Police show up at the scene of a triple stabbing that left one man dead at the Parsons Green Tube station in London. (Photo: PA/The Independent)
Knife-related crime in London has risen 34 percent over the last year, according to a new report from the BBC.
An incident involving a blade or sharp object takes place, on average, every 14 minutes in the United Kingdom. Of the 37,000 incidents in the past 12 months, more than 13,000 offenses were committed in London.
“It’s scaring people because things are happening so often, to the point where people are fearing for their lives every single day,” one teenager told the BBC.
Another man said his motorized scooter was stolen by a group of teenagers who held him at knife-point.
“My money has gone, my bike has gone, my job, everything,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The uptick in knife-related attacks is part of a larger rise in violent crime in the UK. Earlier this year we reported on the increasing number of acid attacks in London, and police say gun-related crime has risen by a staggering 27 percent in the last year (though some question the reliability of these statistics).
But even while violent crime increases, law-abiding Londoners have few options for self-defense. Guns are entirely out of the question, as handguns are illegal to own anywhere in the UK. Knives could provide small means of self-defense, but it is illegal to carry a knife with a blade longer than 3 inches, and anything shorter than 3 inches must be folding.
The helplessness of London residents likely explains the BBC’s focus on police action. When private citizens are barred from acquiring effective means of self-defense, they must rely on law enforcement to keep them safe.
SEE ALSO: Britain Sees Rise in Acid Attacks after Crackdown on Guns
The BBC report also reiterates the age-old fallacy that blames the weapon—rather than the person—for violent crime.
In the video that accompanies the article, the reporter asks an anonymous knife-carrier why he chooses to carry a weapon.
When the man explains that he carries a knife because he’s seen friends being stabbed, the reporter responds, “But if you decided not to carry a knife then that’s one less problem on the street.”
The knife, apparently, is the problem. It’s not that people decide to harm other people, whether with knives, acid, or guns. Weapons, according to this logic, are always bad, even if law-abiding citizens use them for self-defense.
Meanwhile, Londoners must face every day the possibility of being assaulted, robbed, or killed, and they can’t do anything about it.
Its easy to blame the weapon. When will we realize that world wide we have a people problem and not a weapon problem?
Dear England,
Just ban knives, duh.
Signed Dianne Feinstein
………Hahahahahaha!!,……Ban all Knifes, including dinner knifes!!,…..Hahahahaha!!,….
AGAIN,
Where’s Blue Dog? 🙂 LOL
Tj
Every time knife attacks happen people scream for more guns, not being smart enough to understand that more guns would mean more gun attacks, which are invariably more deadly than knife attacks. The Brits are adult enough to know that the wild west is not a nice place to live. There will always be violent crazies, the only sure way to limit the body count is to limit the weapons available to the crazies.
sorry but the law breakers will always get knifes or guns or acid and you have no choice but to stand there and take it because you can have want you should to protect yourself? no thanks i’m just glad i live where i have a fighting chance to stop who ever it is trying to kill me and not be another victim, thank you very much.
“The Brits are adult enough to know that the wild west is not a nice place to live”
Well, their policies apparently weren’t “adult enough” to save them from that fate, because it appears the Wild West is exactly what Great Brittan is becoming. Good luck living in a world where good law-abiding people receive no more respect or regard from their government than the average terrorist!
What’s worse is that if you defend yourself with ANY weapon and the perpetrator is injured, or worse, killed, YOU will go to prison for homicide, assault, etc. Doesn’t matter who the aggressor is or what his weapon. This has lead to the British themed “Run, Hide, Tell (DIE)!” saying touted by the Bobbies.
All that, and INCREASED crime rates over 10X that of the US… how’s that for safety!
yes, isn’t it sad but true how this is just that and yet you still have the people there who think it is ok. talk about mind control. they be programmed for so long they nothing else. they still think that a cop with a whistle is going to protect them. why do you think over there they so many camera’s, not to help any one to keep from being hurt but simply to hope and catch the bad person after they have killed someone. you hear from people over there how safe it is from guns because they aren’t allowed to have them but you have their own cops say gun crime is on the rise there. so who is telling the truth?
There is an obvious solution given what we have hearing from the left – Out Law ALL Knives!!!!
After outlawing knives, don’t forget the hammers, forks, sticks, clubs, shoes, belts, and etc.
Reply to “common sense”
I believe the article is wrong about the 3” knife carry being legal. My wife has relatives over there. We usually see them every 10 years or so but last time we were there, I was told that you could NOT carry ANY knife at all! We left the relatives house and he had to take the pen knife out of his pocket and leave it home because he did not want to be arrested!
live here you have no means to protect yourself or live where you have the God given right to protect yourself? not to hard for me to figure that out, thank God for America land that i love.
Don’t care what race they are. one of the points that I gleaned from this article is that all the pundits point to Englands lack of firearms for reduced gun crimes. Yes, that is correct but they are being replaced with other violent acts. Please alert Piers Morgan and his ilk to this fact. Man has been killing man since Cain & Abel, using rocks, knives, spears, clubs, arrows, swords, fertilizer (Murrah bldg OKC for those who have forgotten), pressure cookers (Boston Marathon) and lately vehicles. It’s not going to stop any time soon.
Pierce Morgan’s show was shit canned in 2014. He went back to UK to continue his British stupidity……where it belonged in the first place.
Edgar, there are likely some Brits that can’t stomach Pierce either. Poor them.
What can law-abiding British citizens do? Nothing, you’re fucked!
Last time I was in London was 1994. The hotel, very nice one by the way, was run by people named Patel from India. The man who tailored my suit was from India. The small grocery nearby was run by Lebanese people. The newspaper stand was run by a guy from Ghana. All the taxi drivers were from the Middle East. I sat in for a shared ride with a black man from Rhodesia who told me he lamented the fact that London had fewer Englishmen in it every day and he was considering moving to the country side because of the crime. He was thinking of Brighton.
Crime was pretty bad in some places back then. Too many people packed into a tiny place. I don’t think its so much the ethnicity as it is poverty, drug abuse, and a lax criminal justice system that allows hardened criminals out quickly.
and yet we’re told by the people their we have it all wrong in the way we do things here and the way we live. give me America any day. someone tries to harm me and i can fight back, there they have no chance at all. fight back and you go to jail, sued by your attacher and they call us crazy.
This is what happens when a government ignores a problem, and that problem is two-fold. One, the inability to speak English. Two, excusing kids for not going to school or disrupting class. They need to make the parents of these kids stand in court when their kid(s) misbehave. Even the most worthless parents do not want their lives interrupted by facing someone who can put them in jail.
There is more crime in London now because there are more non-whites. Do those two blacks in the picture above look like Englishmen? Pointing this out in the UK is now a crime.
PC before truff now a days.
the dnc– party of pedophiles- sex abusers traitors criminals [clintons for sure]blm terrorists need the scumbags to stay in power. Get the filth hooked on the government titty for democrap votes later
Are you f’n serious im sure if they divided up all the knife related crime in the UK the majority would probably be by whites but in close2nd black people then middle eastern in 3rd and all the other ethnicities could all be grouped together with their percentages so low. But with your logic we can say the crime has gone up %1,000,000 since white people showed up to the america’s and those commas are right there not supposed to be decimals.
White people don’t have a monopoly on mass shootings, and you know it.
So what your saying is that you DO NOT know anything about race, religion or ethnic background when it comes to those crimes….Nor do you know anything about crime in America. Why didn’t you just not write anything …..and save us from your stupidity.
Coming to Commiefornia next year!