Feb 18th 2009
From Economist.com
Most knives could be much safer yet still do their job

COULD household knives be made less dangerous without being made less useful? In countries such as Britain, where the latest figures suggest that 30% of murders are committed with knives or other sharp instruments, many of which have come out of a kitchen drawer, that is a pertinent question. It is one that Sarah Hainsworth, a forensic-engineering specialist at the University of Leicester, asked herself.

The answer that she and her colleagues at Britain’s Forensic Pathology Unit have now come up with is “Yes”. Using a pig’s carcass, which is similar in some ways to a human’s, Dr Hainsworth and her team studied the wounds made by different blades falling from a height that was adjusted, depending on the weight of the knife, to result in the same force. The team looked at four of a knife’s properties—the radius of the tip, the shape of the tip, the thickness of the blade and the sharpness of the edge—in order to determine what was doing the most damage.

“The Times of London reports that the United Kingdom’s Home office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state that drives ‘a coach and horses’ through privacy laws.”

Supporters listed in the article include Ian Blair, chief of the Metropolitan Police, TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson, Mothers Against Knives , and some academics.

If we just picture ourselves as infants, with the state as our mother, we will end up living much safer lives.

“But as it stands, you can go into a supermarket and buy for £10 something that’s a murder weapon – no questions asked.”

Why, for just a dollar or so, you can go to a petrol station and buy a litre of highly flammable fluid! Baseball and cricket bats require no background checks! Bottles which can be broken and used to stab people are available in high school cafeterias!

“If you are the sort of person who flies into insane rages and threatens people with knives, consider replacing your sharp-tipped ones with dull ones.”

I don’t think that’s what Cameron is calling for and even if he were it likely wouldn’t happen because procedures that the police & prosecutors dislike or consider too minor, time-consuming and/or expensive tend not to be fully implemented (eg. the California Three Strikes provisions, the prohibition on drink driving). I am particularly sceptical about enforcing a prohibition on knife carrying because they are unlikely to be noticed by police unless either a) the knife is used to attack or threaten someone, in which case more serious charges than possessing a knife could be made, or b) the police condict a search of the person & their belongings, which is illegal on non-terrorism grounds unless they have cause to believe you have commited a crime. Such searches are also very unpopular with the individuals & communities concerned, and if we were all liable to police searches for ill-founded suspicions of having a knife then there would be public outcry and a spate of legal challenges.

However, these problems are unlikely to apply (at least on a wide scale) because the BBC article on Cameron’s statement indicates that his intent is selective, saying:
‘He urged police to exercise “common sense” by not prosecuting people carrying penknives for angling, or for bringing home kitchen or garden equipment from the shops. “This is about kitchen knives stuffed down the front of tracksuits,” he told The Sun.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7492758.stm

That hardly seems in keeping with a tradition of good sense policing, nor with the basic rights that comprise the core of western legal systems.