Bill Considers Ice-Pick-Wielding Youth

Okamoto Studio Thomas Brown, an ice sculptor at Okamoto Studio Custom Ice in Queens, uses an ice pick to ply his trade. A proposed city law would bar the sale of ice picks to those under 21 years old.

If you’re buying beer, you need to show some ID. Planning to pick ice You’ll need to do the same if legislation introduced Thursday in the City Council is enacted to bar those under 21 from buying an ice pick.

The ill, which also applies to awls, another pointed tool, addresses concerns that the tools have occasionally been used in the city as weapons.

The measure would extend to these tools the same limits that already apply to box cutters, including prohibition against their being openly displayed by vendors and being carried on school premised by anyone under 22. It was introduced by Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat who heads the Council’s Public Safety Committee.

Mr. Vallone said he was troubled by reports like an attack last summer in the Bronx, where a young man was stabbed in the back with an ice pick, and a spree of ice-pick assaults in 2011, mainly on women in the Br! onx, by a man named John Martinez, who was called the “Ice-Pick Bandit” and eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison.

While ice-pick crimes were more prevalent in the days before refrigeration, when the iceman delivered large blocks of ice to homes, they have had a slight uptick in recent years. Tougher gun laws, and the rise of the Police Department’s so-called stop-and-frisk practices, may be why people are turning to this weapon of yesteryear, Mr. Vallone said.

“I can’t say it’s a huge problem right now, but it’s our job to stay in front of these things,” he said. He added, “I still have not run across any remaining legitimate uses for an ice pick.”

But at Okamoto Studio Custom Ice in Long Island City, Shintaro Okamoto, the owner of the company, which makes ice sculptures, says it’s an integraltool for his trade. Though legislation would little affect him, Mr. Okamoto said, since the sculptors of his ice animals, busts, and modern art pieces are all over 21, the concept did not sit well with him.

“It is kind of a scary steppingstone,” Mr. Okamoto said. “Are they going to ban pencils because you can stab someone with a pencil too You can hurt somebody with anything.”