I'm a wee bit late chiming in on this one, but good God, get a freakin' clue.
A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
The research is published in the British Medical Journal.
The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.
They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.
None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed. {...}
One of my best friends is English. And she has, in the past, spouted off about how appalling she finds the Second Amendment to be. The last time she did this, I had to laugh. She stared at me for a time and then I explained.
"You do know why we have the Second Amendment, right?" I asked.
"No," she replied, after a long thoughtful moment.
I laughed again. "It's because of the English. King George decided it was all right to quarter his soldiers in colonials' houses and, while they were there, they stripped the owners of said houses of all their armaments. Armaments they needed to survive the wilderness. That's mainly why. The other reason is that the Founding Fathers decided we should always have the means to overthrow our own government if the need should arise."
She stared at me for quite some time. Like I'd grown a third head. Her eventual reply, which skipped over my final reason entirely, was, "Well, too bad we didn't take all the bloody things away."
I should probably mention that what brought this whole subject up was that while I was visiting her place in London, we were watching the news and they were reporting that a couple had been stabbed to death in their own home.
I wonder what she thinks about the possibility of her very nice set of Wustof-Tridents being banned. In her own country. Because they're too dangerous.
{Hat Tip: Andy}
Posted by Kathy at May 30, 2005 10:19 PM