(Disregarding the bait-title…):Ms Atkins, who became a minister last November, has special responsibility for combatting knife offences as well as gangs and counter-extremism.
She said parents should “look in your kitchen drawer and count your knives and make sure you know where the knives are”.
Her remarks follow a violent start to 2018 in which nearly 50 people have been killed in knife attacks in London alone.
Ms Atkins was clear her advice applies not just to those living in big cities, but in small towns and villages as well.
[…]
The UK crime rate, and in particular knife crime incidents, have increased significantly in recent years.
In the year to September 2017 knife crime [in] England and Wales shot-up by 21 percent to 37,443 offences.
London’s murder rate temporarily overtook New York’s for the first time in March…
That shows a 30% rise in reports of rape not a 30% rise in the incidence rape. It’s an important distinction. Rape is a crime that notoriously suffers from low reporting rates. Anonymous surveys tend to be better measures of incidence. Succesful law enforcement programs to improve handling of rape survivors can even produce rising reports of rape. That statistics you cite might actually be good news. There’s just not enough to know for sure based on comparing reports.
A stabbing, or even a threat made with a knife, is more likely to be reported. Differences in reporting rates are easier to assume away without it introducing a lot of error. Ultimately that’s what we’re doing when we compare crime statistics. We assume similar reporting rates in that comparison. With sex crimes that’s a pretty weak assumption.
If it were solely a matter of preventing specific person A from injuring specific person B with specific item C, then of course those “extreme” examples could already apply, in the use of the law against carrying offensive weapons, where a jury would be invited to rule on the whole circumstances,
Neither of us knows the specific circumstances leading to this particular ban, but it may also be necessary and effective in disrupting the culture of taunts and threats that escalates into violent injury. Don’t forget that laws in this country don’t always happen just because the legislature gets the bit between its teeth in response to headlines: a lot emerges from those who actually deal with problems on the ground.
In your experience, when people’s symbols are banned and they are forced to destroy their property, do they tend to calm down or get more irate?
This seems to be a big disconnect between us, and I’ll bet it’s a common one. You think you can combat a serious sociological problem by banning the tools the disaffected people are using at any given point.
This is the mad logic behind banning assault rifles, too. People understand they aren’t any deadlier than any other sporting arm, or at least many of the people who were for the assault weapons ban understood it. Their logic was that the AR-15 and similar weapons are romanticised and symbolic of this kind of violence in the U.S., so by banning it you can at least take away the symbol.
The problem is that even if that could be done effectively, a new symbol would just appear. Maybe it would then be the Tommy Gun, kicked off by the sudden revival in the popularity of Warren Zevon. Hey, this is my story.
Anyway, to solve any of these problems requires really hard decisions with no great answers and plenty of hot buttons, so no one wants to address the root causes. So the problem will continue to get worse until whatever caused this radical shift several years ago is fixed.
I agree that this is true. And given some of the reporting of police refusal to listen to rape victims, ‘grooming gangs’ preying on British girls for years under the noses of the police, and the threat of violence against those who speak up, I’m betting a good percentage of the victims of the current surge are keeping quiet about it.
Therefore, even though the actual statistics are already horrific, it’s probably worse that we know.
The observed data is that rape reports are increasing. We know that rapes are underreported both now and in the past. We don’t know whether the degree of underreporting was greater now or in the past. The increase in reports could be due to an increase in rapes, which would be bad, or due to a more complete level of reporting, which would be good. You seem to be saying “Well, the reports are increasing, and that means that rapes are increasing, and that’s bad, and we know it’s underreported, and that means that the increase in rapes is even larger, and that’s even worse”. There is no justification for that conclusion.
I said that it could be a contribution to the solution, depending on what the people on the ground who actually do have to deal with the day-to-day consequences feel would help them. I don’t say that that conclusively must be the reason for this ban, and you’re certainly in no position to state so conclusively that it cannot be.
But I do, incidentally, note that there is a remarkable absence of incidences of crime involving AR15s or tommy guns or AK47s in this country, which might just possibly have something to do with the impossibility of obtaining them legally, even if violent criminals are still being violent - just less lethally so.
Actually, there is a remarkable absence of incidences of crime involving AR15s or tommy guns or AK47s in* this* country, also. Sure, the mass shootings and such get a lot of publicity, but in actuality only 3% of violent crimes here are committed with any sort of rifle, and of course AR15s etc are only one type among thousands.
Handguns are the weapon of choice for criminals. Not tommy guns.
In my opinion, once people start treating a knife as a symbol, it’s way too late to do anything useful - and I think that’s at least part of the driving ethic for the UK knife law - to try to discourage any increase of these things becoming symbols in the first place.
Oh Lordy, I’d forgotten about those! Imagine a modern school with a hundred and fifty idiot teens walking around flipping razor-sharp knives around because they “need to practice” ?!? I can recall a home-room teacher commandeering one to cut a birthday cake. LMAO!
I agree with this. It may not deter the teen who’s been saving up for six months to buy one already. But it will keep the little kids on the street from seeing him go by with it and thinking that’s the definition of “cool.”
US, Florida: I honestly don’t know the law here. The charge is a misdemeanor for a “concealed hatchet” in a car.
…During the traffic stop, a Clearwater Police Department officer found a “concealed hatchet/axe shoved between the driver’s seat and the door, hidden from sight.” When asked about the weapon, Byerly referred to unnamed Florida scum bags.
Seen above, Byerly was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and driving with a suspended license, both misdemeanors. He was freed from jail after a relative posted $400 bond…
If you do carry a axe or other tool, NEVER admit that you consider it a weapon. If he had had- “Oh that’s a break out tool in case I get trapped in the car” i doubt if he’d be arrested.
Yeah, a weapon is something intended for violent use. I could use a sharpened pencil for violent use, in which case it would be a weapon, but normally, neither the maker nor the user intend it that way, so it’s usually not a weapon.
Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives…