A pointless idea, or not?

An interesting idea - although getting the legislation through without looking like a nanny state may be awkward.

Personally, I don't use the points of knives in cooking - mostly I use a cleaver. Others may have a different opinion on that issue.

I guess the main thing they're targetting is the convenience of a large pointy object with which to poke at your intended victim. I'd be surprised if there is a single kitchen in the country without something resembling a carving knife that is really easy to get at - i.e. in an argument, someone can quickly grab and use it and inflict great damage. If that convenience was taken away, then the likely injuries sustained by whatever *was* convenient to grab would be less severe. Other stuff like hammers are usually not likely kept in the house, but instead in the garage or shed - thus making them a lot less likely to use in the heat of the moment.

Not sure if legislation is the way to achieve this - maybe reduce VAT on round ended knives.

I use sharp long pointed knives in my kitchen all the time, I have an axe and various pointy sharp objects in my shed, my lawnmower has blades which could easily be utilised as a horrendous weapon. Even my knitting needles could be misused not to mention climbing equiptment.

Yet I somehow have managed to resist the psychotic impulses to run amok in public murdering people.

You cant legislate the problem away like this, where will it end, are we going to take away from the public everything which is or may be dangerous in the wrong hands?

If people desire to cause each other harm they will find ways. Those who choose to carry weapons will always find ways to obtain such weapons legally or otherwise even if it means creating them.

It is about time government made real attempts to tackle the source of the problem (which succsesive governments have created) instead of trying to stick a plaster over an arterial wound.

As someone said - you should see the wounds the Chinese can inflict by hacking with their knives without points instead of stabbing.

Maybe we should all go back to a pre tools era and live in caves.

I think it is an absolutely worthless idea that will never work or get any kind of public support. The problem I have with this is that anything that you can think of, in the wrong hands, could be used as a weapon. What is next? Take away pencils from school children because we are afraid they are going to stab someone else? If someone wants to hurt someone, they will find a way to do so. Hammers, nails, fish hooks, and everything else you can think of can be used as a weapon in some sort of way. I know that this is an idea to try and alleviate voiolent crimes, but this is not the way to go about it.

There seems to be a huge difference between grabbing a knife from the block during a heated argument and taking a kitchen knife with you when you go out for the evening.
One is crime of passion, the next clearly pre-meditated. If every knife in the land were to be destroyed the people who commit these crimes would simply find another weapon.
After all, Sleeping Beauty still got pricked by a needle in spite of the precautions!

The argument against knives is clear -- but then, shouldn't Japanese chopsticks be banned also? They are tough, smooth, and pointed. A strong man could jam one into the chest and have it stick out of the back.

Millions of people have these in their homes. As my wife is Japanese, we probably have 50 or more in our kitchen. My wife uses only chopsticks to eat; so a ban on them would amount to a starvation sentence. Also, we have several pairs of cooking chopsticks, equally pointy but quite a bit longer than eating chopsticks. If those were banned also, my wife could no longer cook, and I might starve along with her.

There are plenty of items in any home which could be grabbed in a moment of passion, and used as a weapon. Screwdrivers are an obvious example; and many people keep two or more screwdrives (regular and Phillips) in a kitchen drawer.

And in the hutch in many dining rooms, there is the sharpening steel for the (evidently soon to be banned) carving set. That is long, narrow, pointed, and has a comfortable handle. An ideal stabbing sword. Does that have to go also?

As I look about my kitchen, I spy the broom. Do you know how fast a broom handle can be broken across the knee, producing a very large and very sharp splinter. With that, one could kill a wife or husband even if they were a vampire.

Then there are my umbrellas. We keep two of them close to the back door. In case you never noticed, there is a spike sticking out of the top; and they have strong, comfortable handles. Possibly one could not stab as deeply with an umbrella as a bucher knife, but the thrust could nevertheless be just as fatal.

Then we have the cleaver. You can't stab someone through the heart with a cleaver, but a good whack will split a skull right down to the Adam's apple.

The notion of banning knives, because they can be seized and used as weapons to commit great harm in a moment of passion, is just absurd. There is no end to the alternatives one can find. Trying to ban kitchen utensils for everyone, because a few lunatics might use them as lethal weapons, is utterly senseless.