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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> the UK, which is generally pretty low on violent crimes, has a specific problem with knife crimes and is therefore tackling the problem heads-on.

Sadly neither the problem nor the solution is new - the ban on knives in public dates to at least 1953.

It's interesting (and very Brexity) that people blame these things on the EU when they're both very much British criminal law independent of the EU.

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To clarify: I find the UK’s knife ban stupid, and it affects me personally (I often cook at friends’ places and, if these friends have no proper knives, I bring my chef’s knife; I also own two valuable antique swords but the rules for bringing them into the country are so complicated that they are indefintely stored at my parents’ place in another country). But like you said, it has nothing to do with EU legislation. And there’s a specific historical context which at least gives some explanation as to why the rule exists in the first place.

>To clarify: I find the UK’s knife ban stupid, and it affects me personally (I often cook at friends’ places and, if these friends have no proper knives, I bring my chef’s knife

There's nothing in UK law that prevents you from doing this. Bring along a cook book and store the knife securely (and keep it in your bag) and you're going to be fine. If you get stopped by the police mention it straightaway and move from there.

The legislation is written broad enough that discretion is possible in cases like this. Where it's going to look funny is when you're stopped with it in a pub at 9pm on a Saturday night.

So yeah I see both sides (I might go for a beer down the local after cooking on the way home with the knife for example), but really there's not much wrong with your knife laws IMO.

Broad discretion in such laws is the problem. It puts you at the mercy of an individual police officer's whim. More broadly it facilitates discrimination. This isn't a theoretical problem: I know people in London who, due to stop and search, would never dare to carry knives, no matter the reason.

>More broadly it facilitates discrimination.

This is also true, I certainly think if you're a white middle class person taking a knife to a friends you're going to get off easier than an someone from a ethnic minority in Tower Hamlets.

It also results in insane things like this [1]. I'm not sure if there's a better way though, it seems much like democracy it's the best of a bad bunch.

1. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3165489/Gardener-arr...

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