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Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

Knives help you cook delicious food, knives can also help you stab your partner to death. This doesn't mean knives should be banned (though, ironically enough, the UK believes otherwise).

Different technologies are in different places on the "societal usefullness versus danger" spectrum. Nuclear weapons are obviously on the "really fricking dangerous" side, no country lets a civilian own them. Forks are obviously on the "useful" side, even though you can technically use one to gouge somebody's eye out.

What's the right tradeoff for guns, printing presses, typewriters and social media companies is a matter of some debate.

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Knives in the UK are age restricted for purchase. Anyone can carry a folding pocket knife with a blade less than 3" without needing a reason. Any other mechanism, fixed blade, or longer blade require a lawful reason to carry. This includes recreation (e.g. fishing, camping) work (e.g. joinery, cooking).

There are a handful examples of overzealous officers misunderstanding and detaining for the wrong reasons, and plenty of examples of people who pretended to the media it was for innocent reasons until the court case showed otherwise.

For your point about forks, I'll note that they are actually covered by the same law; as are all pointed objects.

> This doesn't mean knives should be banned (though, ironically enough, the UK believes otherwise).

No it doesn’t. I can easily go to any number of local shops and buy a knife without any hassle.

You do however have to undergo age verification, but under a much less intrusive process than online (a shop assistant looks at you and guesses, or looks at your ID and does not retain a copy).

Right, which isn’t really any hassle at all.

Same as buying alcohol or a child ticket on the bus or an old age discount

The Us has even higher limits - many things are banned to many adults. Alcohol, lottery tickets etc.

> The Us has even higher limits - many things are banned to many adults. Alcohol, lottery tickets etc.

Not trying to start an argument, because I could indeed be missing some crucial info here, but what kind of adults aren't allowed to purchase alcohol or lottery tickets in the US?

The most scrutiny I ever got while attempting to purchase either alcohol or lottery tickets in the US was the establishment's employee glancing at my ID (and even that happens less than 1/5 of the time for me).

Much the same way that no one will stop you from buying a knife if you have ID in the UK.

I mean, sure, I never disputed that (because I have zero idea how difficult it is to buy a knife in the UK, and I’ve never even said anything about knives).

My question was about the stricter limits on purchasing alcohol or lottery tickets in the US (which were brought up in the comment I originally replied to), because that was the first time I heard about that. I was curious what those alluded-to limits were, and I still have zero idea.

They're probably referring to the fact that you can buy alcohol at the age of 18 in the UK vs 21 in the US. It's also much more easily accessible, for example, we don't have dry counties or state-run liquor stores.

Bars in the US routinely ID people who are obviously over the age of 21. And then they get weird about foreign passports because...well, because America, I guess. I've sometimes been refused entry despite being clearly over 21 and having my passport with me (or, absurdly, been asked to show another ID, as if a passport wasn't sufficient for buying a beer). Attitudes to IDing people for alcohol are much more pragmatic in the UK.

Generally if you look over 25 in the uk you don’t need ID to prove you are over 18.

In Arizona, 20 year olds aren’t allowed to buy powerball tickets.

As far as IDing to confirm age, I haven’t been IDed in the U.K. since I was 2007. I was IDed in DC last year.

A large number of Americans believe all sorts of nonsense about the UK

The US is a big place and many Americans never travel anywhere else. Heck, a large number of Americans believe criminals are burning down LA.

The U.K. doesn’t ban knives. It has an age limit to buy them, and bans carrying them in public without a lawful excuse.

Ok so they only "ban" them not ban ban them. Nothing to see here, move along.

> Knives help you cook delicious food, knives can also help you stab your partner to death. This doesn't mean knives should be banned (though, ironically enough, the UK believes otherwise).

This is a reasonable enough metaphor but we don't have to pretend to be idiots either and act like every single technology is totally neutral in its design. Knives are a good example, actually. Kitchen knives are totally adequate for killing people (I assume, I'm no expert) but they clearly have a design meant for something else. A nuclear weapon, to choose a stupidly obvious example, has no capability other than mass death. It seems reasonable to ask ourselves whether we want these two objects to be under the same regulatory regime.

> has no capability other than mass death

A 30-kiloton nuclear explosion was used by the USSR to extinguish a large natural gas fire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtabulak_gas_field

They would be used for constructive purposes far more if not for mutual distrust between nuclear powers, and the public hysteria around anything associated with the word "nuclear":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion

And the massive amounts of harmful fallout, don’t forget that.

There are also harmful downsides to the alternative methods used now.

Alternative methods for doing what? Putting out gas well fires?

This is another version of "we don't need to pretend to be stupid."

Yes, one could cook up all sorts of uses for the things called nuclear weapons, which we designed by people to kill other people. But we don't have to pretend to be stupid and assume nuclear weapons don't, I don't know, exist in a context of warfare which shapes their design and warrants actual thought about their use and regulation?

I cant help but feel this analogy misses the mark. With the information people are consuming being guided by algorithms, its extremely hard for people to realise theyre being herded towards a specific viewpoint these days. It kind of reminds me of one of those mirror houses at the fairground - its extremely hard to get the correct signal in all the noise. You are what you consume and if everything you consume is of a misguided point of view, very quickly you're sliding towards being assimilated into that point of view.

I now believe that guiding technology use comes down to leadership. "with the exact same technological advances, on one side of the world we created modern america, while on the other side we created the soviet union"

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