Could you not ask for it back when you left?
Museums are often sensitive about people having sharp implements on them where they could potentially do damage.
No. They said it’s a law country-wide. I’m not allowed to have it in all of England. Don’t know if it’s true but that’s what they said. They would not give it back when I left.
Buggers. Bolox.
From participation on these boards, I get the impression that British people are pretty paranoid about knives. I remember a thread we had on it here, and many of our friends from across the ocean were dismayed at the idea that anyone would carry a knife of any kind save for a tradesman on-the-job.
The French are just as bad. They stopped me from scraping off the mouth of the Mona Lisa in The Louvre a while back. I told them I just wanted to paint a proper smile on the ol’ gal, but they wouldn’t hear of it. No class! 
I hate it when they give me dirty looks for putting ketchup on my foie gras.
I’ve often wondered why our lawmakers don’t raise the tax on semi-auto guns, ammunition and certain knives to the point that they become prohibitive for youth and unstable people that can’t keep a job.
The tax could be used pay into a victims compensation fund.
I know there’s probably a black market for this stuff, but but do most people “know a guy” that can hook you up on short notice?
IANAL, but I don’t think raising the tax would constitute a “Shall Not Be Infringed” lawsuit.
All this stuff is currently taxed.
The “gun show” loophole would be hard to close with taxation. Umpteen strangers milling around a meeting hall buying and selling to one another. Private parties generally don’t collect taxes on sales. If the government wanted to somehow install enough revenue agents at the doors or go after the promoters they could.
But of course once we remember that government paralysis due to one party’s position is the cause of the underlying problem, it becomes obvious that this particular band-aid is no more achievable than any other band-aid, much less a real solution.
But it’s hard to act spontaneously when you have to wait for the gun show.
-Little wins…
Around here gun shows are nearly weekly occurrences. Very few crimes (or suicides) are committed with guns obtained the same day. Whether from legit, semi-legit, or totally underground sources.
Agreed.
Possibly because the new owner will want some familiarity time with the new item before the big day?
I’m not surprised though that Florida has more gun shows than some other states. Like Washington.
Just to expand on my thought, a luxury tax, coupled with a mandatory waiting period might make a dent in the problem.
Leaving aside the subject of firearms, I just finished reading an essay titled “All The Way Down The Slippery Slope”. In addition to detailing the incremental banning of firearms in the U.K. it further goes on to detail the decay of knife ownership, and the right of self-defense, and civil liberties in general in the U.K. The essay points out something I’ve been trying to explain for years: that you can’t evaluate a legal measure by itself, you have to take into account how it shifts the goalposts and over literally generations lays the groundwork for things that would have once been considered absurd.
ETA: it’s often asked why we don’t accept Britain as an example of a perfectly democratic first-world nation that gets along perfectly fine without weapons. Upon reading the essay I’m no longer sure Britain fully qualifies as a free society. To be sure it’s not despotic, or savagely repressive, or totalitarian; but one gets the impression of an almost Chinese level of submission to the government, of a society and government that could enact anything in the name of “order”. Or as the essay itself puts it, a “Weberian” view of government.
Pardon the knife pun, but poke poke.
It’s easy to get the wrong impression of a nation when you’re not actually there; It’s probably about equally reasonable for me to say that I get the impression that Americans hate safety, based on few stories I’ve heard about people campaigning against seatbelts or whatnot.
There are, I think, different attitudes in general, either side of the Atlantic; if I were to try to caricature them both, it would be:
UK: “But what if I hurt myself on the safety features? Can you make those safer?”
USA: “Don’t you dare try to make me safe! I have rights! If I feel unsafe, I’ll shoot something.”
Probably the most important thing that’s often ignored is that the UK is pretty densely populated compared to a lot of the USA - we have about 20.5% of the population of the USA, in about 2.5% of the land area; there aren’t very many areas of true wilderness; for most of the UK mainland, you can’t ever be more than 5 or 6 miles away from a road. The opportunities for antisocial interactions are just far more numerous as a result of this.
In the USA, Kinder Surprise Eggs are banned. I’m not sure the USA qualifies as a free society.
That’s literally, “Come read my logical fallacy.”
Sorry, it starts with questionable assertions and premises, and uses faulty logic to get to the conclusion it was motivated to get to.
I didn’t wade through all that tripe, but I can see how it would agree with the biases of pro-weapon enthusiasts enough for them to ignore its blatant misinformation and errors.
I promise you the vast majority of Americans are never more than 5 or 6 miles away from a road. Most of us live in urban environments rather than the vast wilderness areas of Alaska, New Mexico, or west Texas.
It’d be quite a surprise if they had little knives in them.
Sure, but American suburbs are nowhere near as dense as ours and there’s simply no culture of the general public going off on hunting trips or whatever - there’s nowhere for the public to do that.
But honestly, there’s no point trying too hard to compare the two cultures with respect to guns. Adding guns to the UK would not make it anything like the best cases in in the USA. Trying to take away guns from the USA would not make it like the best cases in the UK. We speak similar languages, but we’re not the same people.
The UK is not the USA minus guns any more than the USA is the UK plus guns.
I hear you there. I’m frequently told that Americans are nothing special only for Europeans to tell me how crazy they find us. It’s weird. But yeah, the UK is different from the US. While I think their aversion to knives is a bit overboard, I’m not going to be one of those people who suggests they’re not truly free or some garbage like that. Though I’m going to laugh at the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.