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posted by martyb on Sunday January 19 2020, @07:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the pointed-comments dept.

Sheffield-based company Viners has produced the "Assure" range, square-ended knives which are "shaped to reduce and prevent injuries, accidents and fatalities." With knife crimes in England and Wales at their highest in a decade, a 3% increase on last year and the highest level since 2009, this new knife is intended to not be used in crimes and only in the kitchen. While anti-stabbing messages have been left on fastfood containers and a crackdown on knife crime has been tried, for which included limiting the sale of knives, so far nothing has blunted the knife based problem.

When have social problems been solved by technical solutions?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @08:16PM (30 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @08:16PM (#945451)

    Have carried a knife for over 25 years and somehow no one was every stabbed by it. The are looking at the wrong problem. When knives become useless, these individuals will switch to screwdrivers, clubs, hammers, pipes, and other things to accomplish the same task. Many things can be used as weapons and you can't outlaw them all.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:36PM (4 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:36PM (#945474) Homepage Journal

    Correct. One of the first things we invented as a species was the pointy stick.

    I've been carrying a pocket knife any time I had pants on since I was a six year old Cub Scout and never cut anyone but myself with it. Yes, in school. Yes, in church. Yes, even on airplanes. The last was even post-911. It never even occurred to me to not have a knife in my pocket, so I threw it in the change tray with everything else in my pockets and put it back after they utterly failed to notice it in there. Hell, I didn't even notice myself until I was putting it back in my pocket.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday January 20 2020, @03:59PM (1 child)

      by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday January 20 2020, @03:59PM (#945855) Journal

      You too? I wasn't a cub scout / boy scout, but I've had a knife for decades including in high school.

      My post 9/11 pocket knife story is amusing enough. My spouse and I had to enter a federal building with a metal detector. I walked through the metal detector without thinking about my pocket knife. It did not go off. I probably just walked through too slowly for it to detect the metal in my pocket. Meanwhile, she had to put her purse through the x-ray machine where they found her pocket knife. She looked at me and said, "Go put this in the car for me." The underlying message being to also put my knife in the car too. Looking to avoid hassle by security theater, I did. But it was amusing that I could have gone right in while she couldn't despite us both having pocket knives.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @04:25PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @04:25PM (#945870)

      Hah... My little brother got expelled from high school (mid-2000s) because he had a pocket knife (they searched him claiming he "smelled like weed").

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 20 2020, @04:54PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 20 2020, @04:54PM (#945885) Homepage Journal

        Most of the vehicles at the highschools I attended had a shotgun and a rifle in the gun rack right where everyone could see. It wasn't uncommon to see a guy come to school in full camo during deer season because he wanted to hunt right up until he had to go to school. That was both large city and itty bitty town. This institutional weapons paranoia today is nuttier than squirrel shit when viewed against what I experienced not even ten years before your example.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SpockLogic on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:41PM (11 children)

    by SpockLogic (2762) on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:41PM (#945478)

    No, the UK should legalize the ownership of AR-15's. Much more efficient as they could kill lots more in far less time and at far greater distances. That way knives would be seen as a non problem again. Works here in the good 'ole USA, doesn't it.

    --
    Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:54PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:54PM (#945488)

      Someone could just as easily hole themselves up in a Las Vegas hotel and throw knives at 500 concert goers. Could easily happen. There's fundamentally no difference between guns and knives. That's why the military only uses knives. Cheaper and just as effective as guns.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by zion-fueled on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)

        by zion-fueled (8646) on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:01PM (#945495)

        Someone can easily make a bomb or just drive through the crowd. And they have... none of that matters when there is agenda to push.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @04:47PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @04:47PM (#945882)

          So why don't we see school bombings or school drive-thrus on the news every day? They should be happening just as often as shootings according to your logic.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:08PM (#945974)

        let's not drag the FBI's Fake Terrorist Factory into discussions about crimes the public/invaders commit.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @05:13AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @05:13AM (#945671)

      Here [fbi.gov] are the stats on homicides in the US, broken down by weapon. You might be surprised to notice something. About 500% more people are killed by knives than by rifles. In fact about 200% more people are killed the old fashioned way - beating them to death with your fists and feet - than are by rifles.

      Most people don't realize that rifle crime in the US is relatively negligible. This is because our entire media have become hardcore agenda pushers. And this is also true for 'mass shootings.' Here [fbi.gov] is the table on victim count. It doesn't specify weapon but it's not necessary because there were more than 300% multiple victim scenarios than the entire total of the number of people killed by rifles. Quite clearly, rifles are not playing a major role there.

      The most popular weapon there is for killing people is cheap little pistols.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday January 20 2020, @08:37AM (5 children)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Monday January 20 2020, @08:37AM (#945722) Journal

        Are rifles not guns?

        Or they don't count because someone is somehow less dead, being shot with a rifle rather than a pistol or a shotgun?

        Those stats show over 71% of homicides were committed by some sort of firearm.

        The price of that "freedom" seems quite high.

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @11:25AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @11:25AM (#945743)

          The point is to emphasize how little people understand about crime. The person I was responding to said, "No, the UK should legalize the ownership of AR-15's. Much more efficient as they could kill lots more in far less time and at far greater distances. That way knives would be seen as a non problem again. Works here in the good 'ole USA, doesn't it."

          He probably believed that rifle homicides in the US were greater than knife crime. And he can be forgiven for making such a mistake. Anytime there is any rifle crime, the news media runs it nonstop 24/7 because the goal is to intentionally misinform people and to make them assume that rifle crime is at all a relevant chunk of homicides. In reality you could ban every single rifle and you literally would not notice a difference as the total of all rifle homicides is less than the statistical noise in other gun crime.

          ---

          The current absurd situation in the UK should emphasize that the problem we have in the US is not a gun problem, but a people problem. Here [fbi.gov] are the gun statistics on race. When you look only at non-hispanic whites (you need to subtract hispanic ethnicity from white race to get this figure - the FBI classifies hispanics as whites for race), you see a homicide rate of about 1.6 per 100k. That's higher than most of Europe, but not by much. It's below some countries such as Belgium and Canada.

          By contrast the homicide rate among black Americans is 15.6* per 100k. That is, bizarrely enough, directly comparable to the homicide rate [wikipedia.org] in a wide number of African nations. You can see this problem by observing the joke that the UK is becoming. They have extremely stringent gun laws, so people are simply turning to new ways to murder each other. So now they are working to ban knives. Yet that will hardly change anything since just about anything can be used to kill with, including of course your fists. The same thing would happen in the US. Ban guns and now you'll just see people killing each other with knives, or guns anyhow. Because the sort of people that engage in murder are the same sorts that can dig up weapons in the black market. Same thing the UK is also now seeing in spite of the fact that they are literally an island.

          You're not supposed to talk about this because it's supposed to be racist. It is not. Political correctness is cancer. If you want to solve the US homicide rate you need to start by figuring out why young black men are killing each other at such absurd rates. The social science response of things like systemic racism makes 0 sense since you also see similar things in places such as Africa where the people, the police, and their politicians are all very ethnically close. You also do not see things from other groups that are or were indeed discriminated against such as Jews, Irish, Catholics, etc.

          This is also why "racist" actions such as "stop and frisk" do work. It's completely fair to say that the police engage in racial profiling, but it works - because you're looking at vast crime rates between different groups. Ultimately this is a problem you're never going to solve until you throw political correctness (and tabula rasa) out the window.

          ---

          * = The black homicide rate is actually much higher than that. The reason is that "unknown" column. That is driven by homicides that were left unsolved (thus the race of the offender is not known). And these are disproportionately in the ultra-high homicide rate areas in the US: Detroit, Baltimore, etc. And in these cities nearly all offenders (and victims) are black. So it is fair to assume the the vast majority of "unknowns" are also black.

          • (Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Monday January 20 2020, @11:00PM

            by SpockLogic (2762) on Monday January 20 2020, @11:00PM (#946050)

            He probably believed that rifle homicides in the US were greater than knife crime.

            Wrong, I'm well aware of the gun violence problem we have in this country.

            FYI Your sarcasm detector must be broken, please fix it.

            Thank You

            --
            Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:33AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:33AM (#946216)

            Lolwut? Only dark skinned people have ever been violent and genocidal to their kin?? Ever read the bible??

            Lololol, racist shitpost parsding as sinole facts "they" don't want you to know! "Come join our secret club, you'll have brothers, belonging, solidarity!! Except women, they aren't allowed in our secret club, not because there is anything wrong with us."/s

            Someone needs to go back to school, learn some world history. Your ignorance is painfully awkward to read.

            You ignore facts and logic because they go against your BELIEF and the simple logic you think everyone is ignoring out of PC concern. You are an ignorant turd pretending you're being oppressed somehow because few people agree with you.

            Ah well, can't reason someone out of a position they didn't logically get into.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:13PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:13PM (#945976)

          10k murders by firearm per year in a country of 330 million people? big fucking deal!

          • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday January 20 2020, @10:20PM

            by MostCynical (2589) on Monday January 20 2020, @10:20PM (#946028) Journal

            In other parts of the world, this would not be considered to be an acceptable price, which is why different countires have different levels of restriction on certain activities.

            Parallels the issues with deaths caused by motor vehicles, in that countries* effectively "allow" a certain number of deaths each year as a byproduct of certain activities.

            *permission is granted by the citizens, whether they vote or not..

            --
            "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:36PM (#945507)

    are you muslim?

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by DrkShadow on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:41PM (10 children)

    by DrkShadow (1404) on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:41PM (#945511)

    You haven't noticed? In many places throughout the US it's illegal to repair your home.

    Even if it's not, apparently doing plumbing or electrical work yourself will void your insurance policy.

    The movement is explicitly toward preventing you from being able to do _anything_ -- and so if you can't do anything legitimate with these "tools", why would you need them? "This is an implement that can harm somewhere; let me see your license to possess this phillips screwdriver."

    You can't say that cars aren't going the same way.. and just look at how home ownership is becoming expensive to the point that only large corporations can buy property, forcing everyone to rent.

    It's maybe not a foregone conclusion, but it seems like a pretty good prediction of the future. The acquisition of fundamental knowledge is already practically illegal -- when's the last time you were able to buy elemental chemicals without a corporate or teaching license?

    • (Score: 2, Disagree) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @12:02AM (9 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 20 2020, @12:02AM (#945558) Journal

      You haven't noticed? In many places throughout the US it's illegal to repair your home.

      When a botched repair can result in your neighbours' home being damanged or destroyed (and maybe their life too), I don't think is such a bad idea to ask wiring/plumbing be performed by professionals.

      Besides, that bank that offered you the mortgage for 30 years? Paradoxically, it's more interested in the integrity of the building and its value than your rights.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Monday January 20 2020, @04:58AM (1 child)

        by DrkShadow (1404) on Monday January 20 2020, @04:58AM (#945664)

        By going outside, you could (perhaps inadvertently) cause a death! Let alone suggest you try to operate a vehicle.

        Therefore we should make it illegal to go outside. Obviously. Eliminate the edge cases, eliminate the problem!

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @05:18AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 20 2020, @05:18AM (#945673) Journal

          By going outside, you could (perhaps inadvertently) cause a death!

          See? This is why your parents trained you for some long years before letting you go on your own. You can still (perhaps inadvertently) cause a death, but the risk is deemed acceptable.

          Invest that much time in training as an electrician/plumber under supervision (it's called apprenticeship in most of the civilized world) and chances are nobody will object to you performing repairs to your own power circuits or pipes, even if you can still could (perhaps inadvertently) cause damages.
          Heck, you may even get a job doing those repairs for others too (that is usually called "certified trade/professional" in most of the civilized world).

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:05AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:05AM (#945726)

        I don't think is such a bad idea to ask wiring/plumbing be performed by professionals.

        Then I wouldn't be able to fix my house, because I wouldn't be able to afford to. Electricians, plumbers, etc. charge high rates, so there's serious savings to be had by doing the work yourself.

        I educated myself and replumbed, rewired, air sealed, and insulated my house for a fraction of the price that I would have had to pay had I hired an electrician and a plumber. As long as you educate yourself about code and safety standards, it should be fine.

        And yes, there are people who do ridiculous nonsense such as wire their house with undersized wire (you know, the same people who would probably ignore such laws anyway), but that doesn't mean everyone should be forbidden from fixing their homes.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @10:26AM (3 children)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 20 2020, @10:26AM (#945735) Journal

          I educated myself and replumbed, rewired, air sealed, and insulated my house for a fraction of the price that I would have had to pay had I hired an electrician and a plumber. As long as you educate yourself about code and safety standards, it should be fine.

          Cool. Very likely you avoided the critical mistakes and made many others smaller that you don't know about. Let's hope you won't run into conditions that make from those small mistakes a critical risk (which is to say the practical experience of a good trades aren't totally captured by codes and safety standards, those are just the minimum required - and known - to be safe)

          There is such a thing as "the law of diminishing returns" which guarantees over a certain level you'll be spending way more money to, in this case, lower infrequent risks. Besides, work quality, "defect free"-dom and risk minimization aren't guaranteed even the licensed tradesmen.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by helel on Monday January 20 2020, @01:09PM (2 children)

            by helel (2949) on Monday January 20 2020, @01:09PM (#945782)

            In my experience many tradesmen are just as likely as any amateur to make stupid mistakes. The phone line in my house has been a problem forever and the man from AT&T insisted it's as good as it can be, nothing more they can do. I read up, tore apart his work, and found numerous errors including the complete lack of a ground. After I fixed his mistakes and connected the ground in the connection box to the earth I've got an order of magnitude faster internet connection and far less risk that I'll die in a lightning strike.

            A skilled tradesman might be worth their weight in gold but many of the one's I've dealt with have been just a little less knowledgeable then wikihow.

            • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday January 20 2020, @03:38PM (1 child)

              by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday January 20 2020, @03:38PM (#945850)

              If one has budget worries, in UK at least, one can hire an electrician to check out a "home brew" job and sign it off for compliance purposes. It is a compromise option.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @02:42AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @02:42AM (#946129)

                It's the same in USA. In fact, you're supposed to get someone to inspect all your work after you finish each phase and you're supposed get your repair/improvement plans approved ahead of time before you even start. These guys are arguing with each other over nothing, both too ignorant to know what they're talking about.

                In reality, the city's inspection office is too understaffed so people DIY their repairs without approvals or inspections all the time. Normally it's fine. Most things aren't that difficult or dangerous and even if it is, it only matters when something goes wrong which might never happen. A lot of the random contractors you can hire don't have that much knowledge above what you can teach yourself. Most do have more experience than you, but knowledge and experience aren't the same thing. All the knowledge you need is out there online and at your local library. You gain your experience when you screw it up and have to re-do your own work.

                With insurance, sure if you screw up you'll end up being denied coverage, but that's the same when you hire someone else to do the work too. If you don't get the inspections done (something every contracting company says in their contract that it's up to you to do), then there's no difference from you doing the work or them doing the work. The 3rd party inspection is what matters for the insurance, not who completed the work.

                As with most things, it's all a time vs money trade off.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:15PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:15PM (#945977)

        yeah, b/c paying some parasitic piece of shit to give you a piece of paper makes you qualified. what a fucking suck ass slave.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @09:56PM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 20 2020, @09:56PM (#946012) Journal

          yeah, b/c paying some parasitic piece of shit to give you a piece of paper makes you qualified

          I do remember distinctively I said you need the experience to know what problems you need to address for the result of your work to be reasonable safe, nothing about a paper.

          BTW, that paper? Should be for others to trust you working on their stuff. Your problem is with your fucked-up education system, the rest of the civilized world works better in this regard.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:06PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:06PM (#945527) Homepage

    >Many things can be used as weapons and you can't outlaw them all.

    You think that will stop the UK? I've got one word for you: Brexit.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!