Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/15/company-sells-square-tip-knive.html
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Also, they are black so they look like murder knives?
Honestly living in the US with 40,000 gun deaths a year the UK fear of stabbings seems a little… quaint? I certainly wish we could be worried more about a few hundred knife deaths.
Regulation preventing sharp pointed knives would definitely be annoying, but on the other hand I actually wish more knives were blunt. I do sometimes need a sharp paring knife and a sharp slicer for melons and gourds, but I would prefer if the rest of my knives were blunt tipped and I only grabbed the pointy ones when needed. I’m not worried about stabbings, which are fantastically rare, but just accidental injury. I’m always worried about dropping a knife on my foot or similar, and a blunt vs. sharp tip could easily be the difference between a bandaid and some swearing vs a trip to the ER.
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That is so fucking asinine that words fail me.
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They have been making stab proof knifes for years in the UK.
I hope no one tells criminals about belt sanders or angle grinders. I mean, shit, a stabby thing is one of the most basic tools/weapons ever invented.
If you’re buying stab proof knives, chances are you aren’t the problem. But I love this continued focus on “If we just had safer tools, tools wouldn’t be used in crimes.”
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That is still a thin piece of metal. It will stab. Not through a few layers of clothing but it will still stab.
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It’s ok. They’ll just classify those as offensive weapons, too.
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I think the scenario contemplated is that stabbings are “heat of the moment” crimes (i.e., domestic murder) where the criminal is mad and just grabs whatever it at hand and uses it as a weapon. In that case a blunt tip knife would be substantially less effective, and the fact that they can turn it into a good stabbing weapon in 10 minutes with a grinding wheel is not that important.
I’m not saying the law is necessarily good or effective, but this is a strawman argument.
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This is my thinking too.
I’ve read books from the days of sail which mention bosuns searching sailors coming aboard and breaking the tips off any knives but I thought they’d all have marlin spikes anyway!
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Not particularly difficult to fabricate one’s own pointy sharp implement, even if every single knife in the UK were to be magically replaced it doesn’t necessarily solve anything nor does it address the root of the issues that might be causing the violence.
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like this:
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If you live in a relationship where the thought has ever crossed your mind, “I better get the stab proof knives in case so and so flies off the handle and stabs me.” then I highly suggest and implore that person to get out of that relationship. One exception is parents of a troubled teen, in which case they probably have to keep lots of things inaccessible.
I believe the more likely scenario is people buying knives to go out and use them in illicit activities. Box cutters and kitchen knives have other mundane uses and are way more common.
And no, it isn’t a strawman argument in that my point is 1) if you plan to use a knife for crime, you get the stabby ones. 2) If you could only find the non stabby ones, you can make them stabby with a minor amount of work. People are making sharp, stabby shivs in prison everyday with no or limited access to tools.
it is a feel good product that will do nothing to reduce crime or violence. The knife I linked too is over 10 years old.
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I don’t think that’s the kind of crime people are concerned about in the UK right now. People in the UK are talking a lot about gang violence and terrorist violence using knives. It’s what’s in the headlines. Gang members and terrorists can figure out a way to get stabby things and the whole thing, and family members who go wild can attack you with a glass, bottle or “hitting implement”.
(source)
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I’d be curious to learn how many (if any) of those stabbings were committed by people wielding kitchen knives versus some other kind of knife.
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Much more relevant, to people with a shred of sense (so not politicians, by and large) is what percentage of kitchen knife use involves stabbing. Almost everyone I know has kitchen knives, and uses them regularly, but I’m pretty sure none of them has ever stabbed someone with one. (I had a psycho roommate who threw one at me once, but I don’t think that really qualifies. Even if you do count that as an attempted stabbing, the percentage of kitchen knife use that involves stabbing is so incredibly low that only a complete fucking idiot who also had strong authoritarian tendencies would consider them a reasonable target for regulation.)
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I know at least one person who stabbed someone in the heart with a kitchen knife, so it’s not an arcane hypothetical, but the UK hyperventilation about knives is basically 100% about pushing racist hysteria and distracting from government destruction and looting of the commons.
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This was pretty much my thought.
Buy the un-stabby knives
vs
Get out of the relationship with the person with anger management issues.
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The act in question doesn’t appear to make any explicit mention of kitchen knives.
As best I can tell, what’s actually happened is that the law now bans the sale of any knives / “bladed articles” to people under the age of 18 (16 in Scotland, or so I understand), with no exception for kitchen knives or cutlery.
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What you don’t seem to realise is that kitchen knives are frequently used in street violence, the reason for which should be plainly obvious:
Every kitchen has them, so youngsters intent on messing up another gang member, or even just a rival for a girl, can just swipe one from a drawer.
Every supermarket and hardware store has them, they’re very easy to shoplift.
They’re very easy to conseal, and to dispose of.
FWIW, if I was going to go tooled-up with the intent of fucking someone up, I wouldn’t carry a knife, much too easy to cut yourself, or be caught carrying it, I’d carry a regular flat-bladed screwdriver - rubbing the sides of the blade on a kerbstone for a minute or two produces a weapon that’ll penetrate most items of clothing very easily - and very easily concealed.
One unprovoked killing carried out by a teenager in London involved the use of a screwdriver.
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And one in Newcastle too.
Read this.
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN04304
In the year ending March 2019, there were around 47,000 (selected) offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales.
Hardly “quaint”.
