Government consultation on banning large knives and machetes

[GreyCat]

So..... the latest bright idea is to make people record a video when they try to buy a knife online. (BBC new headline this morning) to show they are over 18.

I really don't know where these people get their ideas from. Maybe it's time to introduce daily mandatory drugs and alcohol testing across the govt estate...... because sure as eggs is eggs, the person who came up with this idea must be on something strong. Either that or has a level of stupidity which is breathtaking.

Say I want to buy a pruning saw on Amazon. Or a little spud peeler for the kitchen. Oh, it's a "knife" so I have to record a video. But I am using a desktop computer without a camera, and I don't use my phone for ordering..... what happens next?

[Meanwhile, the crims just go and nick themselves a big kitchen knife from the supermarket or pound shop, no-one tackles them as shoplifting has effectively been decriminalized, and understandably the shop staff won't risk being hurt].

Of course, the idea of re-tasking police onto the streets to tackle the violent gang culture or indeed to focus resource on the demographic who commits most knife crime is not allowed as it offends some sensibilities.

Lets just hope that once the headline is yesterdays news, someone who is sober and has a functioning brain-cell quietly shelves today's pronouncement....

GC

 

[Glow_worm]

Sounds like a typical ill thought out knee jerk- yet another layer of hassle and complication for the law-abiders while failing to have any impact on criminals.

As you point out @GreyCat, more effort to buy a knife legally. However, a notable feature of criminals is that they don't obey the law...

 

[Chris]

Not sure how this isn’t just solved by age verified delivery.

 

[HillBill]

Knee Jerk reaction to the info that the Southport killer bought a knife off Amazon at 17 years old

 

[Chris]

Amazon don't help things by being useless at verifying ages. I've had knives delivered by them without any checking (although I am a big bald man with a beard), or left on my doorstep even. The latter seems pretty inexcusable, and I think the responsible retailers like Heinnie will be unfairly impacted due to the likes of Amazon who think that laws are for other people.

 

[haptalaon]

What kills me is them wasting money & time on this instead of, say, funding after school clubs... rapid access to mental health support...early years support for parents who are struggling to know how to parent...higher minimum wage and shorter working days so all parents can stay involved with their children's lives... Etc etc etc

It's turning tragedy into an excuse to expand the surveillance state instead of actually doing something life changing for vulnerable young people.

 

[Pattree]

No. Daily Mail readers won’t vote for that!

 

[Glow_worm]

shorter working days so all parents can stay involved with their children's lives...

Another subject entirely really, but that flies in the face of what seems like the current policy- childcare=employment, get everybody working to fund childcare so they can go to work. Erm?

A boost to the economy, granted, but the knock on social effects will likely cost more in the long term.

 

[ged]

...
...
Lets just hope that ... someone who ... has a functioning brain-cell ...

I'm convinced that there isn't a functioning brain cell anywhere in most governments.

I was just reimbursed £43 for a Herbertz garden machete.

It was a superb tool. I surrendered it because it had seven holes in the blade.

If it had been O1 I might have tried welding them up but it was 420 stainless. There's no way it would have surrvived, and the holes made it illegal for me to use it for weeding (or anything else), or even to own it.

Bone-headed doesn't do it justice. There has to be some expression like "BBC science reporter" we could use to describe the level of incompetence necessary to place the niece of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh at the head of the UK Treasury's efforts to tackle corruption. In case this sounds too political I want to emphasize that it's not the policies I'm comlaining about, it's bone-headedness in all walks of life. But it does seem to me that there are a lot more examples of it to be seen in government - any government - than anywhere else. That's what led to the ridiculous requirement for me to surrender my completely harmless machete because of the danger to the public which it was deemed by the law to pose. The fact that I might have spent half a century training to kill people with my bare hands probably never even made a draught between their ears.

As it happens this month I've been trying to pay Companies House for filing three documents. I've been trying for three weeks. It's just a credit card transaction. How hard could it be, you'd think? We're currently up to eleven emails and five support calls. Nobody there seems to know why their computer won't let me pay. Multiply this by the four or five million active businesses registered at Companies House and the hit to UK productivity is just frightening.

If there's a takeaway here it's "competence". Until we see reasonable measures of it everywhere I think we should prize competence above almost everything else.

 

[Jared]

Just saw the BBC article saying about live video recording. What a joke.

Knee Jerk reaction to the info that the Southport killer bought a knife off Amazon at 17 years old

He bought it a week before his 18th birthday.
In Scotland, a 16 yo can purchase any bladed item if it's designed for a domestic use.

 

[Herman30]

I was just reimbursed £43 for a Herbertz garden machete.
It was a superb tool. I surrendered it because it had seven holes in the blade.

What´s the idea that make those holes make it illegal?

 

[C_Claycomb]

Just saw the BBC article saying about live video recording. What a joke.



He bought it a week before his 18th birthday.
In Scotland, a 16 yo can purchase any bladed item if it's designed for a domestic use.

I hadn’t realised he was that close to 18. That makes it even more obscene that the government is pointing at the attack then saying they are taking steps to pr3vent similar by making it even harder for under age buying.

The young man made a bio weapon in his kitchen! No law was going to stop him getting a knife. If he had been in the US he would have had a gun, so maybe there is some benefit in restrictions…but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had deployed his ricin!

 

[ged]

What´s the idea that make those holes make it illegal?

Apparently zombie knives and the like sometimes have holes in them. So if there are two or more holes in a blade that's more than eight inches long which has sharp bits then it's illegal. I'm sitting next to the wife's magnetic kitchen knife holder, and one of her cook's knives looks to me like it fits the description but she's not having any of it. Below I've quoted the full specification from the original document:

8<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which items will become prohibited?

The weapon sometimes known as a ‘zombie-style’ knife or ‘zombie-style’ machete, being a bladed article with—

(i) a plain cutting edge;
(ii) a sharp pointed end; and
(iii) a blade of over eight inches in length (the length of the blade being the straight-line distance from the top of the handle to the tip of the blade),

which also has one or more of the following features, the specified features are—

(a) a serrated cutting edge (other than a serrated cutting edge of up to two inches next to the handle);
(b) more than one hole in the blade;
(c) spikes;
(d) more than two sharp points in the blade other than —
(a) a sharp point where the angle between the edges which create the point is an angle of at least 90 degrees (where there is a curved edge, the angle will be measured by reference to the tangent of the curve);
(b) a sharp point on the cutting edge of the blade near the handle.