Knife crime

[pmel018]

OK then, not locked.
As for the hyped up nature of the press coverage of the gang situation in France at that time.....there is some research that would indicate that this was the case, one or two street attacks became "the Apache menace". It also happened in the UK but this time it was the "Garrote" after one particularly famous attack the whole of the middleclass was raised to a fever pitch of fear by sensationalist newspaper headlines. There are a few old self-defense articles and books that cover this period. There were also anti-garrote devices to keep the wearer safe. After a while the whole thing died down and there were only a few actual attacks. Nevertheless a great panic had ensued.
Sadly it is much the same today , here in the UK. The press sensatonalises every attack, giving rise to the 'ban everything brigade' and their political poodles.
The Samurai sword ban here was not instigated because of a huge inrease in attacks using cheap swords, but because one of those caught up in an attack was the relative of an M.P. ( a lurker on th edge of criminal activity)
Phil

[BigMac]

Someone needs to bludgeon to death a couple of people (papparatzi perhaps) with a rubber ducky or a frozen Mars bar just to see how the press spin it and to show that any damn thing can be a weapon.

Maybe a sock full of quarters/shillings see if there is a call to ban socks and coins

TTFN

[Colin]

While dramaticised, Orson Welles hosted and narrated a radio show on murder items stored in the Black Museum in the 1950s. IOW the press do mine 'unusual murder weapons' for stories.

In Victoria, the police top brass had a bee in his bonnet when it came to swords. The original bill was squashed, but he resurrected it a short time later and forced it through. A similar set of circumstance that Phil described. One can only hope that a similar situation doesn't happen here[1]. However, I'm working towards setting up a national body (NZSEMA) to act as a lobby group if the need ever arises.

Knives are a bit tricky for politicians to ban though. They're a useful tool with a lot of applications. Defining a "murder" knife from a "tool" knife isn't the easiest thing to do. I'm pretty sure that kitchen knives are the number one knives used in murder-cases in NZ.

[1] While Antonie Dixon was the most infamous case, a nut in Feilding went attacking late last year (2008). I don't hold out much hope that swords and particularly "samurai swords" won't become a target of legislation in some future year.

[Phil Berghan-Whyman]

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/5390973

Still, sometimes the knife crime is a little to close to home. The article doesn't mention it, but this woman was stabbed to death.

The stabbing took place about 8 minutes walk from my home, about 10 minutes before my wife (Dayna) and her friend walked into the servo for snacks on the way home from a party. When they arrived, the police were still comforting people who had seen the stabbing.

While I am perfectly cogent of the fact that banning knives probably wouldn't have stopped this crime from occurring, I can still understand the people's desire to stop crimes like this from occurring.