First 'anti-stab' knife to go on sale in Britain

[Havok]

Hmmm... I dunno about you guys, but I bet 10 Dollars (pounds to you UK folk) that I can stab somebody with that knife. That thing looks... ridiculous. And seriously, if you have a kitchen knife to stab with, chances are you have a fork too. They should make non stabbing forks next... call them... spoons or something.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Sure... after that they can get to removing all the sharp pointy sticks from Britain....

If you take one weapon away the deranged, angry, murderous people will find another weapon, even if it's just a bare fist. It's treating a symptom and not the cause of the fury that causes such violence in the first place.

I realize that.

[folti78]

Hmmm... I dunno about you guys, but I bet 10 Dollars (pounds to you UK folk) that I can stab somebody with that knife.

Yup, you just need to use more force.

That thing looks... ridiculous. And seriously, if you have a kitchen knife to stab with, chances are you have a fork too. They should make non stabbing forks next... call them... spoons or something.

We've got you covered here man, with sporks! (Sorry couldn't find the pic of an old Imperial Russian Army wooden one. )

Otherwise, I'm sure that unless they ban pocket knifes with pointed blades too, this won't make too much dent in the knife statistics.

[Plekhanov]

I was saying a gun can kill a person much more easily than a knife can. Besides, the following article seems quite shocking already (the title is in the link):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... y-day.html

and knife/ edged -weapon murders will be more than tripled?!

28 firearm crimes a day isn't that shocking as possession and most things related to it are crimes here.

The article states there were 49 gun related deaths in the preceding year, roughly 1 per million people that seems pretty low to me.

[Fr33ze]

According to the article:

While gun-related deaths were down, from 55 to 49, the number of slight injuries, threats and non-injury incidents linked to guns increased.

28 gun crimes per day sounds definitely more scary than 28 knife crimes to me.

"Children as young as 11 or 12 are carrying guns," he said. "The sad reality is that it is becoming so routinely reported by the press that a child has been shot that the shock value has been eliminated."

Guess my shock value hasn't been eliminated.


Back to the main topic, modifying all "potential" weapons does not seem like an effective solution. As it says, "Guns (Knives) don't kill, people do." They should spend more effort finding a better way to educate the people.

[Zwinmar]

Knife, gun, pair of scissors, brick, tire iron, crow bar. Of those only a gun was designed as only a weapon. The rest are tools that can be used as a weapon. Look around weapons of opportunity are everywhere. A stab proof knife? Man has been making sharp, pointy rocks since the Lithic Age.

[Starglider]

Knife, gun, pair of scissors, brick, tire iron, crow bar. Of those only a gun was designed as only a weapon. The rest are tools that can be used as a weapon.

Unsurprisingly, the gun is the only one that can't be countered except by another gun, and even then only if you shoot first.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd like to point out that the fact that such a knife has been designed does not mean that normal, functional knives have been outlawed, or will be.

What we're seeing is the social side-effects of policy inertia. The British government tried to end crime by banning dangerous weapons, and it didn't work, but the people who originally tried to do that still seriously believe that they can eliminate murders by eliminating enough weapons. When confronted with a weapon they can't readily eliminate, they try to invent a way around the "problem."

So it gets publicized in a rosy glow of vague benevolent intentions (fewer stab wounds! Yaay!), but that doesn't mean that it will replace normal knives, or that any significant proportion of the British government seriously expects it to.

[chitoryu12]

Knife, gun, pair of scissors, brick, tire iron, crow bar. Of those only a gun was designed as only a weapon. The rest are tools that can be used as a weapon. Look around weapons of opportunity are everywhere. A stab proof knife? Man has been making sharp, pointy rocks since the Lithic Age.

Not just that. I can look around the room I'm typing from and find three objects I could kill you with without even leaving me seat, three or four more if I get up. If someone wants to kill, he can and will grab what's at hand and bludgeon, stab, strangle, whatever with it. I'd be surprised if these knives made any sort of visible change in domestic violence incidents, even at the smallest possible level.