quite a few years back now Jack, if it's rellevent?

I dont wat h the news, but i've heard of this "epidemic" and then I heard that 18 people have died in London this year and I just dont see that as a trend, deaths in road accidents is a bigger problem.

I got attacked in London this year by a guy with a baton, if that's rellevent? I can show you the baton too, I didnt let him walk away with it.

Quote from Becky Rose :

18 dead is hardly an epidemic.

18 dead teens in london.

How many other stabbings do you think happen to people over the age of 20 that include non fatal attacks and not only in the city of london?

I know for a fact that Glasgows knife crime makes london look very tame indeed, And lets not forget the other great citys of Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and your 18 dead teens is soon 1000's of knife attacks.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I got attacked in London this year by a guy with a baton, if that's rellevent? I can show you the baton too, I didnt let him walk away with it.

Policemen dont count.

Quote from Bladerunner :

I have nothing to hide..

your privacy maybe?

Quote :

Policemen dont count.

It was 3 BNP.
EDIT: OK, I cant say they was bnp without evidence, let me rephrase:
It was 3 BNP or other neo fascist low life scum.

Quote from Dajmin :

+1 for Becky.

Despite what any victim's parents might say, there is only a certain type of person who feels the need to carry a knife.

Eh I don't really agree. I carry a 2.5 inch flip knife almost all the time not to stab people with it, but to have the upper hand in case someone tries to mug me or threaten me. Most muggings in my area are perpetrated by crims that don't have weapons but think that being threatening is enough to get my money.

Quote from Dajmin :

But someone wrote a book about it so it must be true, right?

Because we live in an entirely blameless society where nothing is anyone's fault?

There's the entire basis of the problem.

I agree with this though

Quote from Becky Rose :

which, lets be honest, 18 dead is hardly an epidemic.

But there also other stabbings that don't make the news, Glasgow for instance must recieve a couple fo stabbings a day, at least. There has also been a couple of stabbings up in Inverness....now for the Highland's this was unheard of 10/15 years back, now we have 2 kids killed this year (all innocent wrong place wrong time) with another 20 incedents alone in the last month (I've got a mate who is a copper). Even now in my home town knife attacks are on the raise.

Knife crime is on the rise, but has been for the past 5/6 years, only now the media seem intrested, that will soon change though when something else take thier fancy.

this was a very intresting read. banning knife's wont fix the problem

i was in quiet a few gang fights in my earler year's and their was rarely a knife normaly just base ball bats and such. after i got a little older and out of gangs is where i seen lowlife's carrying knive's trying to rob people and the few times someone pulled a knife on me and my friends when we were skating or riding they got beat down so hard im not sure they would consider pulling a knife on someone else again.

in short the only way to make these people realize what they are doing is dumb is to make them feel pain and scare them that much they wont want to feel that pain again.

and in australia we have law's against carrying knive's nothing over 6inch is allowed. 2 months ago my friend got his throught slit by a 4inch blade laws wont work

Quote :

Eh I don't really agree. I carry a 2.5 inch flip knife almost all the time not to stab people with it, but to have the upper hand in case someone tries to mug me or threaten me. Most muggings in my area are perpetrated by crims that don't have weapons but think that being threatening is enough to get my money.

I urge you to reconsider because:

A knife does not give you an advantage in a fight unless you are mentally prepared to do serious harm.

A knife gives no advantage in a fight unless used to damage organs, or to cause sufficient bleeding for blood loss to impede your agressors performance.

Getting slashed does not hurt. They're sharp, the things just pass right through. Getting stitched up afterwards hurts like buggery mind!

Getting stabbed however does hurt, and thats when serious life threatening harm is done.

Your only advantage in holding that knife is intimidation unless you are prepared to kill.

Then what would happen if you did use that knife and kill somebody in self defence? You would have to live with the fact you took human life for the rest of your days.

You are far better off with something blunt.

Personally I dont carry a weapon. I don't want to hurt anybody out of choice but I have been tested with all those difficult questions like how far am I prepared to go and i'm still here. It doesnt take a weapon to beat off somebody holding one, you just have to ask yourself the same questions - how far are you prepared to go?

To me somebody else carrying a weapon is an indicator that i'm likely to win any hostile interaction.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Yeah, yeah, let's all have a good laugh at the "yank," even though he's from the south and shouldn't technically be called a yank.

Quit yer moaning, hick :P

Quote from duke_toaster :

B sounds a bit sensible, but A and C are not permitted under international law.

Well, they're more vents of frustration than real suggestions Though, the more I think about B the more I think in some form it would be a good idea. Kids, especially teens, are very sensitive to peer pressure and I think ultimately it's through peer pressure that this issue has any chance of being resolved. However, I do feel you need to use stick as well as carrot. It's not enough just to talk about educating, not least because education alone will take too long to solve the issue. Those that are already of that mindset are highly unlikely to change their behaviour through education attempts, the young however are much more likely not to start that kind of behaviour if educated well in the first instance. So it will take decades for education alone to work, which is no good for the victim that gets stabbed today or tommorrow.

A quick comment on deterents in general. I don't believe, (and the evidence conclusively proves) that severe penalties work as a deterent. Why you ask? simple, the vast majority of people about to engage in a crime, (especially violent), don't take the time to stop and think about the consequences of being caught. Even if they did, they don't believe they are going to get caught anyway. That said, I strongly disagree with "letting off" for those that are caught.

Think of this scenario. You're in your car and you need to park somewhere. Problem is everywhere around is controlled parking and you risk a £100 fine and potentially getting your car towed. What do you do? What goes through your mind? If you're anything like me, (and I suspect most are), you think. What are the chances of a warden coming by in the next X minutes? Can I risk it? In other words you assess the risk of being caught, if you think you wont be caught then the whole issue of the penalty doesn't even factor in to it.

Think of this hypothetical scenario:

You need to travel to work by car every day. At work there are two parking bays, bay A and bay B. You're not allowed to park in either at the times you want to park and you have no other parking alternatives:

Parking bay A: Fine of £100 for illegal parking but a 1 in a 100 chance of getting ticketed.

Parking bay B: Fine of £5 for illegal parking, but a chip in your car and sensors in the bay mean you will get ticketed 100% of the time.

Which will you choose to park in each day?

Bay A is 20% of the price of bay B. Personally i'd cycle

Quote from gezmoor :

A quick comment on deterents in general. I don't believe, (and the evidence conclusively proves) that severe penalties work as a deterent.

True. Just look at places with the death penalty. If deterents like that worked, there wouldn't be any murders, but the rates are just as high as anywhere else.

Quote from gezmoor :

Though, the more I think about B the more I think in some form it would be a good idea. Kids, especially teens, are very sensitive to peer pressure and I think ultimately it's through peer pressure that this issue has any chance of being resolved.

Surely it would only work if people knew that they had a knife though. Probably best to install knife arches in more places.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

True. Just look at places with the death penalty. If deterents like that worked, there wouldn't be any murders, but the rates are just as high as anywhere else.

Actually, states with capital punishment tend to have higher murder rates. Only three EU member states have higher murder rates than the USA (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).

Quote from duke_toaster :

Surely it would only work if people knew that they had a knife though.

True, but I suspect many kids that carry often brag about it to give themselves cred.

Quote :

Probably best to install knife arches in more places.

True, which comes back to my point about being caught. IMO the real deterent to crime is the knowledge that there is a high likelyhood of being caught, (and that when you are you actually get punished in some way), that needs to be true before we'll see any significant drop in crimes.

Well some people use knifes as tools. We have an allotment and regularly use the most feared machete...its a very handy tool.

Speaking of knives, a car came in to work today for an MOT, and just casually placed inside the drivers door compartment was a 7 inch serrated knife, we had to nominate who would tell the bloke his car failed on the MOT

My teacher used to carry around a foot-long machete in the door sill of his Multipla.

After that I never had the balls to tell him what an ugly car he had...