Time to Ban Knives?

Knives don't kill people, but people kill people with knives! Let's ban 'em all and then only the government will have weapons - fantastic! /rushes off to join The Mirror Peoples' March...then I realise I was only being sarcastic.

Times Online: Two youths murdered in new spate of London knife attacks

(Image: Authoritarian absurdity.)

A 16-year-old boy who stabbed another teenager to death in a row over a borrowed computer games console was jailed for life yesterday.

Shane Boyd, who had been the subject of an ASBO for violent behaviour from the age of 12, wanted revenge after discovering that Conor Black, also 16, had borrowed an Xbox computer games console and not returned it.

Boyd sought out Conor, a college student, outside a house party in August last year, before hitting him over the head with a can of beer and stabbing him in the back with a kitchen knife. As the teenager lay dying Boyd paraded around the street boasting: “I’m the best — I’m the man.”

That's right, idiot - you're the man, because you can kill. I'm just surprised nobody is calling for a ban on knives (that tends to be how it goes in Britain - blame the weapon).

...

“You do not know or show any respect for authority. Will young people like you never realise that the public and the courts will not tolerate those who carry knives with no thought of the consequences?”

Those who carry knives. There it is, the cliche of anti-weapon fascism (because in Britain, banning guns isn't enough). You can spend years in prison for carrying a knife, even if you could explain why you were doing so. How long before an art student does jail time for having an art knife?