Menacing machete hardly an edged knife

What Massachusetts needs is some commonsense machete control laws.

The local Democrats are still obsessed with guns. But have you noticed how many crimes these days seem to involve a “machete-wielding” individual, who are often not identified even after their arrests, and we all know what that means?

They’re illegal aliens, or maybe TPS, probably expired. Not Americans, in any case.

My question is, do you ever remember reading about random machete attacks back, say, 20 years ago?

Just like there were next to no wrong-way driving accidents on major highways, certainly not at 2 a.m. on weekdays, as so often happen now.

And way back when there was certainly no one running multi-million-dollar food stamp scams out of ruined “Gateway Cities,” crimes almost solely involving the freeloading foreign grifters Gov. Maura Healey calls “residents” or “neighbors.”

Let’s look at the recent epidemic of machete violence, and why won’t the legislature address this epidemic of senseless street crimes? Are they taking orders from the NMA – the National Machete Association?

Why won’t Beacon Hill close the machete-show loophole?

Don’t we need a seven-day waiting period before a cholo can buy a machete?

Machetes – they’re not just for chopping up plantains anymore. Now you can use them against the gringos.

The machete crime spree started a few years back in all the usual places, perpetrated by all the usual suspects – a Lawrence man here, a Chelsea man there.

Now, though, it’s spreading into the Beautiful People districts. It always does. In the long run, the trust-funders in their multi-million-dollar mansions will be just like the rest of us – they can run, but they can’t hide.

In Harvard Square, the chinless fops in their ascots said it can’t happen here. But guess what, it did. Just last week, in a coffee shop – on Mount Auburn Street.

Mount Auburn Street! You can watch all the transitioning beta males and the no-nonsense gals clucking to themselves – “Lovey, lovey, isn’t Harvard Square definitively zoned as a no-machete district.”

After the hobo went crazy, there was even a brief shelter-in-place order at Harvard University. Initial reports said “machete” but then the Cambridge Ministry of Truth took over the narrative, and it was, ahem, clarified to downgraded to maybe an “edged knife.”

Also known as a machete.

Of course there was no description of the machete-brandishing individual. And he wasn’t named. They didn’t need to name him. We all knew who he was.

It wasn’t the first senseless street crime in Cambridge involving a machete. A year earlier, there was an 18-hour standoff near Central Square between the cops and one Princiano Faustin, age 51. Police said they first encountered him near a bus stop, wielding “two large machete-type knives.”

Again, not machetes, but “machete-type knives.” How Cambridge is that? Are machete-type knives to machetes what decaf coffee is to coffee, or near beer is to beer?

In late August, there was a more typical machete incident, in a more typical place – Brockton.

A fellow named Wonder Estiverne, age 35, was charged with assaulting a 42-year-old man with a machete, leaving him with severe lacerations on his arm.

The dispute involved an auto repo. How Brockton is that?

Even in Brockton, the usual omerta soon descended on the machete mayhem – “No further details were immediately available.”

There was a false alarm in Fall River on July 26. Did you ever notice how seldom you have a machete “false alarm” in Dover or Chatham. But it somehow seems appropriate in Lizzie Borden’s hometown.

Moving along to Dedham, a road-rage incident occurs on the Providence Highway, where police “responded to a report of a disturbance involving a person who was allegedly chasing another person while brandishing a machete.”

Journalistic tip: on first reference, the perp is “brandishing” the machete. In second paragraph, use “wielding.”

Arrested by the police was Mussa M Rafat Mohamed, also known as Amusa Raft Muhammed, age 51. You’re shocked, I know.

Next headline, from three weeks ago: “Suspect accused of stabbing man with machete in Leominster.”

Charged with brandishing/wielding the machete was Christopher Lopez Oquendo.

Did you know that Johnny Appleseed was born in Leominster, back in 1774. He wouldn’t recognize the cuidad today, would he? His nickname now in Leominster would be Juan Machete.

But like Third World cuisine, machetes are slowly assimilating into American culture – crime culture anyway. Last spring, three Americans were sentenced to prison for a machete attack in, of all places, Millers Falls, back in 2023.

Their last names were Chapin, Chadwell and Collette. It’s a clear indication that, at least in Massachusetts, the machete is becoming as American as apple pie.

It’s not just happening here either. Here’s another headline, from California:

“Biden-Appointed Judge Frees MS-13 Terrorist Wanted for Murder in El Salvador.”

This savage was released by a judge named Jinsook Ohta, as Breitbart reported, “after he allegedly attacked a homeless man by swinging a machete at the victim.”

Have they finalized a new state seal of Massachusetts yet? Wasn’t one of the problems with the old one the fact that the Indian, er native American, had a bow?

Why not just keep the basic design and replace the bow and arrow with a machete?

And if the woke reps from Cambridge object, we’ll just call it a large machete-type knife.