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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