Ross Clark
but lethal.
Many deaths seem to have come about as a result of spurof-the-moment attacks. Anything we can do to make it more difficult for children to obtain and go about with knives is surely going to have some kind of effect on the death toll.
A properly-enforced ban on selling knives to children underlines the message that, no, it is not normal to carry knives even if your intention is solely selfdefence.
Controlling the sale of knives shouldn’t just be about children either. There are times when adults have to carry knives in public, such as going camping or bringing them home after buying them in a shop. Yet surely it is not too much to ask retailers to sell knives in packaging from which it would be difficult to extract them in a hurry.
In spite of their fondness for over-packaging other items, retailers seem quite happy to sell knives with blades on open display. We can’t ban kitchen far less likely to be knives but what about enforcement of laws against combat knives? For the past two years it has been illegal in Britain to sell so-called “zombie knives”: defined as “a knife with a cutting edge, a serrated edge and images or words suggesting it is used for violence”.
Yet in a few seconds on the internet I was directed to numerous British websites selling military knives, machetes and other items clearly designed as weapons for which there is no peaceful, civilian purpose.
“Constructed from only the highest quality materials all our knives are specifically developed for reliable use in the most extreme conditions,” read the sales blurb on one site. Extreme what? The same site was offering mail order purchase (supposedly with age verification) of a range of spring-assisted knives bearing the logo Zero-Tolerance.
On that and on other sites I found knives with serrated edges galore, with little attempt to disguise their purpose – one was described as an “extreme ops knife”. In other words the supposed ban on combat knives doesn’t mean a thing. You can still sell knives designed for fighting just so long as you don’t use the word “zombie”.
It is all very well talking up personal liberty but this year’s spate of knife violence demands a serious review of all legislation relating to the sale and carrying of knives.
UNTIL 2014 knife crime was falling. That led to complacency on the part of the government and police – demonstrated by the decision of the then home secretary Theresa May to change the rules on stop and search – supposedly out of concern that young black men were being unfairly targeted, although a Home Office study found no such bias.
As the number of stop and searches fell sharply so the decline in the prevalence of knife violence was reversed. The young black men to whom Theresa May thought she was doing a favour by curtailing stop and search have proved to be the biggest victims of the surge in knife crime.
There is no one thing which is going to bring knife violence under control. But making it more difficult to buy and carry knives is an important element. Our strict gun laws have long saved us from the carnage in the US. It is time we had equally well-enforced laws on knives.
‘Time to enforce ban on combat knives’