London has proven that you don’t need guns to kill people. There are so many stabbings in London so far this year (2018) that their murder rate is above New York City’s. Apparently Londoner’s think they are better than New Yorkers, so they are really freaking out.
In response to these murders, London’s mayor is setting up a special police task force that can stop and frisk, and is setting up programs to stop knife attacks at schools.
Not only will London’s city hall take action on knife violence, but evidently the UK Parliament is also taking up the matter. The proposal is to stop the online sale of knives, and to stop knives being delivered through the mail, amongst restrictions on the type of knife you can carry.
(At first I thought about the poor Swiss, and their army knife, but it seems that those were out-lawed long ago in the UK.)
All of this leads one to ask, where will it stop? Will you have to get a background check to get a kitchen knife? What of foreigners who carry a utility knife, but then get arrested for carrying a knife? Will butter and steak knives be stripped from all restaurants, only a fully licensed waiter will be able to cut your food?
Well-meaning people think that if you get rid of a weapon, the amount of murders will drop. Unfortunately, this is not the case. People find another way to kill. The urge to kill is still there, and as a species we can find and make many tools that will get the job done.
The need to legislate every type of tool that can kill is beyond stupid. A paring knife can kill. A rope can kill. Petrol (as the Brits say, gas to us Americans) can kill. When guns were taken away from the British people, I bet they didn’t think that knives would be the next thing to go.
Many people think the US should look to other countries laws to see what we should do in this country, including members of the Supreme Court. And if that is the case, should we not look at how asinine weapon bans are? It’s true that the UK has low gun violence, but people figured out other ways to kill.
The question we really need to ask is:
As a society, do we want to stop a certain type of violence, like violence done with a gun or knife, or do we want to prepare people to protect themselves, while understanding that bad things will always happen? Regrettably, there is no way to stop all violence.
And meanwhile, passing a law to make yourself feel better, doesn’t alleviate the actual problem. The problem being murder, and if a law could end murder, would we have to worry about the weapon used?