Knives Away, Pinkies Out! We're British, You Know!
7 July 2008Jail knife carriers, says Cameronfrom the BBC
Anyone caught carrying a knife without a good excuse should expect to be sent to prison, David Cameron says.
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Mr Cameron says knife crime is now a problem ofepidemic proportionsin the UK.
Knife crime is such a problem in the UK because violent crime is a problem. In fact, per capita, there are more incidents of most sorts of violent crime in the UK than in the US, though this fact is generally hidden by the British using different data reporting protocols. Violent crime is at greater levels in the UK in spite of their having gun control, because guns aren't the cause. Nor are knives. The prohibition of guns has largely resulted in a substitution of knives. A prohibition of knives will largely result in some other substitution. And innocent people who aren't protected by the police will be ever more at the mercy of criminals.
Tags: crime, weapons, weapons control
Good point. Though I'd still much rather have an epidimic of knife crime than gun crime, we do have quite a problem here in the UK with violence. Fortunately we do have gun control as it has helped to keep us from having as many fatality crimes as other countries, such as the USA, but in the end violence is a people problem and not just a weapon problem. If you get rid of one weapon there will always be another.
Ah, but when British rates of violent crime were truly lower than ours, gun control was often given most of the credit. To many people, in fact, that credit seemed obvious. What makes you think now, with that first hypothesis exploded, that gun control is responsible for the lower rate of fatal crime?
There is little question that a person who desires to injure another has a greater range over which he or she can strike when using a firearm, but the frequency and sorts of incidents in which people seek to strike are changed by the legal availability of firearms.