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ZorbaTHut  3yr ago (text post)   37491 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Britain Knives thread

Who was it that first forged the deadly blade? of rugged steel his savage soul was made.

— Tibullus (c. 55 BC – 19 BC)

.

Below /u/incognitomaorach has a great thread about violence that eruptted in the UK between Muslim and Hindu cricket fans, ut in the middle he mentioned this:

Videos of some of the men having knives (all too common in the UK now) also circulated.

In North America there's a mocking parody of the UK that live in jokes and memes, that after banning guns they started banning knives leading to lots of joking "OI you got a loisence for dat ther potata peeler" or picking up a stone for skipping only for the bobbies to materialize and taze you because the angle of the stone was too sharp.

But every so often you see clips from UK media or here a story or see an interview of a worried middle aged woman, and start to wonder if it is a joke...

I'm a Canadian firearms enthusiast and something of an outdoorsman, and I'm tickled and a little horrified at the idea that a knife, a basic tool with archeological evidence dating back literally millions of years to pre-hominid times (Who first forged the deadly blade? They called him Oook), could be "all too common"

the knife is next to opposable thumbs in the things that make one human... i'm genuinely curious about this attitude... did he mean "men who'd openly draw blades are all too common now", to be fair such men have quite a storied history in the UK: they were called gentry. Or did he actually mean the physical knives themselves are too common?

In Canada folding knives, including the scary looking scythe style fighting knives, are sold at convenience stores and all kinds of mall ninja weapons (real sharpened steel) are for sale at most toy and game stores.... often in goofy coloured finishes so that tweens and early teens can blow their allowances on them and feel cool for a few minutes. Parents give kids knives for Christmas. I remember summer camp we were all just given folding knives (cheap ones we were expected to keep) because it was a camping camp and we were expected to make shelter and survive in the woods. Its normal in most small towns and even most cities for guys who are blue collar ect. to wear big knives visibly on their belts, and maybe 20-40% of men and women have a pocket knife or something comparable on them at basically all times.

In Britain is there a real serious attitude that people should just not have knives...or could be denied them? Like not memes, and shitposts, but for real?

British Mottizens is this a real attitude?

In Britain is there a real serious attitude that people should just not have knives...or could be denied them? Like not memes, and shitposts, but for real?

British Mottizens is this a real attitude?

No.

The idea is that there's no legitimate reason for a teen/20-something and their mates to all be carrying one around with them in a pack. Tradies are fine. Yoofs are not. It's extremely easy to know which is which.

This is ridiculous for me. Not UK resident, but I got my first small folding knife when I was maybe 6 and I was given knives to do stuff by adults even before then. It was part of the ritual to get your own knife from your dad for your birthday, it was source of great pride and acknowledgement of responsibility of kids. Having a knife was seen as one of the hallmarks of boyhood/girlhood. I do not remember any type of "knife crimes", quite to the contrary it was a step on the ladder for kids to mature. Learning how to handle knives was commonplace - one did not have to hide the ownership of knife, self-teaching oneself in secret - which would exactly be the source of injuries.

Knife is incredibly useful for all types of things: making stuff from wood, serving as scissors to cut rope when you construct anything, when you gather some type of fruit or shrooms and myriad of other things. I carry knives with me very often, I have multiple of them in various places such as a car or work, etc. And it is not only me but also my wife.

This emasculation of society in the name of evermarching safetyism is starting to piss me off big time.

Were you and your pals going around stabbing people? That, unhappily, is the difference today. Back in my own dinosaur youth, penknives etc. were normal, and a boy having one wasn't remarkable.

Today, the kinds of kids in towns (and this is not a racial angle, you have plenty of the same in majority/all white areas) who go around with knives are not going to a Boy Scout jamboree where they will be using the knife to show off their woodsmanship. They are heading out to harm somebody, be that rival gangs, other feral kids like themselves, or ordinary people just walking past them on the street.

Sure, even more effective "solution" would be to have forced curfew for everybody under 18 so they can only go out under adult supervision. I also strongly suspect that those "feral" gangster kids will be the ones who won't care about bans, ending up in juvenile detention centers for possessing forbidden item. Of course I am not surprised, the instinct is to immediately go for draconic control measures at least to look as if we are "doing something" seems to be the first idea nowadays, ignoring all unintended consequences.

See, if it were just ordinary kids going around with pocketknives, nobody would care. But it is precisely these kinds of kids who are going to end up in gangs and are going to end up in jail that are doing it, hence the concern (and not just kids, older guys too).

The UK has gun crime, but to a lesser extent. Knife crime is its version of gun crime. In the US, these kids would have some kind of cheap, crappy gun and wouldn't bother with knives. In the UK, while cheap, crappy guns for criminals are becoming much more available, they're still not as common. This is why the plod wear stab vests, not bullet-proof vests:

For many in the Police, stab proof vests will be the most basic protective equipment required. This is not because they are commonly used, but because they are the most common weapon available. Unlike elsewhere in the world, firearms are very rare in the UK and the majority of Officers are unlikely to face firearms. However, there are sadly a number of instances over the past several decades of Officers being killed with firearms, and even though crimes involving firearms make up only 0.2% of all recorded crime, the threat still remains, and some may wish to have protection against firearms. For some branches of the Police, a bullet proof vest is not only recommended but vital; Armed Response Units and other Firearms Officers are deployed into the most dangerous situations where firearms are often likely to be faced. For these Officers, a bullet proof vest is absolutely necessary.

Stab proof vests utilise the same materials as bullet proof vests- Kevlar or Dyneema- because of their extremely high strength-to-weight ratio. However, while Kevlar vests ‘traps’ bullets in its strong fibres, dispersing its energy and slowing it to a stop, they cannot stop knives and edged weapons in the same way. Weapons with an edge cut through these protective fibres, rendering the vest useless. Stab proof vests therefore incorporate either chainmail or laminate coating in addition to Kevlar to help stop a knife from penetrating. This is ideal for Officers who, if facing a weapon, will most likely encounter a knife or similar weapon. Knives were over three times as prolific as firearms in recorded crime, and a stab proof vest (often called a knife-resistant vest) is a vital piece of equipment for Officers.

You're thinking of the situation "well when I was a kid, I routinely carried a knife because this was a normal part of life" and maybe even today you still do. That's why this seems odd to you. You have to change to the mindset of "well when I was a kid, I was not routinely selling drugs, shoplifting, assaulting people, and getting involved in robberies which is why I carried a knife".

So you'd surrender basic human freedom in the name of stopping degenerates from hurting eachother?

this ius the difference in attitude. In north America the thought is "yep those kinds of people are going to do that" finding some legal emasculation of the whole of society so that even the most bad faith degenerates can't hurt themselves is completely outside the scope of discussion.

Hell the trend in north america is more towards legalizing vastly more, and normalizing the ownership of larger weapons. Weed, psychedelics... you fry your brain its on you.

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