British Medical Experts Campaign for Long, Pointy Knife Control - New York Times
This is not satire. When American Supreme Court Justices, such as Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, start waxing eloquent about how we in the US should start learning from the wisdom of foreign law and policy, consider examples like this one. The UK has very strict gun control laws (of the sort many American liberals advocate), and their violent crime rate is soaring. Answer? Knife control.


The authors of an editorial in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal have called for knife reform. The editorial, "Reducing knife crime: We need to ban the sale of long, pointed kitchen knives," notes that the knives are being used to stab people as well as roasts and the odd tin of Spam.The authors of the essay - Drs. Emma Hern, Will Glazebrook and Mike Beckett of the West Middlesex University Hospital in London - called for laws requiring knife manufacturers to redesign their wares with rounded, blunt tips. The researchers noted that the rate of violent crime in Britain rose nearly 18 percent from 2003 to 2004, and that in the first two weeks of 2005, 15 killings and 16 nonfatal attacks involved stabbings. In an unusual move for a scholarly work, the researchers cited a January headline from The Daily Express, a London tabloid: "Britain is in the grip of knives terror - third of murder victims are now stabbed to death."