I would mildly point out that here we find knife crime anything but funny. One young lad a week is getting murdered around here, with a knife every time. Banning pointed knifes sounds like a good idea to us.
In fact it’s already happening. The steak knifes in my local pub have had rounded ends for sometime- I’ve certainly never heard anyone complaining about it.
And as for the acetaminophen (called paracetamol here) the restrictions on purchase do save lives. My partner was a senior psychiatric nurse; ask her…
Has no one put much thought into how much force it takes to puncture the human flesh with any object? I guarantee that I could “stab” you with a fork for sure and quite possible a spoon, any small dull rod, rebar, garden utensils of many kinds.
The reason the pointy knife thing is silly goes well beyond “rages of passion” that stop you from immediately stabbing someone since that argument could be used for ANY item.
It’s dumb because its a nanny regulation and harms everyone , regardless of criminal thought process.
Much akin to guns.
Guns are a tool, so are knives. So are garden hoes, a shears, and forks …
Sorry, but it is funny. That sounds like a lot of lads dying, but really, it isn’t. More children drown in your country each year than are killed by knives, and we won’t even get into the numbers of your fellow citizens who die because of alcohol or tobacco. Hell, more people die in your country each year because of coal fired power plants than are killed by knives.
Yet, you guys aren’t addressing those vastly greater threats, instead focusing on pointy knives to, theoretically, save a few lives because, unless you are going to actually go house to house to find and confiscate all of the millions and millions of sharp pointy knives (and other sharp pointy things) it’s really not going to do much except from a PR perspective. I know you THINK it is, but it’s not.
ETA: I do have to ask…why didn’t you guys just bring back the funding levels you used to have for police? That seems to me to be a more viable solution.
But it’s your monkey and your circus, and I wish you guys all the luck in this ridiculous task you’ve set yourself. I hope it works out for you guys.
I find the fact that you aren’t doing your upmost to ban water callous and discouraging. You seem to be focused on a lesser threat. Next up…how many people in your country die because of alcohol? Is it more or less than 282? Let’s go out on a limb here and say it’s more, just for the sake of argument. What are you doing about that? How about tobacco? Is it more or less than 282? Again, for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s a teeny weeny bit more. What are you doing about that threat? How about due to air pollution?
I know, you don’t get it. The vast public threat of less than 300 deaths a year has you fixated on this and you don’t see the other things. You think it’s ‘callous’ to point out that this is a minuscule amount of deaths on par with probably home accidents, and that there are greater threats to your public’s safety that you ignore or, hell, probably participate in yourself because you, like many people, suck at risk analysis. You focus on what you focus on because your media focuses you on it…they are almost certainly constantly telling you about the vast threat to public safety that stems from the massive death toll of less than 300 a year. I get it. It’s the same push back I hear from our citizens about gun control and the massive gun deaths…which, frankly, is a whole hell of a lot more, even when factoring in your much lower population.
The fact that banning new sales of pointy knives will have, at best, an effect that is barely statistically demonstrable is irrelevant. Even if it did…hell, if, by some chance, banning pointy knives saved all 282 lives a year…it would still be ridiculous. Especially since it seems a better solution would be just to go back to your previous funding levels and staffing for your police force, which would actually have an effect you could measure.
It is ironic…especially since it demonstrates the axiom that folks are just horrible at risk assessment. And the fact that you think you are and your link demonstrates this.
I’m curious. Do you think that this ban in the UK is a good idea? Think it’s sensible? Let’s leave aside the ongoing gun control in the US debate and just focus here. Is banning all new pointy knife sales in the UK to save some percentage of a bit less than 300 lives a year a sensible act? Think it will have a positive effect?
I don’t know enough about the specific proposal in the UK to offer an opinion on whether the idea has merit. What I do know is that no one who lives in a place with the level of easy gun availability and consequent gun violence that afflicts the US and who generally supports that status quo is entitled to point and laugh at the successful regulatory systems of other countries, systems that demonstrably actually work and save lives. In the case of the US, appropriate regulation of weapons could save literally tens of thousands of lives every single year.
I might also note, speaking of pointy objects, that the US had no problem banning pointy metal lawn darts. The difference, of course, is that lawn darts are just objects that happen to be potentially dangerous, and don’t have the vast pseudo-religious idolation and ideology behind them that guns do.
I will point out that the US also doesn’t have issues with pointy knives, despite the fact that something like 6000 Americans die each year from knife attacks. Which adds to the irony of the lawn dart frenzy in the past. Though you think it’s about a sensible precaution verse religious frenzy about guns, it’s REALLY about the lack of understanding of risk.
It’s, sadly, true that people are just horrible at risk assessment, often focusing on things that are flashy and in the news but which, frankly, are lower probability events wrt death or injury than shit they do every day. It’s the same old story…guy is worried about dying in a plane crash while driving to work chatting away on his cell phone and eating a cheese burger, large fries and a trough sized coke and smoking a cigarette.
That people die isn’t funny. The reaction to it is. Especially since the reaction seems so over the top considering the threat, and that the seemingly sane reaction, namely just bring your police force levels back up to where they were a few years ago isn’t the one being chosen.
A quick Google search shows that several 10’s of thousands of UK citizens die from air pollution a year. Maybe it’s not YOUR coal plants, but that coupled with vehicle pollution is killing a lot more than 282 people a year. But that’s good that you have gotten rid of your coal plants…I wish we could do the same, frankly.
ETA: And from a risk/reward perspective, in the US we are talking hundreds of thousands of deaths, and we COULD get rid of the coal plants without any impact, save funding, to our electrical grid. If we just would do it. We COULD have done it years ago, in fact…part of the reason we still have so many of the nasty things is that the alternative, nuclear, was blocked by a public who, again, were seriously bad at weighing relative risk.
It seems to have gone further than just talk, but if this is rightfully shot down wrt banning pointy knives as a solution then that’s great. Or even if it’s not and you guys go through with it, that’s great too. Like I said, it’s your country, you guys should certainly do what you think you should. Obviously it’s struck a cord with other posters in this thread who have other axes to grind. For my part, it’s just confirmation that folks are really bad at risk analysis and often are worried or concerned about stuff that they see on TV and magnify the threat many times greater than it actually is. If your death rate from knife attacks were an order of magnitude more it still would be a drop in the bucket next to stuff that kills a lot more of your citizens each year…and stuff that you probably don’t even realize you do. Last time I was in London they were still allowing smoking in pubs. Granted, that was a few years ago, but I can guarantee the deaths from second hand smoke alone are more than the lads dying from knife attacks annually. Same goes for alcohol consumption, or, hell, fast food. It’s all about being able to weigh relative risk. And being able to craft sane public policy in line with that risk. Banning the sale of all pointy knives is extreme, and the relative risk is small…as is the reward wrt lives saved. But that’s up to your public to decide for yourselves…if you, collectively think that the gains outweigh the cost, well, more power too you. Your monkey, your circus.
It’s probably true that the general public is often bad at risk assessment, like the woman I saw today in a nice new safe Volvo, all properly belted up and with her child in the back in what I’m sure was the best car seat money could buy, furiously puffing on a cigarette and blowing so much smoke out the window that it practically made me puke just sitting at a stoplight behind them. Unfortunately the risk factors around owning a gun and the proliferation of them in society is precisely one such glaring example in US culture where the risk is not recognized, and becomes subservient to a dominant cultural narrative about self-defense and individualism.
The public may not understand the dangers of guns, but comparative international statistics don’t lie, nor do the objective assessments of academic scholars and epidemiologists about the off-the-charts gun carnage in the US. Just compare with the UK. Canada isn’t nearly as good, and you know why? Because proximity to the US, and a relatively undefended 3000-mile border allows guns to pour in for criminals in Canada direct from the gun center of the universe. Canadians worry about the proximity to such a problematic epicenter of gun violence. You should worry a lot more about the fact that you, collectively, are the problem that the rest of us worry about being close to.
Well, what is the actual risk to Canadian’s from US gun violence? Can you quantify the risk? That’s certainly a valid point…much more valid than trying to trot out some sort of international standard for risk. Risk is relative, and it’s location based. If someone says that country X has more of one type of violence than another, while that is perhaps academically interesting, it doesn’t really say much, especially if, relatively to other risks in country X that type of violence is statistically well below the threshold of other things in that country. In the US, death due to gun violence is barely in the top 20 things likely to kill you…and it’s closer to 20 than 1. As I’ve said many times, societies choose what to allow or not allow wrt risk. In the US, we choose to allow guns, so we accept the risk that entails. Just as we choose to allow tobacco and alcohol consumption, choosing to take those voluntary risks. In other countries, other calculations are made wrt risk. In many countries where gun violence basically doesn’t exist because their citizens choose to ban or heavily restrict them, many OTHER things that they accept actually are higher risk than in the US. Alcohol, for instance, kills more people per capita in many countries at rates higher than the US. Same with tobacco.
So, what are we talking about, risk wise, wrt Canadian’s dying due to US gun violence? Certainly, in this case, if it’s a fairly high figure, especially considering the much lower population of Canada, you have a point…our actions cause you risk. You should probably consider the cost to benefit of closing the border with the US, perhaps in building a wall or something to keep our violence out. You might want to consider that, in the US, thousands of people are murdered a year using knives, and consider the ramifications of that. Perhaps it’s not guns that make Americans violent, but Americans who do so.
That wall might seem better and better, on reflection from your perspective. Because, unfortunately your Canadian’s view on this is really only meaningful to someone who already aligns with your thinking. To most American’s, it’s essentially meaningless. It’s not your monkey, and not your circus. Your choice is that cost to benefit assessment…is the relationship with the US worth the cost in lives. You might want to consider other decisions your country collectively makes that WILL cause deaths, and assess if that cost is actually higher than what you willingly pay in lives for other things your society does.
Getting back to the actual OP, it IS their circus and it IS their monkey, so I’m good with them doing whatever they feel is right. Personally, I think it’s silly, but like you, I don’t live in the country in question and have zero say in what they decide to do.
(ETA: Oh, and it’s been pointed out to me…pubs in the UK no longer allow smoking, so that’s good. I haven’t been back in years, so I didn’t realize it had changed, but I had a friend who lives in London email me calling me, in the nicest way, a bonehead for saying that. My apologies)
Including your actual point about risk. But the poster in question THINKS it does. Plus, as this is a thread about knives in the UK, of COURSE that means it’s about guns in the US. One naturally follows the other.
