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Britain Knives thread
— Tibullus (c. 55 BC – 19 BC)
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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:
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?
Link to original discussion.
I think it's safe to read @incognitomaorach as talking about gangs of young, potentially Muslim men visibly carrying knives while committing crimes. In which case, yes, it's a real serious attitude that they shouldn't be allowed such. This isn't really different from a reflexive suburban fear of gangs in America: why can't the government just take away the guns? The bad people are using them!
"The Romans thought it was based" is not, on its own, a strong argument. We're not Romans in culture or economy. The UK is much more urban than Canada, and for an urban service worker or a housewife the personal cost of restricting knives is next to nil. Whenever a high profile stabbing or spot of unrest comes up, then, why not push the bar?
Really, the analogy to American gun politics is apt. Anti-X sentiment is driven by rare events with strong emotional valence. I'm sure that, should Canada experience a rash of urban
X crimes, regulators would work backwards to talk about toxic X culture and banning toy X. They'd generalize from their own lack of necessity to ask why anyone needs an X with an 8-inch [barrel/blade] and tactical grip. Meanwhile the main users out in small towns and the like would whine about historical precedent and personal liberties because the object level, practical uses are apparently an acceptable casualty.
As long as the costs of restricting X are paid by a separate group, it's going to be on the table.
It seems that the "XXX control" movements share a near pathological need to ignore the criminals and focus on the implement they happen to be using at that time. I don't know how to fix this, but mocking knife control is at least as productive as taking it seriously.
You don’t even need to ignore the criminals to get this behavior. Look at airport security—it targets the perpetrators pretty hard with no-fly lists, criminal penalties and so on. But the far more visible policy is the one that messes with everyone’s stuff.
Knife control isn’t inherently any stupider than lots of laws. Revoking a license for drunk driving is really inconveniencing the (former) driver, and it can’t stop him from getting in a car...just make it really unappealing and costly. The U.K. is pretty light on guns, and it’s not impossible they could impose similar barriers for knives. If so, for what it’s worth, it probably would reduce the number of football-hooligan-hate-crime-knifings. Whether that is a number worth the cost...well, I’ll leave that to the Brits to decide.
Yes, and the TSA is generally retarded and ineffectual. Just like anti-knife policies.
No, it is, because in practice it targets people ignorant of the law or outside the scope of the problem actually being addressed.
This argument would make sense if we never punished drunk drivers who hit people, but always punished drunk drivers who don't hit people, which is how most "XXX control" laws work.
Reducing the number of football hooligan stabbings from zero to super zero doesn't seem like all that good of a goal for me. At best its trading 100 false arrests for one pre-emptive hooligan stabber. The opposite of a rational and fair justice system.
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