instead of people for what people do.
Police arrested two men last night in connection with London's second teenage murder of the new year . The arrests came amid fresh demands for tougher laws to tackle the capital's growing problem of knife crime.
People, it ain't 'knife crime', it's CRIME. With or without a weapon. Catch the bastards who do these things and lock them up and keep them there.
But they won't do it, because it would mean actually holding individuals responsible for their actions, and their government and chattering class just won't: it would rape their worldview to do so. So it'll just keep getting worse.
And please take note of this(bold mine):
Norman Brennan, of the Knives Destroy Lives Campaign, reiterated his demand for a mandatory five-year prison sentence for anyone who carries a knife unreasonably. His call came as Islington borough police commander Bob Carr called for automatic prison sentences for anyone found carrying a knife.
How much you want to bet that 'unreasonably' will wind up meaning 'at all, for any reason'? It wouldn't make any real difference in the crime rate if they did this, partly because there's a fair chance that anyone who was actually convicted wouldn't spend the whole time in jail, and partly because any honest citizen carrying a knife to open packages or cut line or whatever would be more likely to wind up in prison than, say, actual bad guys.
4 comments:
Yes, cops could get hurt arresting actual bad guys... Especially since their cops are mostly unarmed, and the ones that are armed seem to be nervous nellies who do better at shooting innocent civilians carrying a table leg home from the work shop or running for a train while Brazilian than dealing with gunmen on a shooting spree.
British police ARE armed, they carry clubs and pepper spray.
It's easy to arrest the average joe, he doesn't shoot at you....yet.
"for anyone who carries a knife unreasonably".
In lawschool we called "reasonable" and its variants "Weasel words", as that was the place where the judge could weasel his way to whatever result he wanted.
You can bet that some chav who has a criminal record and gets into many knife fights will be found by some judge to be carrying a knife "reasonably", because he "reasonably" expects to need to defend himself and his "honor". Your ordinary Briton, however, will not have any "reasonable" need to carry a knife, as he has no criminal record and no "reasonable" expectation of needing to defend his honor on a daily basis. The (to us) reasonable expection of the need to defend ones life and property dut to the proliferation of crime is not "reasonable", and the full penalty will of course apply. No suspended sentences here.
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