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Comment by thomasguide | Hacker News Reader

Knife purchases are controlled in the U.K.[1] Persons under 18 are not allowed to buy knives, but in practice this means most people are showing an ID to purchase a knife.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

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In addition, carrying a knife on you without a good reason is a crime in itself - and yes going home with a knife you just purchased is a perfectly valid reason. But having a knife on you "just in case" is not, unless you live in the middle of nowhere or are a farmer or something. Get stopped in the middle of London with a knife and that's a serious crime.

Wow.

Not disagreeing with or commenting on that policy at all, but I had no idea knives were treated so seriously in the UK (and presumably elsewhere).

Meanwhile in much of the US, not only can you can openly carry a gun around, you don’t even need a permit.

Just wow.

The world is vast and strange.

The Brits don't have a 2A. We have it because of the Brits. Life isn't that strange if you follow it back.

They have knife bans because they never let their citizens have guns, so there are knife attacks, so they ban knives.

That's why terrorists when they can't sneak AK47s in, rely on vans to run people over, that's why there are bollards everywhere.

Chemical attacks, axes and such can also be used to kill or harm people.

People will find a way to kill people. Guns are an equalizer for weaker humans against stronger ones.

I conceal carry everyday. I don't want to be in a knife fight and I don't want my life to depend on me being stronger than the other person.

You hope not to ever use it, you have it everyday just incase, you practice regularly to stay sharp.

It would attract too much attention carrying an axe around for no reason and Dilbert Grady's family massacre might be the largest ever where only an axe was used and using the axe was mostly for theatrical effect. with a gun, an 8-year-old can probably easily murder a dozen adults. I am not for gun banning anywhere but I don't like likening guns to knives or sticks or stones. It seems no different from likening riding an aircrafts to walking on one's legs.

I didn't say that because I thought there was going to be axe attacks, I said it because there have been axe attacks. Examples:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tesco-axe-at...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4153298/gang-axe-attack-london...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/14/man-jailed-2...

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/woman-injured-east-london...

Interestingly enough, Brits used to also have right to own and bear arms, but they lost it in early 20th century. That’s what happens with freedom, if you don’t watch it.

I just don't get these comments at all.

British people absolutely have freedom to own guns, just perhaps not in the way Americans do, but yes they are in no way forbidden nor is anyone's freedom in danger - I know lots of British people with guns, way more so than where I'm originally from(Poland). You apply for a permit, then a local officer comes over to your house to just make sure you have somewhere safe to store it and that's basically it, go and buy yourself a gun, no problem at all. If you know anyone who lives on a farm they will most likely own at least one shotgun, for shooting rabbits if nothing else.

No. In Britain, to even own a gun, you must argue that you have a “good reason” to do so. If you don’t have a good reason, you won’t get the license. In US, guns ownership is considered a right, and you do not have to justify why you want to exercise this right.

Second, the ownership license does not entail right to actually carry the firearms. Brits used to have this right, but it’s now gone forever, especially as handgun ownership is effectively banned altogether anyway.

UK only has twice as many guns per capita as Poland, by the way, and I think a lot of it is actually a remnant of era when Brits had more freedom.

I grew up in Houston, Texas, where it was a felony to carry basically any knife bigger or more threatening than a Swiss army knife, but open-carrying a handgun was legal.

I don't think knife bans have anything to do with the the 2A or the lack thereof. Knives can be seriously dangerous weapons, and in an urban environment, the stealth afforded by a knife over a gun presents further menace.

I said knife bans happened because there are knife attacks.

Guns are already banned and there weren't many with civilians already so it was effective.

So that leaves knives as the main weapon of choice. There are mainly knife attacks, so there are knife bans.

You said, "They have knife bans because they never let their citizens have guns, so there are knife attacks, so they ban knives"

Texas has numerous bans on knives, despite letting their citizens have guns. Your causal logic is incorrect.

> Your causal logic is incorrect.

It's not, I'm sorry you can't follow the simple logic that people pick up a knife because they don't have a readily available gun, so there are more knife attacks than anything else, so they ban knives more aggressively.

> Texas has numerous bans on knives,

Texas does have bans on specific types of knives, but not a blanket ban or anything w/ length.

It's like saying because full autos are banned Texas has a gun ban.

> It's not, I'm sorry you can't follow the simple logic that people pick up a knife because they don't have a readily available gun, so there are more knife attacks than anything else, so they ban knives more aggressively.

I get that this statement sounds intuitive to you, but I would challenge you to substantiate a correlation between gun restrictions and increased violence with bladed weapons with some data before talking about causality. I personally think the majority of such violence is opportunistic, so I would be surprised if such a correlation were truly borne out by any data.

> Texas does have bans on specific types of knives, but not a blanket ban or anything w/ length.

When I was growing up in Houston, it was a felony to carry anything with a blade over 5.5" on your person. (I distinctly remember my scoutmaster warning us about locking or fixed blades >3.5", but that may have been a Houston or Harris County ordinance.) It looks like this was effectively repealed in 2017 per https://www.houston-criminalattorney.com/texas-switchblade-l...

I agree with you, but note that NYC (a frequent point of comparison with London, despite stats incompatibilities) has more knife murders than London, ie their second biggest category is bigger than our first category of murders by weapon. https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/18/deadly-knife-crime-how-d...

I wasn't trying to compare the rates in which we murder each other.

New York is a shithole and terribly ran, of course the murder rate is higher, especially these days.

There's a lot of gang violence and pickpocketing, knives are the goto choice, especially since it's so hard to get a hand gun legally in that city. Better to carry a knife otherwise you're a default felon.

I must say, as an adult in the habit of carrying a lockback folding knife whenever I leave the house, a practice I ultimately owe to Lord Baden-Powell, I found it.. discomfiting that this benign practice is illegal in London. Lovely city in general, one of my very favourites, but there's something grim about that.

"Be Prepared" was considered a perfectly valid reason at one time. Still is in hmm. Many places.

Not disagreeing with you per se, but what is benign in some contexts might not be so benign in others. Knife crime is a big problem in London - the tight regulation is in response to these circumstances. For instance, of the 126 homicides committed in London in 2020, 71 were committed with knives.[1]

[1] https://www.onlondon.co.uk/the-number-of-homicides-in-london...

It seems plausible to me that the crime we want to deter (shoving a sharpened piece of steel into someone) isn't easily or effectively prevented by adding carrying such a piece of steel to the list of crimes.

They're in every kitchen, how are we to prevent them from being carried out of the nearest one? Ask yourself!

The list of good reasons to carry a pocketknife which are aren't shanking someone is unenumerable and lengthy. It's an absurdity and I despair when I have to see Brits pretend to the logic of it out of some misplaced solidarity. Kudos for the NHS but the knife loisense fills me with pity for what a once mighty nation has become.

The target of these laws is not kitchen knives. Pocketknives (manual blade, less than 3") of most kinds are legal.[1, see exceptions] Bans of this kind are fairly common (for instance, in California, there is a ban on concealed carry of fixed-blade knives; in Los Angeles, the ban extends to openly carrying a "knife or dagger" defined as "any knife having a blade of three inches or more in length".[2] These laws strike me as very reasonable.

[1]https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives [2]https://www.losangelescriminallawyers.com/los-angeles-knife-...

It’s a bit funny to imagine but the NYC knife murder rate is actually higher than London. Against the background of substantially greater crime, though, it fades away.

It’s just a difference in culture. Despite the stabbings, Americans will not tolerate knife control to the same degree.

But we also know some laws an unenforceable in practice so are at best a deterrent if that law is made known to everyone, however in practices, laws not even a TLDR are rarely made known and people also forget what with everything else going on in the world.

My father-in-law (from the US) always carries a small utility/hunting knife, which he packed in his checked luggage when taking a leisure trip to England.

I believe it was at a museum or another public attraction that a police officer saw the knife in its holder on his belt, stopped him, demanded he surrender the knife, and told him he'd be arrested if he didn't.

He was very upset - he'd had that knife for decades.

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