| Sunday, May 29, 2005 |
23:53 - First they came for the knives
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm
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You know, it used to be that you could make a pretty good case against the arbitrary regulation of privately owned firearms by explaining that if the purpose of gun control is to prevent violent crime, criminals denied guns (legally acquired ones, anyway) could just commit their murders with knives instead. (Make knives illegal, and they'll hit you with cars or pour Drano on you instead. And so it goes.)
It was almost a joke, in fact; rattle off the logic, and even a defender of gun control would usually have to concede the point (as it were) and take up a different tactic. Who, after all, would make knives illegal? Guns may have limited applicability to everyday life, but people need knives. How else are you supposed to cut up your turkeys and roasts?
Well, it seems the British may have to come up with an answer to that absurd rhetorical question:
A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.
A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.
They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
The research is published in the British Medical Journal.
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.
And a short blade is just as useful for killing someone, if you're determined to do it. So's a hammer. So's bleach. What'll be next on the hit parade?
By all means, don't be finding ways to stop people wanting to kill each other; instead, just pointlessly reduce obvious methods for them to kill each other. Don't punish the bully on the playground, just cancel recess.
And by all means: consult chefs to determine whether people have a need to be allowed to own such things as kitchen knives. Come on, now: what else should the infant wards of the state that you call "citizens" be protected from being allowed to own?
Will everyday people in England actually put up with this ruling being made upon their lives, or will they take a stand? Can this finally be the place where people stop thinking of "freedom" only in the context of "allowing people to be gay and do drugs", and start thinking of it in terms of liberty from an oppressive police state dictating the terms by which citizens can live?
I'm told by a friend who grew up in Florida (and in the company of people who told these stories from first-hand experience) that in Castro's Cuba, every kitchen has a long carving knife—chained to the counter. It's regularly inspected by the secret police to make sure you haven't tampered with this deadly weapon in "your" house. If you work in the cane fields, you're issued your machete when you arrive to work, and must turn it back in at the end of the day. In this way murders are kept at bay, for the small price of having stormtroopers burst in every few weeks to frisk you for illicit implements of destruction. (But of course you have free health care and 100% literacy.)
Is that where you want England to go, West Middlesex University Hospital?
Via CapLion, who's planning a lucrative career as a mugger in Britain, where his victims will be defenseless and he'll be protected by law from being assaulted by them in the course of his work.
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Brian Tiemann
