Knife Control

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, says, “There’s never a reason to carry a knife.” Well, Mr. Khan: there’s always been a knife in my pocket for more than fifty years. It’s a little one with a two-inch blade and a very handy tool. Mr. Khan further states: “Anyone who does will be caught and will feel the full force of the law.”

I’ll be in London April 28th, but only for a stopover on the way back from Barcelona. I won’t be carrying my knife because it’ll be in my checked luggage. A real visit to Great Britain is on my bucket list however, and I plan to carry my pocket knife after I go through customs in London —unless it’s confiscated.

It’s made by Schrade, says “Old Timer” on the handle, and costs $16.01 on Amazon and given that I turned sixty-seven last Saturday, the “Old Timer” label is ever more appropriate. I ordered four of them recently to have spares on hand because I lose them sometimes. Three times I’ve had to forfeit my knife at airport security checkpoints because I forgot to put it in my checked luggage.

One of my students told the principal several years ago that she got scared when I used it to peel an orange in my room during snack time. He came up to see me and said, “You’re not supposed to have those you know.” I responded that I was going to keep my little pocket knife until he told the custodians they couldn’t have utility knives and the cooks couldn’t have cutlery. He left me alone after that.

Just last month New Hampshire’s Berlin Daily Sun reported that a Gorham, NH high school teacher was being investigated for doing a classroom demonstration on search and seizure using a jack-knife which he temporarily gave a student for the demonstration. When the parent complained, the superintendent, the police chief, and the district attorney all got involved to consider charges against the teacher. All this over a jack-knife that boys in my Cub Scout den carried. “There were other students in the classroom at the time,” said the article. Of course there were; it was a demonstration! What’s next? Will the school provide grief counselors for students who’ve seen a jack-knife?

So far in 2018, the city of London has had more homicides than New York City. Most have been stabbings so Mayor Khan wants a knife ban. Handguns have been banned in the UK since 1997. Khan is also banning acid because there were more than four hundred “acid attacks” in 2017 mostly by young men against other young men in certain London neighborhoods.

Acid attack victim

Though NYC police are banned now from using “stop and frisk” tactics, London police have been empowered to “stop and search” suspected knife wielders. Mayor Khan had previously called that “racist” and “Islamophobic” because they were often done with Muslim immigrants. Nearly all the attacks, however, occur in Muslim immigrant neighborhoods — also called “no-go zones” because police and other civil servants are violently discouraged from going there by their Muslim inhabitants. Officially, however, there aren’t any “no-go zones” in the UK and if you claim there are, you may be investigated for a hate crime.

Snopes insists “no-go zones” don’t exist in Europe anywhere. Last month, however, German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted they do. When asked to clarify a statement on citizen safety in public places, she said: “It means for example that there cannot be any no-go areas, that there cannot be areas where no-one dares to go but there are such places. One has to call them by name and do something about it.”

According to the Daily Wire: “Parliament is also set to take up heavy ‘knife control’ legislation when it resumes this week. The U.K. government is expected to introduce a ban on online knife sales and home knife deliveries, declare it ‘illegal to possess zombie knives and knuckledusters [brass knuckles] in private’ — ‘zombie knives’ are those defined as being manufactured for the purpose of being used as a person-to-person weapon — and ban sales of caustic materials to anyone under the age of 18, the Independent reports."

British actions would seem to empower classic arguments long made by gun control opponents in the US, like: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Killers use what’s available whether it’s guns, knives, poison, or explosives. It’s not the instrument; it’s the person, they insist. 

“It’s also not clear what local Londoners will now use to cut their food,” says the Daily Wire.