First, London and then the rest of the UK have been on a years-long experiment to end knife violence. And we’ve been making fun of them as criminals deprived of other means have taken to using knives on people their government has disarmed.
Related: 2018 – What Gun Control Looks Like A few Years Down the Road
That’s gone as you’d expect, as is the government’s response.
Home Secretary Braverman argued that law enforcement “must go further” in preventing stabbings and deaths in UK, noting that police have taken 90,000 knives and offensive weapons off of the streets from 2019.
“These knives, which have no legitimate purpose they used simply to terrify and harm victims, are often sold and advertised on social media sites like TikTok and Snapchat.” Policing Minister Chris Philp echoed. “This simply cannot go on.”
No lessons were learned, though. I admit I am surprised they are not banning Snapchat.
This is the same nation that said banning personal firearms would stop the cycle of violence, but instead, they got more by other means. The solution to that is to continue to blame the tools. And we get that. It’s difficult to look at yourself as an utter failure, especially when it comes to one of the few things the government is expected to do. Protect everyone’s rights and liberties. And here they are – the people, I mean – still killing each other with edged weapons and absent anything approaching chivalry had to guess. Rouges and bandits, the lot of them.
In America, the leftish response to almost anything is to take things away. In the case of guns, it is because we have systemically racist and violent police to protect us. An inequitable arrangement whose solution is fewer police officers. Criminals are, not surprisingly, fans of this cultural shift in their favor.
In the UK, they’ve decided to expand the definition of knives you are no longer allowed to possess. A downward spiral of ridiculousness that I have, for years, insisted would result in mission creep and the banning of kitchen cutlery and, who knows, perhaps even sporks, none of which will make a bit of a difference in crime.
Were the UK to ban all edged metal tools (good luck cutting your government-approved meat substitute into small, manageable bites so you do not choke), emboldened criminals would use shivs, bats, clubs, sticks, or just fists, all still very popular among the thugs and near-do-well. Tendencies that explain why gun control fails to reduce violence and murder everywhere it is tried. When deprived of every legal means of self-defense, those disinclined to care about law and order – whose numbers always increase as lawful defense rights wane – commit more (and more violent) crimes.
That thoroughly beaten dead horse, Chicago, is the Left’s model for common-sense gun laws—a city where someone still gets shown every 3:47 seconds and is murdered every 15:57 seconds. That’s a lot of crime, but it is what the stop violence Left calls progress.
Meanwhile, back across the pond, in disarmed, increasingly knifeless England, five of the most dangerous cities in Europe (top 20 – or is that bottom twenty) for crime are in the UK, including London. France has six if that makes you feel better. Italy has three, and Greece has two. But it is obvious that what they are doing isn’t working, and whittling away at “knives” for which the government claims you’ve no legitimate use is only making matters worse.