To think all knives including religious ones should be banned, after what happened to Henry Nowak

A Swiss Army knife is legal provided the blade is under three inches.

You don’t need to justify carrying such a knife.

(Just don’t carry it as an offensive weapon).

Nah. When someone wants to stab someone, the law doesn't usually bother them.

I don't know if this would be appropriate or not but if the followers of that branch of Sikhism have carrying these knives openly as part of their religion , why can't they be fake? Just rubber ones, like from films?

So who is going to police this ?

Off MN, in the real world. I learned that the whole reason the kirpan is the novelty size it now is, is because when the British (that's "us" to a large number of posters here) occupied India they decided that their decree overrode religious expression and insisted the kirpans were novelty size. Not quite sure what that adds to the debate, but it does rather illustrate that this is hardly a 2026 - or even 1926 issue. Rather puts modern discussion about foreign countries sticking their nose into British affairs into perspective.

Guns have one purpose - to kill. There is no other use for them

Knives, as is abundantly clear from this thread, have 1001 legitimate uses by all sectors of society. The most lethal blades used solely for killing are already banned as is my very useful foraging knife which I already cannot now carry outside legally.

Knives don’t kill people, people kill people type thing? I think in general we ban / control things to make it harder for people to kill people. Otherwise we’d be seeing the sort of mass shootings that are prevalent in the U.S.

Its alrrady illegal to murder people. Banning knives wont make any difference.

Years ago I always had a Swiss Army knife in my handbag. It was so useful in so many ways. The actual blades had a multitude of uses from cutting up a Camambert on a picnic to opening a parcel. And of course there were the other tools such as scissors, tweezers, the tiny screwdrivers and one tool that was the perfect size for unclogging a Tippex bottle.

Sadly, I haven't felt able to carry one for years. There are loads of good reasons for carrying such a useful tool and it should be possible to deploy common sense to distinguish between safe and legitimate use and a threat. But seemingly nobody is prepared to deploy common sense these days.

Sikhs have a martial, saint-soldier tradition that dates back centuries and is a core tenet of the faith. The Sikh regiment is one of the most decorated military units in the world. The martial tradition is embedded in their religion, culture, music, history and literature. Rubber, plastic and imaginary kirpans really wouldn’t cut it.

In all the time that Sikhs have been living in the U.K, no one has been murdered by a Sikh kirpan. 50,000 knife crimes in the U.K. last year, and not one involved a kirpan. More people have been killed by football hooligans in football matches. Doesn’t mean we should ban football.

This Vikram Digwa person was a deranged psycho. He stabbed Henry and then filmed him for an hour trying to get away. Then he lied. He had his family lie.He lied throughout the court case. He was a throughly despicable human being, but he was a lone actor. All Sikhs should not be collectively punished for his actions.

Your last sentence sums it up perfectly!

Knives are very easy to hide on your body/in your belongings. It’s not like there are people walking around the streets proudly waving their knives around in the air to make it easy for the police to spot them and arrest them 🙄

Unless people think that the police are going to start searching random people on the streets for possible hidden knives then seriously, what’s the point of introducing a ban on carrying knives?

People who carry knives for genuine reasons are not the kind of people who are going to use them to murder people.

The people who carry knives with the intention of killing people will not give a shit about a knife law. It will not act as a deterrent to them in any way at all.

I hope @AlphaApple and the other posters who say no-one needs to carry a knife, read your post, @TunnocksOrDeath.

Like most Londoners I travel a lot by public transport, so have carried a new kitchen knife home from the shop multiple times.
I bake and have frequently taken sharp knives to work so people can cut slices.
I travel on public transport to sport competitions where I often need a stanley-knife for tapes, cables and ties to rig our equipment.
I camp & hike; so I keep (and use) a penknife for multiple small jobs while doing that.
A full ban on carrying knives is totally unworkable - how would you police it anyway? It is so easy to just stick one in a sports bag and walk down the street with it, that there's a vanishingly small chance that anyone who actually wanted to stab someone would be caught before it was too late.

I don't know if this would be appropriate or not but if the followers of that branch of Sikhism have carrying these knives openly as part of their religion , why can't they be fake? Just rubber ones, like from films? If it's always in a sheath then it wouldn't make any difference? But maybe they'd say then it's not a proper one so it doesn't count?

But anyway I think open carrying of anything that even looks like a knife isn't a good idea as it could cause social unrest. And normalise weapons. So really they should only have them when doing specific religious ceremonies.

Yep.

Absolutely.

When it comes to evil individuals, no “knife law” is going to stop them from killing another person if that’s what they want to do.

And no law is going to stop then carrying knives either,

No one needs to carry a knife capable of injuring or killing someone. I don’t give a shit what their religion says.

Sikhs can choose to adapt to modern society or accept that people will be suspicious of them, following Henry Nowack’s death.

And how is including more knives in the ban going to impact knife crime. People aren’t accidentally stabbing each other. Do you think they will suddenly stop it?

Humans are no different from any other animal in many ways. They are violent, selfish and will take what they want from someone else if they can.

Anyone who believes otherwise is naive. Bring your children up to be ‘kind’ or whatever but lurking under the surface is that instinct whether or not they give in to it

People can and do legitimately need sharp, pointed knives, @DiscoBeat - chefs and cooks, for example. Try finely dicing an onion or cutting up a butternut squash with a butter knife.

I think until males have been eradicated (or they are only allowed to be kept as pets in cages) nothing is going to improve the statistics surrounding violence/rape/murder.

Whilst they are free to roam the planet it will always be an unsafe place regardless of what laws are implemented.

Make the knives rounded and blunt

I carry a Stanley knife for work, as do many others I work with. It’s part of my tool kit. What do you suggest I do with it?

Or bringing home a knife they’ve just bought, @Soubriquet.

There still needs to be thought given to what men have access to here.

It makes sense to remove that weapon the perpetrator used, and ik it wasn’t the small version in your post.