Dangerous Dan Thoughts and musings on the world

The manner in which Britain continues to emasculate its citizenry is truly astonishing. It’s not enough they ban almost all guns, that law-abiding innocents are prosecuted for defending themselves, and that the best advice they can give in the event of home-invasion is to adopt a metaphorical fetal position. Now a group of limey doctors wants to take away pointy kitchen knives. Oh, not all them mind you, just the longer ones. Why? Because ne’er-do-wells are using them to stab people and commit crimes. Now be on the lookout for liberal elitism; the condescension is impressive:

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.

The researchers said a short pointed knife may cause a substantial superficial wound if used in an assault – but is unlikely to penetrate to inner organs.

In contrast, a pointed long blade pierces the body like “cutting into a ripe melon”.

I suppose if one wants to cut into a large ripe melon as one would a body, however, they’ll be out of luck as paring knives will only cause superficial wounds to the fruit. Thus, the first step is taken in the eventual melon dominance over humanity. We can’t let them win!

Seriously, though, this is absurd. A kitchen knife is just a kitchen utensil and I occasionally do find the longer pointy ones useful. I don’t need an iron chef telling me I should be using a grapefruit knife instead of the carving variety. Much like other types of potential, but unintended weaponry, the answer is not banning them. The people now carrying the kitchen shivs as weapons are already acting illegally. Telling them the knives are now slightly more illegal than previously won’t make much of a difference.

And who would you think they want to help? The children!

The use of knives is particularly worrying amongst adolescents, say the researchers, reporting that 24% of 16-year-olds have been shown to carry weapons, primarily knives.

Of course, they don’t say how many of those weapons are knives and how many of the knives are culinary shanks.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

“The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime.

“We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect.”

No, it wouldn’t. Banning the sale of these knives would, at best, result in a decrease of violent crime involving long pointy kitchen knives, but not in violent crime in general. If long pointy kitchen knives are less available than before, the same criminals will merely use different weapons or fashion their own. Remember that carrying the knives is already illegal. The only thing this would wind up accomplishing is denying the law-abiding public access to certain knives while the criminals’ criminal capacity remains the same. It’s a good way to inconvenience everybody but the felons.

For the record, I personally carry around two knives. One is a Swiss Army Swiss Champ. It’s the multi-purpose tool that has everything that can possibly be useful, and often is. It has two blades on it. I’ve had it for about 11 years now. The other one is a Benchmade Griptilian (model 551 plain). It’s for general cutting utility and is much more effective and more accessible than the Swiss Champ blades. I’ve had it for about a year and a half. Thus far, I’ve yet to stick a long pointy kitchen knife down my pants and for personal safety’s sake, I don’t plan to do so.

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