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Notes -
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?
What really enrages me is that there's no "loicense" you can get to carry a knife in the UK. I understand they want to disarm the young and violent underclass, but why not have a "may issue" license? You go to your local police; they take a look at you and see you're not a yobster, you get to carry your Benchmade 940 or ZT 0450 or CRK Mnandi around the town.
...This is exactly how it works in practice, minus needing a license of any sort (Gasp! An American joke being both unfunny AND inaccurate?!)
Yoofs are the only people who will be stopped and searched for knives 99% of the time, and no policeman is going to care if someone in overalls and wearing tough gloves is carrying a knife around on their belt.
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It's certainly better than them being forced to uselessly stop and search Doris, 83, for the sake of equality or whatever, just so the stats look nice and even. Yes, the police know who tend to commit more crimes in a given area. Yes, they should focus their efforts on those people. What gives? This community would agree with targeted policing any other day of the week, but because it's a chance to bleat "Britain bad" it suddenly does a 180?
Would it, though? I think this community more broadly takes the stance of "yes, blacks do more crimes than whites and this should not be papered over; no, this doesn't mean we want blacks to be constantly under the thumb of police, and the problems blacks face have upstream solutions."
Does that mean you don't think allocating police resources towards where crimes actually happen is a good idea, then? In favour of having just as many beat police walking around Shady Acres Retirement Village as patrolling Lower Stab End, Scumville? You don't think that would be a waste of police time and effort?
For my money, increased police presence should be exactly the response to crime being concentrated in one area or among one population.
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