Monday, June 25, 2018

Knife Control Part II


            Strict gun control hasn’t prevented London’s murder rate from skyrocketing in recent years. It’s almost as if there were some other reason for the soaring crime rate in the Swinging City.
Many of the recent attacks in (formerly Jolly-Olde) England’s capital city have been perpetrated with knives. That’s it! Knives must be to blame! Bring on knife control! (See my post of April 11, 2018, cleverly titled ‘Knife Control’).
Shockingly, knife control hasn’t slashed crime rates, either. Ergo, Judge Nicholas Madge recently suggested that Britons should round-off the tips of their large kitchen knives to reduce attacks. “Why do we need 8-inch or 10-inch kitchen knives with points?” the judge opined at his May 25th retirement ceremony. According to The Telegraph, he added, “Butchers and fishmongers do, but how often, if at all, does a domestic chef use the point of an 8-inch or 10-inch knife? Rarely, if at all.” He actually called for a new measure to force knife manufacturers to round-off and dull their blades to help prevent murders.
 I think the “point” Judge Madge was trying to make is that he should have retired long ago.
Dulling knives and rounding-off their tips is not an effective crime-prevention measure.
In the classic board game Clue, there are six murder weapons: a candlestick, knife, lead pipe, revolver, rope and wrench. A newer version replaces the lead pipe and wrench with poison, a trophy, a bat, an axe, and a dumbbell. There are countless lethal weapons out there, and I’m not talking about the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover movies. The automobile, weed-whackers and hammers, among many other implements, can also be deadly. And what about chain-saws? The list goes on.
Should we replace 300-lb. test string on weed trimmers with 2-lb. test? Do we need a law to force candlestick manufacturers to make all their products out of, say, Styrofoam instead of metal? Should lead pipe now be made out of thin-gauge aluminum? Should ropes henceforth be made only from gossamer fibers instead of stout and durable strands of hemp or polyester? Perhaps the only wrenches legally available for purchase should be Fisher-Price’s “Baby’s First Wrench,” made of the lightest plastic, smooth and rounded?
In a destined-to-fail effort to reduce violent crime, liberals would limit manufacturers, make the jobs of chefs and plumbers much more difficult, mandate unkempt lawns and burst pipes, degrade romantic dinners and haunting movie sets, ruin rodeos, and adversely affect the lives of BDSM aficionados. And that’s just for starters.
The only effect these measures would have is to give criminals, i.e. evil, a leg up on law-abiding citizens. Don’t believe me? In England, where almost no one owns a gun and where regular folks may soon have to deal with dull and rounded knife blades and other impotent implements, 60% of burglaries are of homes in which people are present. In the U.S., where the majority of people in many areas own firearms, only 14% of occupied houses are targeted. A truly stunning difference.
If it wasn’t for wondrous inventions such as guns and knives, we would be sentenced to die if someone bigger, stronger, faster, and/or in better shape decided to attack us. If it wasn’t for these tools, and others like them, our ancestors would have had to sneak up on an antelope or other animal, wrestle it to the ground and pummel it with rocks or fists to render it incapacitated, then bend over and rip off its fur and pelt with their teeth until they got to the edible meat underneath, in order to avoid starvation. Not true? We shouldn’t be eating animals anyway, you say? Still, they couldn’t have even effectively harvested plants and vegetables without potentially dangerous tools.
Criminals don’t obey laws, or else they wouldn’t be criminals. Government’s single most important job is to protect its citizens. Passing laws that make it harder for decent folks to protect themselves doesn’t help solve the problem. It makes it worse. It is just pouring gas on the fire.
It is, in fact, itself a crime. Or it should be.


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