Should knives with points be banned?

[OonaStubbs]

All the recent attacks have been through stabbing, why not ban pointy knives and just sell knives with rounded ends? Or at least heavily, heavily restrict the sale of pointy knives to those who have a legitimate need for them, have them branded with serial numbers and prevent re-sale etc?

I see. I did the laugh emoji. Not because hating dogs is funny, but the craziness of the op

How will I do my mire poix??

Headbutting can be dangerous as well, so I'm campaigning for mass beheading 🪓

@Mansionscoldandgrey you’ve got my vote 🗳️

We used to buy all our cook's knives from TK Maxx in store ... they stopped selling them about 18 months ago.

No, this is not a troll thread.

Yes you can used serrated edges as weapons but you can't use them to stab.

Yes you can use sharpened toothbrushes to stab but it's harder than using a pointy knife.

Surely anything that reduces stabbing deaths is worth a try?

You can use anything to stab if you use enough force.

The issue is not the availability of knives... the issue is why young people feel the need to carry them.

I can't help thinking that this is going to be yet another of those things that makes things much more difficult for everyday law-abiding folk going about their mundane business, whilst having no effect on the violent criminals, who will always find a way.

After all, various dangerous drugs are not just restricted but illegal, and loads of determined people don't seem to have much trouble getting hold of them.

I think the thing that gets me is that it's purely going on age and nothing else. Nobody is bothered about whether somebody who wants to buy a knife is a violent psycho seeking to kill people (if this can/could be known in advance) or just somebody who wants to prepare food - there's no distinction made.

Even with the new changes that are going to be made to the law, if this man simply waited a few months, he would be perfectly fine - as though a knife criminal is only ever going to be 17 or under, whilst knife criminals aged 18 and over simply couldn't exist or pose any kind of threat.

Stricter controls for ordering online, yes.
Quite shocking he wasn't asked for ID.
I get id'ed in Tesco buying butter knives, paracetamol& energy drinks(they don't make me show it but they have to authorise it on the til)

@DalzielOrNoDalzielAndDontPascoe well yes exactly

The fact he had such a violent past and the authorities did f all about it is the biggest issue

And also this his Father stopped him doing something similar but did he report him to police or not?! If not he has blood on his hands too.

Yep, I got an age check thing when buying teaspoons. Oh, and when buying a ruler, was checked I was putting it in a bag. A ruler?!

Only if you're banning screwdrivers, box cutters, sharp sticks, scissors, chisels, drills, and probably a hundred other things.

If you read books about prison (really good one by a female prison guard) or watch any prison tv shows its actually quite amazing the things people can construct weapons out of. Sadly, where there's a will there's a way but of course it's balancing dangerous people having access to dangerous items with normal people being able to live a normal life.

I dated a guy who worked as a psychiatric nurse. He was stabbed with one that was meant to be rounded and safer.

he explained to me that wounds can be worse from those. The patient in question was then given plastic cutlery. It's horrible to think about- the scar was all I saw and that was terrible. But if someone comes at you in a frenzy, with anything that can be used as a weapon...yikes.

honestly I don't think it would make much difference. If we don't sell any knives anywhere, then you'll have to sort scissors, tweezers, corkscrews etc next. The list is endless.

How the fuck do I get into my watermelons then?

I have been a patient in a psychiatric ward, and maybe anything that would be taken off of a patient on intake (pens were taken from me, and some people had deodorant removed), should be banned in the general public too.

Exactly, they will find a way

Surely anything that reduces stabbing deaths is worth a try?
If you make stabbings impossible (which you won't, because it's not that hard to grind down a blade to a pointed end), people who want to cause death and mayhem will turn to axes, chisels and many other tools with perfectly legitimate uses.

Stop and search was meant to stop stabbing. We had to scrap it, so clearly not anything that helps.

@UnstableEquilibrium There's such a thing as a tomato knife?!?! I've reached the grand old age of 53 and never knew they existed.

I did buy a set of 'the world's sharpest knives' about 20yrs ago after being sucked in by a demo in a supermarket, even they don't cut a tomato unless its the one with a pointy end.

Who knew.

I don’t think they particularly need to be pointy so I agree with you op!

Newly manufactured knives should be pointless

It’s not the poor knives fault, it’s the people that are using them. Best to just ban people, all of them. Just to be on the safe side

The knife tip isn't necessary for a lot of food prep - a lot of the concerns other posters have suggested could be solved by a different instrument e.g. scissors, regular cutlery. Which might be a bit inconvenient but not massively so. And these instruments of course still cause damage if used as a weapon - but not the horrible deep penetrating wounds caused by long bladed knives. Of course knives with rounded tips aren't completely safe - but there is evidence that the wounds generally would not be as severe as they wouldn't be as deep.

Making something harder to obtain or illegal doesn't stop it but does reduce the how often it happens. A good proportion of knife crime is unplanned - anything that makes accessing a sharp long knife a bit more difficult is going to reduce the amount of fatal stabbings. A bit like limiting the amount of paracetamol per purchase has not prevented all overdoses, but has reduced the numbers because its a bit more difficult.

It's not a new suggestion and to be honest I find the evidence behind previous campaigns to do this quite persuasive:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4581871.stm

www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/news/2020/september/experts-say-rounded-tip-knives-could-reduce-violent-crime.aspx

People use knives for crafts too. I do the occasional bit of paper cutting. You can't do that with a rounded edge. I use the same blades that surgeons do.

The campaigns haven't proposed banning anything that is sharp, just the long pointed kitchen knives that are associated with the deepest and most severe injuries. Small knives can still hurt and kill but generally don't have the same association with severe injury because they don't penetrate as deep. Whilst it's quite old the BBC article linked above discusses this in more detail.