Knife Crime UK - What's going on?

It would appear prior poster cities are not where you want to be when things get bad.

anyone found with a knife on them should be locked up for 10 years, with a gun 20 years, and using either, for life..... end of discussion

people say "oh but all that time inside, how will you then integrate them back into society?"... well im sorry but i dont want them back in society. The whole country is a shambles with regards to justice. Where else can you get a few years for rape and life for fraud.

That's what happens when you take away the individual's right to protect themselves. Banning guns does nothing as criminals move to knives. Banning knives will cause criminals to murder using other means. You don't stop crime by removing the weapon. By removing the weapon, all you remove is the law abiding citizen's means of protecting themselves. That's what anti-gun laws are: anti-self-defense laws. Criminals will always commit crimes. The only thing you're doing is removing the protection of the innocent.

Remember, when you have only seconds, the police are just minutes away. Wanna stop most crime? Give everyone a gun. A gun is the great equalizer. It puts the 25 year old punk on the same level as the 65 year old woman. No one is going to rob a Dunkin Donuts if they know the 15 people in line are packing a semi-auto handgun. Criminals prey on the weak, and your society is breeding a nation of weaklings.

[edit on 6-7-2008 by ChocoTaco369]

giving everyone a gun? thats a bit silly. there is still some crime which is just holding up a shopkeeper u know... that wud instantly turn into a murder coz of the criminal knowing that the shopkeeper had a gun (he wudnt mess about, he wud just fire straight away), i dont think thats it at all.

Throughout history there have been bad people. so i dont think you can stop bad people from existing and wanting to cause trouble. SO identigy them, and lock them away.

I assume this is just the media trying to instill Fear into the public. I couldn't find a number on the total amount of Murders in London this year, but just to put it in perspective. London has around 7.3 million people where as Los Angeles has 3.8.. There have so far within that 3.8 million people been 131 murders this year.. in all of 2007 there was 324

[edit on 6-7-2008 by Empath]

[edit on 6-7-2008 by Empath]

New York City
LA
Chicago
Detroit
Houston
DC (oh the worst city on here)
London
Paris
Berlin

^ Cities with large amounts of citizens. Guess what? Large amounts of people = crime. Guess what? They're going to be carrying weapons (guns, knives, whatever)

This is not a hard thing to figure out why people are being harmed in London. it's a city. I've been there, I know what it's like. It's the New York of England.

IT'S A CITY

The media really is whipping up a frenzy over there. With cctv cameras, speakers and new oppresive laws over there it looks like they want the citizens to be in a panic and call for more oppresive laws!! Us Americans can laugh now but it is moving over here too! Were just a littlbe bit behind in the police state, but trust me, give it a few years and we'll be in the same pathetic position.

reply to post by Boniouk06

anyone found with a knife on them should be locked up for 10 years, with a gun 20 years, and using either, for life..... end of discussion

And what if I just use a pencil to stab you, or even the Sunday paper to run you through?

ha well yeah but killing with a pencil wud seem a more random event. walkin round with a knife is lookin for trouble. there is a difference. and if u can kill me with a newspaper i think u need an award not a punishment

Media hype....There have been bar fights here where more people got stabbed in 5 min They will ban knives and next you will see a rash of baseball bat attacks.

Whats going on is that this is the new "Maddy". Good looking teenagers on front pages with good looking relatives (one a soap star no less) weeping and providing soundbites is a media dream.

Media are now hyping up knife crime and having the reverse effect; those criminally inclined may now carry knives cos it has been glamorised by the media. It had a kudos and your crime will be in the news!

And that is just is just the self fulfilling prophecy aspect of it. The underlying cause? Well, that can't be hard to see. A lack of value placed on life due to overexpuse of death in the media. A generation of people not caring about their futures bacuase they have no hope. A generation above them that cannot enforce discipline and a government that supports the criminal more than the honest.

Give it a few months and there will be a new scare in the media...

What we are witnessing is a vicious sociological cycle...several unrelated incidents involving stabbings happen, so the police start to look at stabbing incidents, the closer they look, the more incidents they uncover, which is picked up by the popular media...at this point, the government, spurred by popular opinion fed by the media grants more funds to the investigative bodies to look deeper into knife-crime, resulting in yet more incidents coming to light, further fuelling the public/media hysteria...and around we go again

where we land, we all could guesstimate...more restrictive legislation added to the already groaning statute-book in Parliament and attendant increase in police powers to stop-and-search 'demographically-targetted' individuals...to an almost 1984-like scenario of a pandering to the general populace that the rollout programme of next-generation of CCTV systems that can detect sounds of a victim pleading, breaking glass, or otherwise determined undesirable or alerting 'sound-profile' to 'visual profiling' of hostile physical movements of an aggressor or other specified targetted mannerisms will be moved forward to combat the percieved threat to ensure the 'safety of all and freedom of movement for none'

double-plus-good!

Anyone found with a knife gets 10 years?? What if I've just bought one from the shop because the one in the house is old and useless...or what if I use it as a tool and its in my bag with my other tools, should I get 10 years for that?

A knife is a tool just like any other...what the problem is, is not the tool itself, but the intent of the person weilding it

I travel about on foot or by bike after-dark as I don't drive but am rarely unarmed, the last thing a mugger will expect is a sharpened 4H pencil in a soft-tissue area, and the last thing the police will expect to be used as a self-defence weapon should I be subject to a SuS search...the pen is truely mightier than the sword!

To misquote the movie 'Lock, Stock...'

"Knives for show...pencils for a pro"

Originally posted by citizen smith

What we are witnessing is a vicious sociological cycle...several unrelated incidents involving stabbings happen, so the police start to look at stabbing incidents, the closer they look, the more incidents they uncover, which is picked up by the popular media...at this point, the government, spurred by popular opinion fed by the media grants more funds to the investigative bodies to look deeper into knife-crime, resulting in yet more incidents coming to light, further fuelling the public/media hysteria...and around we go again

But you go on to admit, in a later post, you carry a weapon when you go out. Which is it hysteria, or common sense or just hedging your bets. I'll admit, I carry something on me now, it wouldn't have occured to me to do so ten yers ago but that decisions based on the experience I've had on my local streets, not what I've read in the press. Yet according to some I'm imagining it.

Personally I don't think we need that much in the way of surveillance, or new initiatives, just a zero tolerance to all anti-social behaviour and long sentences applied harshly against those that cross a line.

reply to post by Marsrising


I haven't read all of the posts after the member to which I'm replying (at least not yet), but I am inclined to agree with everything that was said in their post.

Guns were banned here in the UK shortly after "Dunblane" - for those of you who do not know, a bloke walked into a primary school and started shooting. Not a plesant thought, I know, but nutters like that man do exist.

It was a knee jerk reaction from a government hell bent on disarming the public. They seem to think that if the public is disarmed then crime will vanish (either that or a more sinister motive is that they believe that once the public is disarmed it will be easier to 'deal with us' - you choose).

However, the reverse is true. As soon as you disarm ordinary people, they no longer have the ability to stand up for themselves when criminals and thugs show up with knives and/or guns.

The simple fact is that we should make it compulsory for all adults in this country to own a gun! Once you do that news items of teenagers raping an old lady in her own home will never again grace the pages of a newspaper. Why? Because that little old lady might have an uzi hidden in the top drawer of her sideboard, or a sawn-off shotgun in the umberella stand by the door... who's going to mess with someone that might have a bigger gun...

Switzerland enjoys a very low crime rate - that's because it is compulsory for their adults to own a gun. A simple solution for a simple problem. When the criminals haven't got a clue if they are outgunned, they tend to stay out of the way... When they know they have the advantage, they thrive.

It isn't hard to work out.

reply to post by dampnickers


Good point...
Switzerland has one of the highest gun-ownership rates in the world.
The Swiss people are armed.
Violent crime is practically unheard of there. You don't have to be Einstein
to figure that one out.

Move to the U.S.A. and buy a gun.

Give them guns, death by baseball bat and knife doesn't sound fun to me. People need guns, you take are guns away then we just stab each other. People will kill people in more inventive ways if you wanna take guns and sharp things away, the act of striping people of there arms only helps the criminals. Take my guns, my knifes, all bust out my fork

i dont see how 13 murders is an epedemic, my county alone has about 100 homicides a year..