"There is never a reason to carry a knife"? The knife is one of the most universal tools in human history. There are hundreds of reasons to carry a knife, which is why everyone everywhere has typically done so.
Self-defense is a valid reason, for that matter. The collapse of order in your city, Mr. Khan, is a more than adequate reason by itself. But for goodness sake, don't try to sell me on "never." I carry a knife everywhere, and I find it endlessly useful. Other people who have neglected to carry a knife very regularly ask to borrow mine.
Why don't you try establishing a civilization in which you don't have to ban ordinary useful tools in order to have peace and good order? The British used to know how to do that.
Amen , Brother Grim.
ReplyDeleteMy father gave me my first pocket knife around 6 or 7 years old, IIRC. It was just the standard issue for boys then, a Barlow pattern with a large and small blade. Was it ever useful! I have had a knife on my person every day for 50+ years, and probably use it a dozen times a day.
A knife is the fundamental human tool.
They are turning England into a giant padded cell.
Did you see the photo of a "Weapons sweep" the English cops posted recently? One pair linesman pliers, one pair needlenose pliers, one file, smooth pattern 8", one screwdriver #2 phillips, one screwdriver flatblade, small.... I am not making this up, as Dave Barry used to say.
I don't carry one when flying, which is a nuisance because I generally need one at my destination. It turns out those claws at the end of my fingers aren't quite sharp enough to open packages. No doubt Khan will ban them anyway.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.trendhunter.com/trends/stone-age-swiss-army-knife
The UK is no longer a serious country. Do not look to it for anything anymore.
ReplyDeleteSolution: have TV crew + police go to the household of Hizzonah Da Mayah and confiscate every knife in the kitchen.;
ReplyDeleteThis is a silly argument. Back your way out of the rabbit hole and let Mayor Khan continue flushing himself.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad thing to see, the formerly great UK reduced to this: People arrested for defending themselves from being murdered in their own home; the internet heavily scrutinized 24/7 by Law Enforcement seeking to arrest on suspicion of IncorrectThink; First guns, then knives being taken from the hands of the law-abiding due to the actions of the lawless; Young girls being groomed, exploited, and sometimes murdered while Law Enforcement steadfastly gazes away to avoid being accused of racism. I wonder what other doomed experiments of social deconstruction will we see, before the vast societal achievements of the Empire are erased in the name of its many lesser sins?
ReplyDeleteJam is a reason.
ReplyDeleteI really thought that spate of "we need knife control" articles that kept popping up on my feed were dark satires.
ReplyDeleteThe photos under the hashtag #weaponsweep are really amazing. Some of them are parodies, but most are not. (Example: photo of a large haul, mostly kitchen knives, a couple of nail clippers, a pair of Fiskars, a sharpening steel, a fork with a purple plastic handle... seriously, British people?)
ReplyDeleteKitchen knives, gardening tools, the contents of someone's toolbox, an xacto knife that apparently fell out of someone's pocket a couple of years ago... all accompanied by the proud declaration that these ordinary items of everyday life have been "safely disposed and taken off the streets".
Police are evidently spending a fair amount of time prowling yards and going through parks for these "weapon sweeps", while London's murder rate has reached alarming proportions (in addition to the usual sky-high burglary rate and the odd rape grooming gang).
There is cause for optimism for the government workers. Life is full of useful items. Compare the UK to the Gaza Strip. There's much work to be done for many busy hands before they get down to banning rocks.
ReplyDeleteJaed, you ain't kidding. One of the authentic tweets from Regents Park police showed that they seized a pair of needle nose pliers and a pair of linesman's pliers in one haul. Those are weapons?
ReplyDeletea pair of needle nose pliers and a pair of linesman's pliers in one haul. Those are weapons?
ReplyDeleteNever watched Marathon Man, did you? I'm waiting for the dental--I mean, Dremel--drill bits to be confiscated, too.
Eric Hines
You can kill a man with a file! (Albeit kinda slowly.)
ReplyDeleteI was wondering what's going to happen when someone there figures out rocks can be used as weapons. Police going through parks and yards and removing all the rocks? Demolishing brick walls? Self-righteous tweets from the mayor that there's never any excuse for having another brick in the wall?
I mean, it's funny, but it's also frightening in its revelation of a fundamentally insane mindset. "Insane mindset" makes a poor mix with "monopoly of violence".
Well, their conviction that they _ought_ to have a monopoly on violence is the key source of this insanity. The principle itself is bad. It invites tyranny.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of it in terms of one of the definitions of government: an entity which has a monopoly on the use of violence. (That there is an exception for self-defense under circumstances in which the state can't defend you, such as an immediate threat— well, probably doesn't go without saying when we're talking about modern-day Britain. Unfortunately.)
ReplyDeleteI understood your reference; it's a phrase that originates, I think, with Bodin and Hobbes. It was more famously used recently by Max Weber. It's that very political philosophical principle I meant to criticize as bad. (The fact that Hobbes endorses it does nothing to counter the claim that it invites tyranny.)
ReplyDeleteRather, everyone has a legitimate recourse to violence in appropriate circumstances. Self-defense is one of these, but not the only one; stopping a crime in the absence of the police (or, for that matter, assisting the police in their presence to stop a crime) is another.
More important for our purposes, though, the right to overthrow and replace a government that has turned tyrannical entails a rejection of that principle. So does the right to resist an unlawful use of government force.
The principle is exactly backwards. The state borrows whatever power to use force it has from us. Wherever the state fails, and for whatever reason, we recover our power because it always belonged to us.
Wherever the state fails, and for whatever reason, we recover our power because it always belonged to us.
ReplyDeleteI see nothing to disagree with in this.
The case of overthrowing a tyrannical government does not seem inconsistent with the principle, since such a government has forfeited its legitimacy.
However, we don't (for example) try and punish criminals; we cede this to the government. Similarly with war. Does this not illustrate that a legitimate government necessarily has a monopoly on these forms of violence, indeed is defined by that monopoly?
No; the government doesn't have a monopoly in either of those cases. In terms of trying criminals, it is a power that is built around the jury function. The state can (or rather should, since tyrannical states lack juries) do nothing without the consent of ordinary citizens. Citizens retain the power of arrest, too, and provide witness without which the jury will not consent to punishment in most cases.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of war, try winning a war without the support of the people. For one thing, they'll stop enlisting in the army; for another, they'll start turning out politicians at elections if they support the war. Or, even more, they'll start an insurgency at home that undermines the war effort. If the war is genuinely illegitimate, all of this use of force to resist the state is legitimate.
So I maintain that the principle is just wrong, even though it is a principle that underlies much of modern political philosophy.
Indeed. As in economics, with violence, government merely brokers the deal; it can do nothing without the people's consent and active participation--not even a tyranny can continue when it crosses a threshold the people set, however tacitly.
ReplyDeleteNorthern Korea is an exception that illustrates my blanket claim: that people seems too physically unhealthy to mount any resistance to anything.
Eric Hines
I think we may be talking past each other, a bit.
ReplyDeleteWe agree that the government derives its powers from the rights of the people. But we choose to exercise those rights, if you will, exclusively through the government in some cases. (For example, the right to try and punish derives ultimately from the right of self-defense, but it's not legitimate to go outside the judicial system—to conduct vigilante justice—unless the government is not functioning or has otherwise lost its legitimacy.)
I don't think we ever exclusively yield our right to use force to the government; it's always present, even when the government is working perfectly. (E.g., stepping up to help a cop stop a crime; serving on a jury to authorize the government's use of force).
ReplyDeleteI think the principle is just wrong. Even vigilante justice can't be punished by the state without authorization from other citizens on a jury. The jury can also choose to authorize the action ("jury nullification"). They have every right to do so.