Before September 11, box cutters were known primarily as a tool for, well, cutting boxes. Today, the words are grimly evocative — as loaded with hateful significance as anthrax or Al Qaeda. Even now, however, when we have finally grasped the box cutter’s potential as a weapon of mass destruction, it’s easy to acquire one. Walk into any home-improvement store, lay down a ten spot, and you are equipped. In fact, thanks to a Chicago-based tool manufacturer called Modern Specialties, it’s actually a heck of a lot easier than that. Or at least cheaper.

At the foot of the Modern Specialties home page (www.themodernspecialtiescompany.com), beneath a passage extolling the company’s "emphasis on quality, service and customer satisfaction," is this: "Free sample box cutter!!" And then: "Click here."

"Free box cutters?" says Dean, the company’s owner. "Oh, that’s been there for three or four years."

Dean (he prefers his last name not be used) has theories about the weapons used on that fateful day in September. "I have never seen a description of the knives the hijackers used," he says. "There just isn’t any information on that, though I’m sure the FBI knows. I suspect they used those tiny things with a single-edged razor. They’d never have gotten mine through security — too much steel."

Dean, whose company has been making box cutters since 1930, insists that the terrorist attacks haven’t changed the way he thinks about his hottest product. "I don’t think most people had even heard the words ‘box cutter’ before this," he says. "But they’ve been around for 70, 75 years, and they’ve been cutting corrugated cardboard ever since."

But hasn’t all that changed since September 11? Isn’t there something inherently sinister about the implement now? "No, my goodness, no," says Dean. "Any knife can be used as a weapon. How they chose what they chose to do, that I don’t know." Dean does stress, however, that his company will only send his samples to "legitimate businesses": "If it looks like they have a legitimate use for a box cutter, I’ll send them one."

Then, pausing for a moment, he adds: "I don’t think we’re going to leave [the offer] up there. I don’t think it’s produced much in the way of orders."

Issue Date: November 29 - December 6, 2001

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