Medical Police: Adults can't be trusted with sharp objects

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The Link

Doctors' kitchen knives ban call
A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.
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.

The researchers said a short pointed knife may cause a substantial superficial wound if used in an assault - but is unlikely to penetrate to inner organs.


In contrast, a pointed long blade pierces the body like "cutting into a ripe melon".

The use of knives is particularly worrying amongst adolescents, say the researchers, reporting that 24% of 16-year-olds have been shown to carry weapons, primarily knives.

The study found links between easy access to domestic knives and violent assault are long established.

French laws in the 17th century decreed that the tips of table and street knives be ground smooth.

A century later, forks and blunt-ended table knives were introduced in the UK in an effort to reduce injuries during arguments in public eating houses.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

"The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime.

"We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect."

The NRA and pro-liberty groups in America always used to argue that if guns were banned, the next step would be kitchen knives. The argument was just rhetoric. Nobody really believed it. But today's reductio ad absurdam argument is tomorrow's reality in a world where the proponents of absurd ideas are more than willing to push those ideas to their logical conclusion- if the public lets them.

Canada and the northeastern American states tend to be pretty nanny-ish. But even there, if medical bureaucrats made a proposal like this they'd be laughed out of public life. WTF is happening in England ?

England was the homeland of pretty much all our modern ideas concerning limited government, individual rights, and above all, the belief that grown men do not stand before the State as so many children before a parent. But this in fact goes beyond treating adults like children; no parent of emotionally normal children feels the need to keep the cutlery out of reach once the kids reach age 9 or so. Will the citizens of England really allow themselves to be reduced to the status of retards, prisoners, and mental patients, and their nation to be turned into a giant psychiatric prison ?

 

[Keebler Elf]

I think the thrust of the argument (no pun intended, HAHA!) is that long bladed knives shouldn't be as readily available to kids. Too many kids carry chef knives to school for "protection" and it's just not necessary. I dunno what the law is already, but making long-bladed knives only available to those over the age of 18 doesn't seem like that bad of an idea to me. In fact, I'd support a total ban of chef knives since they really aren't that necessary (except to chefs!), but I realize implementing that would be next to impossible so restricting the age of the purchaser is good enough for me.

The bigger crime would be ignoring the findings of the study: that knife-crime is increasing dramatically (probably b/c firearm restrictions have been so effective).

 

[Truncador]

The article published in the BMJ pointedly ( ) calls for an across-the board ban on the knives. They even cite the regulations of Louis XIV's police-State as an enlightened example for a modern democracy to follow- which is very instructive, and unusually forthright...

(that low-level rumbling in the background is the sound of Algernon Sidney and hundreds of Commonwealthmen spinning in their graves...)

The bigger crime would be ignoring the findings of the study: that knife-crime is increasing dramatically (probably b/c firearm restrictions have been so effective).

If knife control proves to be anywhere nearly as effective as gun control, the violent crime rate there should go up a few fold or so following implementation (a criminogenic effect is a type of effect...).

 

[Magister]

This doesn't go nearly far enough. I won't feel truly safe until the government has the fortitude to ban sticks and stones (lest they break my bones) as well.

 

[Truncador]

Now that the medical police have taken away a standing avenue of parody of their violence-prevention efforts, I'll provide another- bearing in mind that there is no longer a clear dividing line between parody and forecasting in this area. They will evaluate sexual assault rates in light of their policy-formulation scheme, which as we can see seeks to govern the innocent the way the guilty are punished, and to make it impossible to commit crimes. All Englishmen, they will reason, ought to be chemically castrated; after all, what with immigration and modern in vitro fertilization techniques, nobody needs to have sex anymore

 

[langeweile]

I propose a ban on cars. Thousands of people get hurt and killed driving them....BAN THE AUTOMOBILE..........

 

[happygrump]

I got scratched by a neighbour's cat once. I propose that we ban cats too. (they keep shytting in my garden as well)

 

[Truncador]

I propose a ban on cars. Thousands of people get hurt and killed driving them....BAN THE AUTOMOBILE

Don't laugh just yet. Once again, it's impossible to ridicule these people; they do it for you. The medical police, particularly in America, have been lobbying for onerous regulations on motor vehicles for years. At one time they lobbied Congress to ban cars that could exceed the speed limit. They lobby against driver's ed. courses on the grounds that people who take them are more likely to get driver's licenses, thereby increasing the number of car drivers. In short, they're completely insane; what else could you expect from a movement that was spearheaded by Nader

 

[Peeping Tom]

This is hardly a surprising development. Europeans suffer from a bizarre fetishism of reverence of the high priests: in this case the medical police. England will yield over this and it won't stop there either. Perhaps the medical police will incorporate in this measure an attack on diet: it stands to reason that if cutlery can be removed from the kitchen, then so must other implements. Watch them adopt legislation banning private cooking - all foods must be bought in the form of a shake where all undersiarble foods are not permitted - to prevent themselves from harming themselves greatly.

 

[Truncador]

This is hardly a surprising development. Europeans suffer from a bizarre fetishism of reverence of the high priests: in this case the medical police. England will yield over this and it won't stop there either. Perhaps the medical police will incorporate in this measure an attack on diet: it stands to reason that if cutlery can be removed from the kitchen, then so must other implements. Watch them adopt legislation banning private cooking - all foods must be bought in the form of a shake where all undersiarble foods are not permitted - to prevent themselves from harming themselves greatly.

If it were, say, France or Germany it would be less suprising. There are powerful historical traditions of State paternalism and police government there. The English, though, historically tended to reject paternalism and the Continental theories of "medical police" you alluded to that went with it. Indeed, it was an uphill battle just to enact a system of public health regulation there at all; the father of public health in that country was regularly assailed as a would-be "Prussian minister", and the establishment of a civilian police force was denounced as an intolerable infingement on the right to arms. It's as though England's national character is mutating into something unrecognizable

 

[Peeping Tom]

Not mutating: Has mutated. This was already clear before WWII - look at the rise of socialism in those years. Add to this the lunacy of "needing to look more European". No wonder they lost an empire without opposing said loss. This is consistent with a political structure with one populist chamber wielding absolute political power in opposition to the absolute power of princes - after a time when the princes all but abdicated from the use of their powers.

Is it any surprise that Tony Blair is hell bent on ceding English sovereignity to the EU in any manner possible, even if it means signing a demand for surrender scrawled on a piece of used toilet paper?