Sam_Stone:
I wonder if some of this is being pursued as a distraction to take attention off the real scandal: The rise of rape across Europe .
According to that data, while assault and murder rates are up slightly (3-10% in the last two or three years, which is bad enough), the rate of rape has gone off the charts. Compared to the 2008 baseline off 100, rapes have gone up from 115 to 147 in just two years, and that’s where the data ends. It is likely even higher now. That should be terrifying. Why is no one talking about this? My guess is that there is no obvious easy political ox to gore, and that it’s a dangerous subject because it touches the third rail of immigration. But that shouldn’t matter. In the #MeToo era, how does the world yawn while women across Europe are becoming fearful of traveling alone? It seems to me that a 30% rise in rape in two years should be a crisis, and plans to solve it should be headlining the news instead of whatever stupid tweet of the day came out of Donald Trump’s tiny fingers, or especially with that whole scary zombie knife crisis that must be addressed very publicly and often.
I think that’s a fair suspicion to have. Knife bans are very simple to get excited about and adding a new category of dangerous weapon on the ‘banned’ list is as simple as editing a document - tackling rape at root cause is difficult, and politicians and the media are fickle.