The realilty is that knife crime is a huge issue Chutes, 42% versus firearms crime which is, according the the official reports of the Scottish Parliament, 1% of reported violence against an individual.
Priorities, y'know ?
and we don't have 'armed' gangs roaming the streets, but we do have the occasional group of eejits tooled up with knives at times, usually in response to other groups of similar eejits
Those eejits though, they're young men, someone's sons, brothers, nephews, grandsons, friends, neighbours; and it concerns the whole of society when violence erupts.
The UK is still, despite all the media screaming and doomsaying from foreigners where gun ownership is prevalent (bias or what, there
) one of the most lightly policed nations.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefingsAndFactsheets/S3/SB_11-23.pdf
cheers,
Toddy
It's a difficult situation.
You can't ban knives like they did handguns for the simple fact that we use them daily for everything from opening boxes through to cutting and preparing our food.
So they ban carrying then in public.
Problem here is this affects everyone, including those that carry knives for practical reasons, even worse is the fact that the crims will only use cheap kitchen knives so when they are stolen it's no lose to them.
When a person carries a knife with legal intentions then often carry a more expensive knife.
Add to that the fact that if a crim is caught with a knife the punishment is hardly a deterrent compared to the consequences of taking some ones life, yet for a law abiding citizen going to court can be a traumatic ordeal, especially when they had absolutely no intentions of doing something wrong.
Education is the best solution, but this will take anything up to 10 years before anyone starts to see the statistics to this, as governments can't and won't think beyond their next term of office this is too long a time frame for them.
God forbid that a government party implement a sensible solution only for another party to claim the glory 10 years down the line.
So it's a tough one.
On one hand i'm happy that it's slightly more difficult for certain elements in society to carry knives, if it reduces the chance of my loved ones being stabbed by 1% then it's a good thing.
On the other hand as someone that usually has a knife with them it is crap that us law abiding people have to (yet again) be inconvenienced by knee jerk reaction to the actions of the scum of society.
It pisses me off more that these scum know the in's and out's of the law better than most solicitors and will usually find a way to either ditch the knife or by some technicality of the law get away with it.
Add to that the fact that i think it's highly unlikely the current laws keep my kids 1% safer and it's a pretty rubbish law all round really.
The law is THAT ambiguous it's difficult to know what to do, many law abiding citizens like myself end up feeling guilty about carry a lock knife even though we have absolutely no illegal intentions.
Honest law abiding folks that feel a knife is a tool for their work are having their expensive well looked after and well maintained knives confiscated.
If the courts had a modicum of common sense they'd kick these cases out, but as it is only a brave or stupid person would risk a criminal conviction against a £100 or less knife being confiscated.
Meanwhile crims who get a £1 steak knife confiscated don't care in the slightest.
It's a tough one.
