SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic.
Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives.
[...] He said laws designed to reduce the availability of weapons to young would-be offenders had had “almost no effect”, since the vast majority had merely taken knives from a cutlery drawer.
[...] He asked: “But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Knives are too Sharp and Filing Down their Points is Solution to Soaring Violent Crime, Judge Says
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 251 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @04:17AM (41 children)
...bullshit false-equivalence "hurr hurr lookit duh stoopid gun grabbers hurr hurr whatcha gunna doo, outlaw knives duhhrrrrr" like this?
Just a thought. Both are deadly at close range, but it takes a hell of a lot less skill to kill someone further away than arm's length with a knife than a gun. And knives, sharp edges in general, have many more uses. Guns are tools as well, but they have very specific uses and niches depending on what kind they are, and most of those are "kill things."
Here's an idea: how about we have the same level of registration, tracking, etc, for firearms as for cars? Those also kill a hell of a lot of people.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:24AM (4 children)
"Here's an idea: how about we have the same level of registration, tracking, etc, for firearms as for cars?"
..
Registering guns won't prevent crime any more than registering cars prevents crimes which involve cars.
..
Has anyone ever told you you're a stupid cunt ?
--
I am telling you now : YOU ARE A STUPID CUNT.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @02:00PM
Going right for the insult. No wonder you need so many guns. You must have a tiny dick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:10PM (2 children)
Actually it does. There are still unregistered guns around. Get caught with one and find yourself in jail. Get caught with a registered gun and they will do you for theft and firearm offenses. It really does cut down on gun crime here. When an idiot gets caught they are seriously walloped by the law. Does not prevent gun crime. Does make potential criminals think about it before doing it. Which makes it effective.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @07:03PM
Yeah, it seems to work wonderfully in Chicago, Detroit, DC, New Orleans, and... Oh, wait...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @08:14PM
WRONG! [parliament.uk] This is on an island where it is illegal to own a handgun.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:46AM
...bullshit false-equivalence "hurr hurr lookit duh stoopid knife grabbers hurr hurr whatcha gunna doo, outlaw spoons duhhrrrrr" like this?
Just a thought. Both are deadly at close range, but it takes a hell of a lot less skill to kill someone further away than arm's length with a spoon than a knife. And spoons, dull edges in general, have many more uses. Knives are tools as well, but they have very specific uses and niches depending on what kind they are, and most of those are "kill things."
Here's an idea: how about we have the same level of registration, tracking, etc, for knives as for cars? Those also kill a hell of a lot of people.
Thanks for being so meta :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @04:57AM (2 children)
Private ownership of cars is unsafe and polluting and should be banned. There is really no reason to allow it, people should be using public transportation, or perhaps the future self driving cabs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @05:55AM (1 child)
Smelly worthless treehuggers should be banned. They are penniless drags on soceity instead of being productive citizens. There is really no reason to allow it, people should be working jobs and providing for their families which will give them less time to worry about others' life preferences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @11:19AM
Jobs and families are polluting and unsafe and should be taken over by the state. Then the most efficient use of time for each citizen can be determined.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @05:55AM (2 children)
Canada already does. We'll give any idiot with a pulse a driver's license. With a ridiculously small amount of effort on the receivers part, we'll even give them a class 1 license [wikipedia.org], which allows them to drive semi-truck tractor-trailer vehicles and "kill a hell of a lot of people" with the Right of Weight on their side, to boot.
But a license to buy a gun (A PAL, "Possession and Acquisition License")? You have to fill out pages of forms, provide character references and all sorts of other background information (it's worse than getting a passport, for what that's worth), and then submit it all to the RCMP. Who will then take months and months to process it, actually contact all your references, and then maybe, perhaps, grant you the license to possess a long rifle. A bolt-action, magazine-capacity-limited-by-law long rifle. Not a handgun, mind you. Those are "Restricted", and need a separate PAL which means a multitude more hoops to jump through, along with an absurd number of silly laws to comply with.
Even the unrestricted PAL's come with a bunch of laws regarding storage and transport of the gun and it's ammunition. An intruder can break in to your home, threaten you with a weapon, be captured doing so on 1080p camera footage by your home security, lunge at you with said weapon and IF you shoot him.. you go to jail. Because the simple fact you were able to get to the gun, then get to the ammunition, then get it loaded in time to use it, means you broke half a dozen laws. If the bastard lives? He sues you. We're getting pretty good at following the american model up here. The lawyers always win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @06:12AM
Not around here friend. If you are in the house and threaten the occupant, you have no rights. A couple years ago, there was a man that perforated and young melanin rich female that broke into his home looking to score some quick drug cash. She was unarmed but picked up a plate from a nearby table and threw it at him when he surprised her. Po po cleared him with self defense.
Just a couple weeks ago, a clerk iced an armed robber at a pizza restaurant. Saved the taxpayers a bundle on trial and incarceration. No charges filed.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @03:08PM
Unless the victim is First Nations [wikipedia.org], then the police will botch the investigation and fail at basic evidence collection procedure.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday June 01 2018, @06:08AM (3 children)
By that logic we would need to register handguns and knives but not rifles or shotguns. If we want to do rifles and shotguns we also need to register fists and bats.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday June 01 2018, @06:17AM (2 children)
These can also be used to wreak mayhem on the human body.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 01 2018, @05:28PM (1 child)
It's having to register rocks that worries me. Those things are everywhere, I'll never get all the paperwork done.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday June 02 2018, @12:00AM
However it will create a lot of jobs, at least until it's automated.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Friday June 01 2018, @11:52AM (6 children)
Or Muslims, even?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:10PM (5 children)
Jesus motocrossing Christ. Your entire worldview rests on category errors like this one. People are not objects, objects are not people, and the start of evil is willful blurring or reversal of that distinction. Fuck. Off. With that shit.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @11:38PM (1 child)
That's one of my core beliefs as well. It's why I can't stand collectivism or identity politics. They reduce all the complexity of a human being down to a buzzword and assign homogenous traits to every member. You know, just like old-school racists did.
P.S. I doubt he was seriously advocating that, though he probably would if you wound him up a bit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:31PM
Highlighting the confusion of intent, where some people commit evil acts so rather than judging them, just judge the harmless inanimate objects found at their crime scenes. Sorta like the old bumper sticker "My guns have killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy".
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:18PM (2 children)
While I agree with you and Buzz, I don't think that's the best response to this sort of comment.
We judge Neo-Nazis by their group affiliation, right?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @07:08PM (1 child)
Actually, I don't. Their group affiliation, though, tells us a lot about them as individuals. In other words, it's not "he's a Neo-Nazi" but "what kind of asshole would he have to be to join that group!"
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @07:20PM
Isn't that really just another way of saying I find this particular group-based judgement to be a reasonable one?
In war, you judge your enemy by his affiliation. You can rephrase that as It tells me a lot about how they will behave as individuals, but the result is the same.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Friday June 01 2018, @02:10PM (6 children)
If you don't like people owning guns, why don't you move to the dozens of countries that do not allow people to have guns? You know, the countries where you are not free, you might appreciate that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @05:45PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Mexico [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:09PM (4 children)
Hey, dipfuck, I've got no problem with people owning guns. What I've got a problem with is the fact that there's not a hell of a lot of accountability over said guns and said people. Switzerland does it right.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by nekomata on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:06PM (3 children)
How so?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @07:10PM (2 children)
Most of the men are required to have firearms and know how to use them...and the ammo and rifles are stored separately. This way 1) everyone is well-trained and knows how to respect the guns, and 2) they can't just pick one down off the mantelpiece and blow someone away in the heat of the moment.
See? Familiarity, respect, and built in baka-yoke mechanism.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by nekomata on Monday June 04 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)
Well, you are not technically wrong. But practically you are. It's very easy to own guns in Switzerland. The reservists don't even store ammo any more (except a small subset of them). And yes, if you do service (which a lot of ppl don't nowadays) you get trained with an assault rifle of top quality.
But all this doesn't matter, since you can just buy ammo and guns with farly little hindrance. You don't even have to have citizenship, a "Niederlassungsbewilligung" ('permit-to-settle') is sufficent. So basically, the following scenario is not only possible but actually happens: Foreigner with Niederlassungsbewilligung owns 100 guns (anything from pistols to ARs to sniper rifles) and 100k shells/rounds. At home. No safe required (except if you want to own full auto guns and/or explosives). You only need to have a clean criminal record. No central registry exists!
The biggest difference to the USA is that we can't carry (except for special reasons, bodyguard, acute danger etc. Very hard to get this permit!) and we need to get a permit ('Waffenerwerbsschein' - WES) to buy guns (those are shall-issue unless your criminal record has something in it).
So it would be entirely possible to shoot up schools, concerts etc. in Switzerland, from a purely practical perspective. But it never seems to happen. Which leads me to believe that guns have nothing to do with the problems the USA face. I think the reason for Switzerland being as safe as it is is culture and money. I am living a safe life here, there is just nothing to gain by going against the law. We have universal healthcare, so I don't need to be afraid about sickness and can go see a therapist if I choose to. Even if everything fails and I can't work anymore, I won't have to go hungry or live on the street. I generally trust random strangers to not do anything evil here. Also there would be little reason to carry a gun because there is little to defend against.
Given all this I am always amazed that there seems to be this idea that guns are the root of the problem in the USA, when it is quite clearly other factors at work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Monday June 04 2018, @07:01PM
100% correct. The underlying problems are real, ignored, and swept under the rug with a cry of "guns kill people." There is something about US that makes people angry, and makes insane people become totally unhinged. I've lived here for 25 years, and I don't know exactly what the reason is, I have identify just some hypothetical reasons, but nothing concrete.
One idea I do have is that I think some people just can't handle too much freedom. That is the freedom others have, which leads to others succeeding, and makes you angry and jealous. Because freedom to succeed means your failures are entirely your own, and not something to do with a vast system which leaves you helpless. Lot of people simply cannot accept that level of self-critical responsibility, and will go to great lengths to externalize their problems.
Another problem is total lack of real mental health facilities, for various reasons. Unless you are eating your own poop nonstop, you will not be committed to an extended stay. So we have tons of borderline people out and about.
Only solution for either one would be to identify and willfully rob these people of their freedoms, which might work but I am unsure is the right thing to do, as it would lead to possible abuses against people who are not a danger to others. In the good old days of Communist Utopia behind the Iron Curtain, people who opposed the regime were routinely diagnosed with mental problems and taken to a mental health facility. The town (20000 residents) which I grew up in had no hospital (there was one in neighboring town 10km away), but it had one of these mental health facilities, which is quite telling. Of course there was no mass shootings, and only murder that I could recall happened some 25 years before I was born. I guess some people wouldn't mind that level of security, but I am not one of them.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @05:25PM (6 children)
I like my idea better. Everyone is required to maintain a deadly weapon for self defense. No one is ever arrested, or charged, for possession of a weapon. I mean, no one.
My generation carried pocket knives to school when we were in elementary school. Third grade is generally the point at which little boys were trusted with knives. There were no school shootings in the newspapers back then. I guess the school shooters were afraid of us little third grade boys with knives.
Seriously, if it were known that every adult in the country packed a lethal weapon, how many assaults do you think would take place? Hell, the insults would drop to nothing - you never know when calling someone a name might result in being double tapped.
Arm everyone. An armed society is a polite society.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @06:28PM (5 children)
Ah ha!
The real reason revealed. "...you never know when calling someone a name might result in being double tapped."
Hmm, what kind of a person would use the threat of murder to stop a meany poopoo head from calling them names?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:07PM (4 children)
Someone with an extremely small penis. I mean, large ego. Maybe both? :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @11:39PM
I have got to start turning my webcam off...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:13AM (2 children)
So, you are saying that Big Dick Daddy has never served time for a violent crime? All violent criminals have tiny penises? You seem to have a recurring theme with the tiny penis thing. More daddy issues?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:09AM (1 child)
No, it just triggers a bunch of morons like you and I'm in the mood for some cheap lulz.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02 2018, @08:44PM
Though you often claim to be a crack snacker, the fixation you have on the phallic seems to indicate your true desire. Do you secretly wish to be cured of your mental aberration? Perhaps you have a face that only a mother could love and even then only on payday. Is your life choice a choice of practical necessity?
(Score: 0, Troll) by DeVilla on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:07AM (3 children)
There's an understatement if ever there was one. What we need is sane car regulations. Who needs a car with over 10 gallons of gas? (And gas cans that hold more than 1 gallon) Gas stations are plentiful. We don't need any more astronauts trying to drive cross country to kill someone.
And why is it even legal to have a car that can go over 35 miles an hour? The the fastest you can go in reasonable traffic anyways. In the country they could go faster, but they don't need to. Any reasonable person traveling long distance is going to fly or take a bus or train. (Unless they are trying to get away with something.)
Then there's the whole issue of sports cars. Let's just admit they aren't necessary, only cater to the egos of car nuts and only ask for trouble. There's no excuse for automakers to be selling cars with a bunch of stuff like spoilers, turbos, blowers, slick tires, decals, flaming paint jobs, racing stripes, and a whole host of other things. I'm just not comfortable seeing someone driving one of those. I guess we can't stop people from adding them after market, but there's no reason for them to come out of the factory with all those sorts of things. It's a 2 ton piece of dangerous machinery, not a toy!
And don't get me started with autonomous cars. We don't need people sending driverless cars on the road to risk killing people with no accountability. We already have most cars out there with mufflers making it so you can't hear one sneaking up behind you. Why do we let people hide that they are racing around?
Of course none of this would be necessary if we'd just admit that there's no reason for individuals to own cars in the first place. A well maintained public transit system is all we really need. But no. We have all these gear head lunatics who "gotta have me mah wheels" because "the road" makes them feel "free". So we have to suffer the nut jobs racing around in there screaming metal genital augmentations.
You were saying something about false-equivalence with knives, right? But false-equivalence with cars should be good, right?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:12AM (2 children)
For the love of fuck, you waste so much time and energy and database space thinking this is destroying my point when it actually proves it...
Listen and listen closely: knives and cars have a tremendously larger scope of uses than specific types of firearms do. Transit is vital to the everyday functioning of the country. Sharp edges are *everywhere.* They have myriad purposes and nearly all of them are life-enhancing. Firearms have only a few purposes, and the ratio of good to bad ones is much smaller. It therefore behooves us to keep at least as close an eye on them as we do for cars.
This is not difficult. And you're not as witty as you think you are.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by DeVilla on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:41PM (1 child)
Ouch. I'm hurt
But you going off on people with their equivalence on banning gun & knives misses a point. When someone (like the UK) brings up banning guns because people use them to do bad things, someone else mentions they do bad things with other things and asks hypothetically "Are you going to ban knives next?" The person defending get blown off because "we all know nobody would be stupid enough to ban knives!"
Well, we get to see that's not true. With guns banned and the murder rate in London that rivals New York, powerful folks are now working hard to ban knives. Some folks deserve an "I told ya so" today.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @07:07PM
So the problem is stupidity then :/ No shit, Sherlock. The day we cure stupid is probably the day a nuclear world war starts...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...