ARMED WITHOUT A WEAPON: ETYMOLOGICAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JUSTIFICATION OF THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO CLASSIFYING THE DANGEROUS STATE OF AN OFFENDER
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32844/ibpala-2026-1.07Keywords:
being armed, weapon, instrument of crime, dangerous implement, arme par destination, gefährliches Werkzeug, functional approach, criminal law, necessary defence, qualifying circumstanceAbstract
This article examines the relationship between the concepts of "weapon" and "being armed" in the dimensions of criminal law, forensic science, and etymology. The thesis is advanced that the contemporary criminal-law understanding of "being armed" is the product of an artificial semantic narrowing that contradicts the natural scope of this concept and lacks adequate etymological, linguistic, or physical justification. Through a comparative analysis of Proto-Slavic and Latin roots of the relevant terms, it is demonstrated that the original semantic content of "armed" encompassed any state of combat readiness of a subject, rather than merely the possession of objects belonging to a specific legal class. A lexicographic analysis of normative dictionaries confirms that the natural meaning of the corresponding verb is broader than its specialised criminal-law interpretation. A conceptual contradiction is identified between different provisions of the current Criminal Code of Ukraine, reflecting the absence of a unified doctrinal approach to the content of "being armed." Analysis of the draft new Criminal Code reveals that this gap is not resolved therein and is in some respects deepened by the introduction of additional restrictive criteria for defining a weapon in the absence of an autonomous definition of "being armed." A comparative legal analysis of the legislation and judicial practice of leading European legal systems demonstrates a consistent trend towards the functional interpretation of an instrument of harm, irrespective of the legal status of a particular object. On the basis of the foregoing analysis, a concept of "being armed" is substantiated as a state of a subject who possesses the real capacity to inflict physical harm with any object having sufficient injurious properties. It is proposed to introduce the concept of "means of harm" as a genus in relation to "weapon" and to define "being armed" through a functional criterion.
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