, no plantations, no golf courses. They don't want or need them. Remember this is the tropics and it is very easy to produce all you need on a tiny plot.
Slagle
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