I reckon what they should do is bring out a fix blade licence and lock knife licence! along the lines of you pay so much each year to allow you to use a fix blade and carry one as long as you have a valid reson to and a safe storage place. Kinda like a shotgun licence! If your ever checked, all you have to do is present your licence card and have a reson for carrying it! Ie, work use! If you dont have a licence, you dont have a knife! simple... And all the money each year goes towards fighting knife and gun crime! obviously 3" and under non locking blades would remain legal..
Good idea???...
Nahhh. What would it achieve - aside from generate revenue for the licensing authority? Would it make the country safer? Nope. There are probably over a billion knives in general circulation in the UK. There are half a dozen lethal knives in every kitchen drawer. Would it stop bad people carrying them as weapons? Nope. They are bad people, they dont care about licences. Would it give bushcrafters carte blanche to carry a knife? Nope. You'd still have to explain your reasons at the time if found with a knife - because some bad person might pretend to be a bushcrafter to get a licence and ...even bushcrafters can be naughty. What it would do, is make everyone think that the law doesnt already allow reasonable use, when in fact it does. It would also make everyone think that the country is so dangerous, that ordinary people cant be trusted with something sharp without a licence, and that would just pander to the irrational fear and scaremongering created by our tabloids, of the kind that seems to have gripped the OP in this thread.
The solution to the problem, is to ignore it, or to laugh at it because it's a non issue. The danger comes when people start taking this nonsense seriously. What next? A permit to carry a sharp stick?
Take heart from the Norwegians, they refuse to let one nutter with a gun ruin their society and curtail their freedoms. Bad things happen. There are not always solutions and that something bad has happened, is not always a reason for change.
It's our system that is the problem. Particularly litigation and health and safety. The way H&S works, is that when something bad happens, you do a root cause analysis, come up with some spurious reason and impliment some equally spurious change of practice. That's what is taught in universities. It doesnt matter what solution you come up with, so long as you come up with something, then your actions are defensible in law. Doing nothing is much harder to justify and leaves you or your organisation (or your government) open to accusations of incompetence. The sad reality, which we are all learning, is that often doing nothing is the right thing to do and that just doing something to avoid liability, leaves us all in a far worse position.
I commend the Norwegians for doing nothing. Their society wasnt broken, it was the nutter with a gun that was broken.
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