What's wrong with the Brits??

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Syzygys, Aug 28, 2009.

  1. mike47 Banned Banned

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    The Brits are okay as long as they do not follow the US......:shrug: .
     
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  3. vslayer Registered Senior Member

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    what an absolutely retarded law. knives are utilities not weapons. daggers or swords i could understand regulating to some degree, but how the fuck would i have eaten, or done my job prior to acquiring a fake ID if i wasn't able to buy kinves.
     
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  5. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Does this cutlery fall under the law?

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  7. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    This moronic law just shows what happens when you let the busybodies have their way and ban guns. You think they'd be satisfied, but no. They need something to bitch about, so they move on to knives. What next? Rocks? Sticks?
    Are you saying a 17 year old can't buy a hammer in the UK? Or a crow bar?
     
  8. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    Did anyone bashing the Brits here even bother to check that there actually is a law against selling cutlery to seventeen year-olds in the UK? That this isn't just one store with an overzealous and misguided policy? Now I'm no expert in legal affairs so maybe I've missed something in this jungle of acts and amendments, but I'm still finding this:
    At fifteen in the UK you're still required to attend school and you're more likely to feel deprived over beer and the right to learn to drive than knives.

    This is a pretty dumb argument. Even if this is actually true, you'd have to establish a causal relation - eg. that youths went out and got knives because the government took their guns away. And even if you establish that, what are you claiming? That the UK would be better off with a gun culture on the streets instead?

    To the Americans here: I don't know what things are like overseas, but Brits and Europeans overall don't have this obsession with their survivalist "right" to own lethal firearms that you seem to. I was living in Scotland when the ban on handguns was enacted, and we didn't exactly have to turn in the family handgun for the simple reason that we didn't have one. I didn't know anyone who did, and I don't exactly remember any major organised protest against it. The ban probably only affected a minority of the population and I think it's safe to say that, by and large, handguns aren't being missed in the UK. Parties would be including "we'll give you back your guns/rights/whatever" right after "we'll let you keep the pound" in their campaigns otherwise.

    At the moment I live in Belgium and I honestly couldn't tell you if private ownership of handguns is legal or not here. I've never bothered to find out. It's simply not something we're preoccupied with here. Europe isn't America, guys.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2009
  9. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Well, did you? But yes, it is apparently the law...
     
  10. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    How do you think I got that quote?
     
  11. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    It amuses me to remember that when I was in grades 6-8, I (and several of my friends) took Bowie knives to school. For those not familiar with the Bowie knife, it usually has about a ten inch blade shaped like some machetes and was used as both a utility knife & a weapon 150 years or so ago.

    We whittled & played a game called mumbly peg. No teacher ever worried that we would do damage to anybody & we never considered using them when a fight got started. When we got to grades 9 thru 12, most of us became interested in girls and no longer carried the knives.

    It is not the weapons, it is the attitude. Today, it would probably be dangerous to allow anyone to carry such a knife to school. In the good old USA, a 7 year old girl was recently expelled for bringing a small pair of scissors to school to do origami or some such activity. Zero tolerance laws are a wonderful idea. They keep people from using judgment.
     
  12. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    1,398
    IMO, part of the problem is the pressure of having 60+ million people shoe-horned into a country that's smaller than New Zealand. What they need in Britain is mass emigration, so that the population drops.
     
  13. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    10,342
    People, a very few people at that, might want that, but they aren't going to get a Firearms Certificate granted by the local Police, if when asked, they say they wish to procure a firearm so they can shoot burglars.

    The only valid reasons for possessing a firearm in the UK are for sport, hunting, or pest control.

    Not true, there was actually a dip after the legislation was passed, but as there is absolutely no correlation that fact isn't relevant. See, in the UK, before amendments were made to the types of handgun we were allowed to own, there were only 250,000 registered owners of handguns, give or take. As these had to be kept locked in a gun safe, which had to be bolted securely to a wall, in a place not visible from outside the property, with the ammunition locked in a separate compartment, these guns were NEVER used for self defence. Not were people allowed to carry them in the street, only in locked boxes, unloaded, to or from licenses shooting ranges. So, given that the population of the UK is 60,000,000, that makes it a 0.41% chance of a burglar breaking into a house that kept handguns, and as they were not used for self defense, that wasn't ever going to be a deterrent. Most burglaries happen around 15:00hrs, statistically, when householders are out at work, btw. Remembers, guns don't kill people, especially guns secured in a locked box, unloaded, while the guy with the keys is at work.

    Of course, all of the above is only relevant to burglaries of property, and bears ZERO relevance to street crime, which you appear to be convolving.

    More guns in the UK would not make knife crime lower. It appears you are inferring some correlation, but the stats from the USA which show higher gun homicides, and higher murder rates over all completely shoot your argument in the foot. Fewer weapons mean fewer crimes, it really is that simple.

    Anyway, that's enough correction of your ignorance for now.
     
  14. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    Why do teenagers need to buy cutlery? Until you are 18, you can't live alone, without the consent of your parents, so while they are giving that consent, they can buy their kids some cutlery as a house warming present.

    Of course, the law isn't designed to stop kids by buying tableware, but to stop them from buying _ANY_ knife, and using it for nefarious purposes. It includes kitchen knives because kids who can't go out and buy a 'Rambo' knife might then go out and buy something that is actually designed to slice though flesh and bone and really do some damage. While it might seem that cutlery is an extreme (and it's rather abstraction to absurdity, as this law isn't aimed at cutlery) is also stops kids from buying steak knives, which could be used as a weapon, and frees store keepers from having to decide exactly which products it think's it's OK to sell. It's simple, and requires no interpretation, and is not a limit on the freedom of a child, as they have no reason to be buying knives anyway.
     
  15. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I never thought butter knives were dangerous before. The most I ever use them for besides spreading is as a makeshift screwdriver. Never crossed my mind to use them for stabbing, but then again I'm not a delinquent.
     
  16. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    25,817
    first butter knives and then screwdrivers and pencils I bet. I wonder if nail guns, electric hedge clippers, and chainsaws are on the 'need ID to buy' list.
     
  17. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    Being stabbed with pencils hurts.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2009
  18. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Why they need to but ANYTHING? Well, maybe the home cutlery set got rusty and their parents sent them to buy a new set.

    Or their parents have an anniversary and that is their present.

    Or.... but you already got the point.

    P.S.: It could be a good British law to make kitchen drawers lockable. Just in case the teenager is too lazy to go to the mall for the cutlery set...
     
  19. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Must not have got the correct one, because there was an age discrepancy of 2 years... (picture 18, quote 16)
     
  20. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    That's what I was thinking too. What do teenagers/children actually need to buy themselves?
     
  21. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    You are missing the point entirely. The law was designed to stop children buying lock knives, 'Rambo Knives' etc, but just also happens to cover cutlery, so there are no loopholes, no slippy definitions, no ambiguity. It therefore covers cutlery.

    A kid in town that gets into a rumble is unlikely to go home and raid the kitchen for weapons. They were more likely to go buy a knife and then use it, and discard it. That is what this law addresses.

    But if you want to criticise an attempt to lower street crime you are free to do so, but only if you can come up with a better solution.
     
  22. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    No, your right, a kid who gets into a rumble will not run home to get a knife, he will already have a knife from home on him.
     
  23. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    Therefore your picture takes precedence over the amended Criminal Justice Act excerpt I copied right out of the UK Statute Law Database? Is it really so unlikely that maybe the store owner misunderstood the extent of the law in question?
     

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