Deadly new knife hits England

[Kanastrous]

It does have the benefit of giving law enforcement a disitnctive murder weapon around which to focus an investigation...

[Pablo Sanchez]

Gee, time for a digression.

A good sword cane has a tempered epee blade

A cheap one would be fairly likely to just break in half.

Maybe I should start writing posts like I'm a comic-book typesetter, bolding all the important words in each sentence.

A good sword cane costs hundreds of dollars, and I honestly doubt that anybody with the means to buy such a weapon would be doing so with the intention of actually fighting with it, especially since one could purchase more effective weapons for much less. If you actually saw a sword cane being used as a weapon, I'd lay odds that it's a cheap POS.

and is primarily a thrusting weapon.

Again, with a cheap blade an inexpert thrust could still fold the blade in half. There's also the problem that impalement with such a narrow blade might not be immediately fatal or even incapacitating if it fails to strike a vital area, and it could lodge in the person. The epee is sporting equipment, not a fighting weapon. Actual swords, designed for killing, have substantially larger proportions.

Slashing with one is poor technique...

It's also a more natural and intuitive movement than thrusting, and thus commensurately more likely to be used in a time of stress.

and, a sword cane has the potential advantage of keeping your opponent at a greater distance.

Yeah, if you know how to use it, which is highly doubtful. Even the rare sport fencer would probably have little idea how to use a sword cane in a brawl, because sport fencing is so idiosyncratic. The methods of realistic fight training for rapier-type blades have fallen out of use and it would be hard to find anyone who actually knew what they were doing. The idea of defeating an assailant with elegant fencing and a sword cane is cute but ultimately not very practical.

A punching dagger is smaller and just as easily concealed, since no one but the elderly and handicapped carries a cane nowadays anyway; its use is very intuitive, arguably more so even than a normal knife; and because it can be used to rapidly inflict multiple serious puncture wounds with a broad blade, it is much more lethal than a cane sword within its range. Most fights end up in the clinch, anyway.

Naturally between two trained experts, one with a push knife and the other with a cane sword, the cane sword would probably win out because of its range. This is because both experts could be expected to use their weapons to maximum combative advantage. In a realistic street situation this wouldn't be the case. And in that case the cane sword, much more awkward to use than the knife, especially close in, would lose.

[Phantasee]

To me it seems this "deadly" new tool is just being hyped up. Slashing is a much better knife-fighting technique, anyway. That's why laws restricting blades usually focus on the length: harder to slash with a shorter blade.

[Sidewinder]

I think the British authorities are overreacting. £200 for a super knife that can kill with the first blow? That's about $400, right? You can get a handgun for that kind of money, and although "Saturday night specials" are crappy weapons, they're certainly a better choice for killing someone, as you can stay beyond the reach of the target's knife when using them.

I'm reminded of the hysteria caused when a weapon firing caseless ammo was offered in the US, with some idiots claiming the lack of a discarded casing would make it difficult for police to investigate murders. The ammo cost $2 PER ROUND in 1993 (adjusted for inflation, my guess is it costs $5 per round now), while the weapon that fires it costs $3000; for that kind of money, a criminal can just buy a semiautomatic AR-15, some M16 parts to convert it into a "machine gun," and a brass catcher.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I think the British authorities are overreacting. £200 for a super knife that can kill with the first blow? That's about $400, right? You can get a handgun for that kind of money, and although "Saturday night specials" are crappy weapons, they're certainly a better choice for killing someone, as you can stay beyond the reach of the target's knife when using them.

In the USA you can certainly get a handgun for $400, and for that amount of money it wouldn't even be a Saturday night special. You could get a perfectly serviceable weapon for that. But in the UK? They have very strict gun control laws, making it difficult to get guns and probably quite expensive as well, doubly so if you're obtaining it illegally.

[The Yosemite Bear]

While I won't deny I'm intrigued I'm wondering why the fuck someone would want to make a knife like that. It really has not other practical purpose for a CO2 injector other than fucking somebody up.

If you saw the site, you'd see it is designed with very specific purposes. It kills a shark, but before it 'explodes' the creature it expands and floats the corpse to the surface, so that it doesn't chum the waters around you. Its actually incredibly well-designed for that purpose.

yup, and just think how out of place those Chavs and street rats are going to look in a scouba shop.

trust me, any OCR shop is gonna wanna see the guy's dive creds first.

[loomer]

I do a lot of swimming, and a fair bit of night walking.

This knife would actually have a legitimate use for me, here in Aus. We get a lot of sharks near my beach.

Also, it's just so fucking cool to describe. "Oh, this one? This one makes people explode."

[Vendetta]

I think the British authorities are overreacting. £200 for a super knife that can kill with the first blow? That's about $400, right? You can get a handgun for that kind of money, and although "Saturday night specials" are crappy weapons, they're certainly a better choice for killing someone, as you can stay beyond the reach of the target's knife when using them.

It's quite simple. If a local police authority can convince the press, and thereby the public of Imminient Criminal Apocalypse! they all start writing letters to the papers and moaning about it on TV, and that means the police authority has more ammunition at next year's tax budget fight.

[Glocksman]

I think the British authorities are overreacting. £200 for a super knife that can kill with the first blow? That's about $400, right? You can get a handgun for that kind of money, and although "Saturday night specials" are crappy weapons, they're certainly a better choice for killing someone, as you can stay beyond the reach of the target's knife when using them.

I'm reminded of the hysteria caused when a weapon firing caseless ammo was offered in the US, with some idiots claiming the lack of a discarded casing would make it difficult for police to investigate murders. The ammo cost $2 PER ROUND in 1993 (adjusted for inflation, my guess is it costs $5 per round now), while the weapon that fires it costs $3000; for that kind of money, a criminal can just buy a semiautomatic AR-15, some M16 parts to convert it into a "machine gun," and a brass catcher.

Meh...
As I'm sure you know, there's an even better technology to avoid leaving casings behind at the scene of the crime.

It's called a 'revolver'.
Though if Joe Criminal is really paranoid, there's an even better technology available, and here in the US at least, one can buy it through mail order under Federal law.

That'd be the 'cap and ball' revolver.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yes, but we need to get more british published, after all they have a much lower murder rate, and write much better murder mysteries, the two have to have a correlation...

[Kanastrous]

Gee, time for a digression.

A good sword cane has a tempered epee blade

A cheap one would be fairly likely to just break in half.

Maybe I should start writing posts like I'm a comic-book typesetter, bolding all the important words in each sentence.

A good sword cane costs hundreds of dollars, and I honestly doubt that anybody with the means to buy such a weapon would be doing so with the intention of actually fighting with it, especially since one could purchase more effective weapons for much less. If you actually saw a sword cane being used as a weapon, I'd lay odds that it's a cheap POS.

and is primarily a thrusting weapon.

Again, with a cheap blade an inexpert thrust could still fold the blade in half. There's also the problem that impalement with such a narrow blade might not be immediately fatal or even incapacitating if it fails to strike a vital area, and it could lodge in the person. The epee is sporting equipment, not a fighting weapon. Actual swords, designed for killing, have substantially larger proportions.

Slashing with one is poor technique...

It's also a more natural and intuitive movement than thrusting, and thus commensurately more likely to be used in a time of stress.

and, a sword cane has the potential advantage of keeping your opponent at a greater distance.

Yeah, if you know how to use it, which is highly doubtful. Even the rare sport fencer would probably have little idea how to use a sword cane in a brawl, because sport fencing is so idiosyncratic. The methods of realistic fight training for rapier-type blades have fallen out of use and it would be hard to find anyone who actually knew what they were doing. The idea of defeating an assailant with elegant fencing and a sword cane is cute but ultimately not very practical.

A punching dagger is smaller and just as easily concealed, since no one but the elderly and handicapped carries a cane nowadays anyway; its use is very intuitive, arguably more so even than a normal knife; and because it can be used to rapidly inflict multiple serious puncture wounds with a broad blade, it is much more lethal than a cane sword within its range. Most fights end up in the clinch, anyway.

Naturally between two trained experts, one with a push knife and the other with a cane sword, the cane sword would probably win out because of its range. This is because both experts could be expected to use their weapons to maximum combative advantage. In a realistic street situation this wouldn't be the case. And in that case the cane sword, much more awkward to use than the knife, especially close in, would lose.

I fenced foil, sabre and epee for about ten years, so my perspective is admittedly colored, on the subject.

And in fact, if and when I do carry any kind of fighting (as opposed to utility) blade, it's usually a punch dagger.

I think what I'm trying to convey, is that I basically agree with you.