When you do away with guns, you apparently get more knives. It stands to reason.
And you know what? You apparently get more guns, too (or at least, more use of them by the “bad guys”):
The increase in London homicides has been so profound that for the first time in recorded history the UK capitol’s murder rate has surpassed New York City’s…In January, the UK’s Office for National Statistics published the statistical bulletin, “Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2017.”…The report stated that there had been a 20 percent increase in offenses involving firearms from October 2016 through September 2017 over the same period a year earlier. This included a 36 percent increase in offenses involving shotguns and a 20 percent increase in offenses involving handguns. Handguns are prohibited in the UK outside of Northern Ireland.
Most of this has occurred in London. And knife attacks have also increased, with the following reaction from authorities and activists:
Having stripped the law-abiding of the most useful means of self-defense, activists and government officials now busy themselves with knife control. Anti-knife activists from the Save a Life – Surrender Your Knife campaign provide “knife banks” where owners can relinquish their blades anonymously. Having collected a reported 100,000 knives so far, which they used to create an anti-knife sculpture, knife control activists recently met with Home Office officials to coordinate a nationwide campaign to collect 1 million blades.The UK already prohibits most knife sales to those under 18, bans a wide array of knives and swords outright, and prohibits subjects from carrying any knife other than a 3-inch or shorter non-locking folding knife “without good reason.”
This is not from the Onion:
…a March 16 sweep [of refuse and shrubbery] by officers near London’s Regents Park uncovered a pair of plyers, two screwdrivers, scissors, and a file, which the department assured the public were “safely disposed [of] and taken off the streets.” With the help of local students, last October police in London’s Telegraph Hill were able to protect residents from a pair of scissors, something the department referred to as a “potential weapon.” A month earlier, a “weapon sweep” in Barnsbury prevented a gardening tool from “end[ing] up in the wrong hands.”
This is more than disarming the public; it’s detooling the public. And it’s doomed to failure. You could say “knives and screwdrivers don’t kill people; people do.” And if people are determined to kill and threaten and harm, they will find a way. People are quite ingenious, especially when angry.
And if people are not allowed to defend themselves, only the “bad guys” will have weapons—or will make weapons out of common objects found every day in your home. At least, they used to be found in your home.
Most articles about this development have focused on the London Mayor’s tweet:
But this is part of a much larger picture, which has been ongoing (as the link he provides in the above tweet shows). As Guy Benson writes at Townhall:
There is never a reason to carry a knife? What about to defend yourself against the criminals murdering people in London? Or is self-defense now officially becoming a criminal offense in Great Britain?
Well, yes.
[NOTE: You may be surprised to learn that in the US, where knife laws are passed on a state-by-state basis, there are some states that have fairly Draconian laws against carrying certain kinds of knives. I haven’t done a country-wide search on this, but my impression is that none come close to the extent of the ban in the UK, and I’ve never heard of drives to surrender knives or to find them in park shrubbery. Most of the US laws concentrate on switchblades and specialized weapons and ban any carrying of knives by minors on school property.
For example, here are the laws in New York, and here’s Ohio and Mississippi. As you might expect, Texas laws are far less restrictive.]
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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