Without Guns, It’s Knives

In April, London’s mayor had enough. Something had to be done.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a crackdown on knives Sunday in response to the rising levels of violence in London, which recently surpassed New York City’s homicide rate for the first time.

“No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife,” Khan tweeted. “Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.”

The idea of London’s murder rate exceeding New York’s seems rather shocking, though it may have more to do with New York’s declining rate than London’s increasing rate. Regardless, Mayor Khan’s “no excuses” struck a nerve. There are a great many very good, and very normal, reasons to carry a knife. His point was that these good reasons were no longer good enough, given the need to end the violence of murder by knife.

This isn’t an apples to apples comparison to gun control here, as knife murders don’t come in multiples of ten, but then our focus on their horror isn’t a reflection of rational fear since the chances of being killed in a mass gun murder spree is negligible. Yet, London’s experience shows that the weapon is the tool. Murder is what the person wielding the tool chooses to do with it.

Unlike guns, which are easily dismissed by people who don’t use them or like them, knives are a lot harder to shrug off. Even if it’s untrue that the only purpose of an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is to commit mass murder, gun control advocates can say so and others will agree. Yet they all use knives.

There have been more than 50 homicides in London so far in 2018, and much of the violence is tied to gangs.

Guns are strictly regulated in the United Kingdom and the rising homicide rate in London is directly attributable to a rise in knife-related crimes, with stabbings claiming at least 31 lives to date in 2018. By contrast, New York — which has a population roughly the same size as London — has seen a steady decline in violent crime.

There were 15 murders committed in London in February and another 22 in March, while New York saw 14 murders in February and 21 in March, according to murder rate statistics provided to USA TODAY by London’s Metropolitan Police and the New York Police Department.

Individual murders never have the same impact as a mass murder, but when that’s what’s happening, and it’s not “normal,” it becomes your tragedy to fix. While neither the constitutional issues nor law are the same as here, the problems presented by Mayor Khan’s resolve parallel ours.

In Britain, it is currently illegal to carry a knife longer than three inches in public “without good reason” and illegally carrying a knife can be punished with up to four years in prison and an “unlimited fine.”

Self-defense is not listed among the examples of “good reasons to carry a knife.” The courts determine if someone’s reason to carry a knife is valid. Condoned examples of knife-carrying include if it is necessary for a person’s work or if it is being brought to a gallery for exhibition.

But how such vagaries are interpreted changed. As Mayor Khan stated, by twit no less, there would no longer be “a reason” to carry a knife. “No excuses.” In short order, this was put to the test.

A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic.

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.

There are a broad array of knives available, some serving specific purposes, some being largely decorative, some meant for cutting meat, whether before or after cooking. But they are all knives.

He said laws designed to reduce the availability of weapons to young would-be offenders had had “almost no effect”, since the vast majority had merely taken knives from a cutlery drawer.

He said: “A few of the blades carried by youths are so called ‘Rambo knives’ or samurai swords. They though are a very small minority.

“The reason why these measures have little effect is that the vast majority of knives carried by youths are ordinary kitchen knives. Every kitchen contains lethal knives which are potential murder weapons.

If a “Rambo knife” is clearly beyond the pale, is a chef’s knife better? They are certainly just as lethal, so if the problem is knives, the solution is no knives. Or in a graduated response, knives filed down so as not to be quite so lethal.

He asked: “But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?

“Butchers and fishmongers do, but how often, if at all, does a domestic chef use the point of an eight-inch or ten-inch knife? Rarely, if at all.”

Whether “domestic chefs” need knives with pointed ends might be disputed by anyone who has ever cooked. Whether sharp ends are different for an 8-10-inch blade than a 6-inch is disputable, but when attempting to rationalize a solution to a problem, one says whatever one has to say, and one believes it with every ounce of their being.

But even if the pointy tips are filed off, the blade can still be used for slashing?

“Acknowledging that any blade could cause injury, the judge pointed out “slash wounds are rarely fatal.”

If sharp tips are filed off knives, want to bet there will be far more slash wounds until they are often fatal? If you can’t use a gun, you use a knife. If you can’t use a “Rambo knife,” you use a chef’s knife. If you can’t use a sharp tip, you use a sharp blade. Or a baseball bat. Or a stick. Or a  rock. Or a boot. Or a car. Or being thrown off a building.

There is a good argument to be made that it’s far harder to kill someone with a boot, but does that address the problem? People are resourceful, and if they want to do harm, they will find a tool with which to do it. Whatever harm finds its way onto our radar will be the terrible problem about which something must be done.

In London, the spotlight is on knives for the moment. Increasingly serious enforcement and punishment is being put into place as a result, which will remain in force long after the tool shifts from knives to something else. Are knives really their problem? Is grinding the tips off kitchen knives really the solution?

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42 thoughts on “Without Guns, It’s Knives”

  1. Gregory Smith

    I contacted the Mayor’s office about this as I have habitually carried a knife and a torch on my person for most of my life, and I told them I had no intention to stop. I was told not to worry, because the campaign wasn’t directed towards ”people like you.” I asked them to put that info in a follow up tweet, they refused.
    There’s a lot of reasons I carry a knife, most of them pretty banal (no dirt under my fingernails!), but i did once use it to help me free a crash victim from a car before pulling him to safety — without my knife handy to cut his seat belt who knows what might have happened – and if I didn’t already have a knife carrying habit, I would have started that day forward. Can’t imagine how anguishing it would have been to not be able to get that guy out of there quickly.

    1. SHG Post author

      Thankfully, the good people are always safe from excesses, so they need not be concerned because bad things only happen to bad people.

      1. that david from Oz

        Thanks for clearing that up for me. I had no idea that if something bad happened to a good person, they must not really have been good . . . /s

        and btw, I find it really sad that I need to note that this is sarcasm in this particular forum, where I have lurked for many years for the quality of writing, and (usually) the quality and amusingly insane comments; oh, and the occasional limerick 🙂

  2. REvers

    The limeys are losing their collective minds.

    What’s next? Blunt Bludgeons?. When blunt bludgeons are outlawed, only outlaws will have blunt bludgeons!

  4. Hunting Guy

    General Mattis.

    “Always carry a knife with you. Just in case there’s cheesecake or you need to stab someone in the throat.”

  5. Rxc

    I have some 3 inch long tweaker screwdrivers that could be used as effectively as an ice pick. Also, are they going to ban pointed nails and hammers, next?

        1. Patrick Maupin

          A: Just trying to figure out if we have a case. After all, if gun makers can be sued for liability, can Phillips be far behind?

  6. John Cornely

    We don’t all knives in prison and they seem to have little problem making shanks to stab each other. Not sure knife control will work.

  7. Frank

    Considering law enforcement in the UK have confiscated sporks as weapons, I discount anything authorities say over there.

  8. Noxx

    Being a collector of folding pocket knives, this has been very much on my radar. It is just baffling to me to see the constant, repeated failure of thought in these campaigns. “If we ban or neuter guns, people will stop this behavior”, then sub “knives” “screwdrivers” “pliers” “pick a tool” and pursue it again, and again.

    It’s almost as if the world is run by morons. Wait..

  9. Anthony Kehoe

    Also, “filing down the point” isn’t terribly effective. I’m sure a visit to B&Q, or Homebase, would source an effective method to file a new point onto a blunt knife. Surely a vise and grinding wheel are next on the list of banned items? Imagine the black market opportunities for such items, or pre-filed knives from the continent. After all, banning guns reduced the gun crime to zero, people don’t smuggle contraband anymore. Even the humble Leatherman is illegal there.

    1. B. McLeod

      Rebating the point of a kitchen knife just makes it a cleaver. It is hard to see how this is a solution in any respect.

  11. Sacho

    The mayor’s thinking small – guns, knives, these are just part of the problem. Why not just ban crime altogether?

  12. Ken Mackenzie

    It’s been tried before. The “act of the date 26 January 1613, whereby it was ordained that none of the Clangregor who were at Glenfruin the time foresaid … should at no time thereafter bear nor wear any kind of armour but a pointless knife to cut their meat under the said pain of death.”

  13. Blackbellamy

    2020: London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced today new measures to stop the spread of blunt force attacks. Henceforth all maces, morning stars, flails, and hammers would be outlawed. When questioned regarding whether the ban on hammers would only include warhammers, the Mayor said there was just no reason why anyone would carry any hammer at all. With the recent advances in adhesive technology there was no more need for force driven fasteners, he explained. Crown Court Judge Nitwit said “we should take all the ordinary household hammers and file their blunt heads into very sharp points. This will surely reduce the number of these kind of attacks”.

    1. Ken Mackenzie

      You think you’re joking, but carry a hammer in London and you risk arrest. I had three clients who were. One was convicted but it was quashed on appeal. The other two were young children, about 10, released without charge, but the police officers warned them (wrongly) that it was illegal to carry a hammer.

      Maces, morning stars, and flails are all outlawed already – offensive weapons per se.

      1. Dan T.

        Thor carried his hammer in London in some of the Marvel movies… nobody dared arrest him.

        If you have a hammer, everything in the world looks like a nail.

        If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning.

  14. Jake

    Banning the carry of knives in cities both foreign and domestic isn’t new, interesting, or outrageous. Slow news day in higher ed?

    1. SHG Post author

      Now I feel horrible for writing a post that I, and all these other readers, found worthwhile when you didn’t. I’m so ashamed.

Comments are closed.