A Euro Nanny State has to protect people from sticking each other with long pointy things, since the gun ban worked out so well.
From Front Page Magazine.
……The UK outlawed the switchblade and gravity knife in 1959.
In 1988 possession of a pocket knife with a blade larger than 3 inches in public became illegal.
In 1996, it became illegal to sell a razor blade to anyone under the age of 16.
In 2007, you needed a license to be able to sell “non-domestic knives.”
Despite all that knifepoint robberies rose by 10 percent this year and there are some 60,000 stabbings each year. So the push is on to outlaw long kitchen knives. (Article from BBC News 26 May, 2005)
Once that’s done, surely utopia will be at hand.
“A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase – and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.
They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.
None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.
The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.
“We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect.”
Baseball bats, tire irons, hammers, canes, scissors, needles, (except rationing them for doctors) tweezers, and hair picks, are next.
Heard the mayor of Boston saying that there had been 18 deaths from influenza. He’s thinking about banning the flu…