Knife campaign takes to the streets - knife-carrying culture blighting UK streets

[The Straight Story]

POLICE have once again taken to the streets of South Tyneside in a force-wide crackdown on knives.

Officers carrying metal detectors targeted the borough's anti-social 'hot spots' to stop anyone they suspected of carrying a blade.

It is the second time the team has been out and about in South Tyneside as part of a Northumbria Police campaign aimed at taking knives off your streets.

The campaign was launched by Chief Constable Mike Craik in July in response to concerns over the knife-carrying culture blighting UK streets.

http://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/Knife-campaign-takes-to-the.4479356.jp

[cliffordu]

1. Well, they never did have a second amendment, so taking the knives is going to

be child's play....

[NightWatcher]

2. IF they take all the knives, the bad guys will use rocks and sharp sticks

when people want to do bad to other people, any tool will do.

[wtmusic]

3. And when they take away the rocks and sharp sticks

wet sponges will become the weapon of choice. After all, it's not the sponge but the sponger...

[notadmblnd]

4. I wonder what the criminals will pick up once the knives have been banned?

No guns, no knives, what's left? Baseball bats?

[tuckessee]

5. Fresh fruit?

[On the Road]

6. Then There Will Only be Drive-by Fruitings

[notadmblnd]

7. Oh the horror!

I'm having visions of murdered fruit and a vegetables as I type.

[dmallind]

8. I grew up in Northern England

Not that far north, but in a similar industrial northern area where youth violence was rampant. I was a bouncer for a few years and the thuggier types used Stanley utility knives as their main weapon, since even back then in the late eighties longer bladed knives were illegal.

Some of them were quite ingenious in a sick way. One particular council estate (subsidized housing development) gang used to weld on an additional blade parallel to and about 1/4" away from the main blade, so that the cut would be impossible to stitch neatly and leave a bigger scar. I must have taken at least a dozen of those away from the kids from that place, and more than that number of plain Stanley knives.

US Duers who have no great involvement with teh UK might be surprised to hear that the youth/party culture there is, or at least was (I can't speak for the last 18-20 years with much more knowledge than any other occasional tourist), much much more violent than here. I've lived in the US for nigh two decades. I spend a lot of time in bars, and many of them not particularly refined or tony ones at that. I've seen maybe ten fights in that time, only one of them much beyond pushing and shoving, and only one where a weapon was even displayed.

Without an exaggeration at all, that would be an average weekend at some of the pubs I both frequented and worked at in England. And those fights are nasty. Even weaponless, grappling is hardly ever seen. Heads and feet and knees are used to strike as a matter of course as well as fists (the damage done by an expert headbutt is quite horrific), and there is little respect given to one on one, fair fight chivalry. In those rougher towns, most pubs will have bouncers on the door and in the crowd, and any of the ones where trouble is normal will have several. And they are not there to check ID's all night either. There are pubs to this day that I, a 290lb practiced martial artist, would not walk into alone because I may be recognized as someone who, out of necessity, clobbered some troublecauser 20 years back who still has a dozen mates with him.

So knives in that culture ARE a big problem. They make already serious damage seriously worse. I was lucky to escape with a few stitches a few times (not everybody gave up their knives willingly!) but saw much worse many times. A friend of mine lost an ear. Another now has a permanent "smile" that joins both of his and cost him the end of his tongue. I've seen dozens of patrons slashed and beaten bloody.

I'm by no means a blissninny. I own and enjoy guns, and value the freedom to do so. I have no answer as to why the inherent violence of the pub culture (which I've heard is in fact a bit dimninshed these days) does not impact most of the US, certain isolated and usually gang-driven hotspots aside. Is it because of the higher and more enforced drinking age (when I was 18 at least ID's had no picture and any even vaguely mature looking 14 year old had no problems being served)? Is it because here there is a much higher risk of being shot if you try to act like a hardass to the wrong people? Is it because there is less of a history of turning a blind eye to fights and "boys will be boys" that is only recently changing in the UK? Again I have no clue, but I do know that knives in that environment are a bit more of a problem than most outsiders would imagine. I have no qualms with the police's actions here, and only wonder what might have been had guns been as normal in the UK as they are here for the last century or so (Dunblane really just frosted an already well baked cake of disarming the UK populace that goes back to Victorian times).

[MadHound]

9. What stupidity. Many people carry knives not for self defense

But because a knife is a tool, one that many people use on a daily basis. Most of my life I've worked in jobs that carrying a knife was handy. I don't anymore, but I still carry one both out of force of habit and because I find it still handy in many situations. More nanny state stupidity.