UK judge proposes bizarre ‘knife-control’ tactic: file down knives — they’re too sharp
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Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge said that knives are far too sharp, and filing them down could be a solution to tackling knife-related violent crimes in the area.
What are the details?
On Sunday, the U.K’s Telegraph reported that Madge proposed a nationwide program “to file down the points of kitchen knives” in order to address the nation’s “soaring knife crime epidemic.”
According to the Telegraph, the “latest figures show stabbing deaths among teenagers and young adults have reached the highest level for eight years,” noting that overall knife crime had risen 22 percent in 2017.
Madge said that in just the last two months, 77 knife-related “incidents” occurred in Bedfordshire, England.
Three of those “incidents” resulted in death.
The Telegraph reported that Madge told judges, lawyers, and court clerks, “These offenses often seem motiveless — one boy was stabbed because he had an argument a couple of years before at his junior school.”
Madge said that existing “knife-control” laws had “almost no effect,” since the majority of those knives used in attacks had reportedly been taken from the kitchen.
“A few of the blades carried by youths are so called ‘Rambo knives’ or samurai swords,” Madge said. “They though are a very small minority.”
He added, “The reason why these measures have little effect is that the vast majority of knives carried by youths are ordinary kitchen knives. Every kitchen contains lethal knives which are potential murder weapons.”
As such, Madge said that kitchen knives are far too easily accessible to youths, and noted that the most common knives taken by youths are “eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives.”
“But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?” he asked. “Butchers and fishmongers do, but how often, if at all, does a domestic chef use the point of an eight-inch or ten-inch knife? Rarely, if at all.”
“I would urge all those with any role in relation to knives — manufacturers, shops, the police, local authorities, the government — to consider preventing the sale of long pointed knives, except in rare, defined, circumstances, and replacing such knives with rounded ends,” Madge said.
He added that police may even be able to create a program in which existing long, sharp knives could be “taken somewhere to be modified with the points being ground down into rounded ends.”
Anything else?
This isn’t the first time “knife control” has been discussed.
In April, London Mayor Sadiq Khan enacted policies to cut down on knife-related crimes.
For his plan to combat knifings, Khan sent over 300 additional London police officers to their city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods in order to accost and search anyone that they suspect may be carrying a knife.
Khan’s policy also included a measure to ban home deliveries of knives as well as acid.
Additionally, Khan created a “violent crime task force” consisting of approximately 120 officers to “focus solely on violent crime, weapon-enabled crime, and serious criminality.”
Khan also revealed that he planned to invest over $150 million in London’s law enforcement and another $50 million in youth programs.
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