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Fighting crime the Home Office way “Violent offenders face ban on owning knives” reports the Telegraph.
Violent offenders face being banned from owning knives under plans to be considered by the Home Secretary.
Something tells me that the violent offenders will face this prospect with the equanimity that comes from already having faced a ban on being violent criminals.
Offenders with a propensity for knife possession or violence would be designated a “prohibited” person under the proposed crackdown drawn up by police.
They would be banned by law from buying certain types of knives or applying to be a registered knife seller.
Chris Rose has been inspired to do his bit to help the Home Secretary fight crime:
Hi
@YvetteCooperMP
I’ve just opened my kitchen drawer and sternly warned the knives not to wonder off and stab people whilst I’m away otherwise you’ll ban them.
Later today, I’ll also be talking to my car to not drive into any crowds.
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Something tells me that law-abiding people need no additional laws, people who ignore the law will continue to do so, so the only benefit of the new law is making the Government seem to be ‘doing something’.
I expect that by now most people are not distracted by such lazy politics. If the Government really wanted to tackle knife crime they would make arrest for carrying an illegal knife more inevitable.
I’m a British expat in HM Former Colonies. I keep a loaded AR15 under my bed at night and a Glock in my glovebox. Amazingly, neither of them start firing randomly at crowds of people, although they do seem to be a good deterrent to people who would otherwise wish me and my family harm (in a herd immunity sense — I carry concealed, not openly).
Seriously, I look at the UK and think its weapons laws are absolutely bonkers — unless, of course, disarming the populace is a goal in itself. Which is is. It’s very sad to see what’s happening to the country of my birth.
An interesting account of the very sad story of British gun control can be found here: https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Greenwood.pdf . It stops in the 1970s, but things were already pretty bad by then. Peter Hitchens’ book “A Brief History of Crime” brings things up to the first few years of this century.
I do wonder what would happen if Reform just said “sod it, let people keep shotguns at home to defend against burglars, provided no criminal record or history of insanity”. And changed the law so that you’re presumed to have a reasonable fear for your life the moment someone breaks into your home.
Registered
Knife
Seller
I don’t understand – why aren’t you guys shooting your politicians? We left over far less bullshit than this.
The War on Knives goes back a long time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4581871.stm
But neither Blair nor Brown actually did anything about it.
It seems the UK government has never heard of underage teens getting older friends or siblings to buy booze and smokes for them. Just one example of how those who want to get around a prohibition find a way to do so.
A guy with a battery powered grinder and a piece of scrap steel can make a very good knife in about 10 minutes.
With only a manual file and a hacksaw it might take a few hours.
Are the Brit “Elites” completely bonkers?
@ SourjournerE
The answer is, yes, it is. The 1920 Firearms Act was brought in in a knee-jerk response to the Russian Revolution. The establishment were terrified of the great unwashed staging such a coup d’etat in Britain. Of course they put a 60 year secrecy restriction on the deliberations and it wasn’t until 1981 when the records were made available and that self same Colin Greenwood gave a lecture which I attended explaining this in 1981.
For a more detailed look at the restrictions and their reasoning, look at “Guns and Violence The Debate Before Lord Cullen” by R. A. I Munday and J. A Stevenson and “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee Malcolm.
@FredZ
10 Minutes? You must be slow. I can (and have) ground a broken hacksaw blade into a serviceable knife in about 3 minutes, excluding the time to wrap the handle in duct tape to stop my delicate fingers being roughed up by the saw teeth.
However, a shard of perspex and a kerbstone is even easier and not detectable by metal detectors …
Phil B, prison inmates are adept at turning things into shivs, a toothbrush handle for example.
At first I thought this was satire – but the government really is this stupid. “People will not be stabbed if we make it illegal to own knives” – as if people who want to stab others, cared about regulations against them owning knives.
Full disclosure – many years ago the Home Office was my employer, it was not quite as bad in those days.
When my father was born (1913) there was no “Gun Control” in London – but there was in New York City, and firearm ownership was very common in Britain. Yet the murder rate in London was a tiny fraction of what it was in New York City.
@ Henry Cybulski – Indeed.
Of course, it hasn’t occurred to the idiots that if prisons which, presumably, are highly monitored and controlled cannot prevent the prison population from acquiring or making weaponry and obtaining drugs and mobile phones as readily as the outside population then any laws that try to restrict knives in the hands of the public is futile.
But since when passing useless laws has ever bothered Parliament and the snivel serpents? “Something must be done. This is something. Let’s do it” seems to be the default behaviour and “solution”. that doesn’t work? Then MORE OF THE SAME is bound to succeed …
The empress of Austria- Hungart was in fact stabbed to death with an old file, not even a homemade knife.
Aslo;
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/tale/the-knife-and-the-naked-chalk.htm
SojournerE, thank you for providing the text of the history of British gun control by Colin Greenwood. We do actually have a paper copy of it somewhere in the house but heaven knows where. I have downloaded it because these days links to material on that topic tend to go dead – or be killed – with even more frequency than old links in general do.
We also own several works by Richard Munday and Jan Stevenson, as mentioned by Phil B, and I think I have read quite a lot of the material that became Joyce Lee Malcolm’s “Guns and Violence: The English Experience” in the form of separate articles written earlier. All recommended.