I just want to say that I think the banning of weapons (seriously? ninja swords?) is superficial; Fighting against gangs and knife crime would involve taking steps to support families, support education and make drugs less criminalised (so people don't have to get into all sorts of fuckery, or can get clean without worrying about being arrested). I know there's a statue called the knife angel which was made to raise awareness about this issue, and if you look closely at it, there's stuff like *screwdrivers* and the like in the angel. Banning weapons isn't going to stop violent crime, but supporting people will :/ It's a bit of a lip-service to me, innit? Like 'oh but we stopped people being killed by ninja swords :) we did a good thing' rather than committing to supporting people's mental health or providing youth services or helping stop homelessness, or y'know. stopping the media from inciting violent crime by blaming minorities, but what do I know :P
Thatâs pretty much it, and itâs where the conversation about gun control in the US is slightly different.
Knives and tools like screwdrivers have other utilities and itâs not feasible to put controls on them.
Labour could address the underlying issues that give rise to knife crime but are choosing not to in favour of this pretendy scaremongering on âninja weaponsâ born out of the 1990s.
74% of violent knife crime is done with kitchen knives (source: Essex violence and vulnerability unit). Even if Labour somehow manages to get all of le scary knives off of the streets (which they wonât because itâd be a colosal waste of money) thus would accomplish approximately fuck all because people would just switch to kitchen knives.
Itâs a great example of how inefficient austerity style finances is: instead of spending money to try and tackle the underlying issues, which would save money and lives longterm, they piss away a smaller (initial) sum of money virtue signalling how much they care about the issue
