It's definitely a study in the absurd and I highly recommend reading it.
Group of Doctors in Great Britain Call for Ban on Kitchen Knives
(If this is for real, please let me know because I'm having a hard time believing it.)
Nearly anything can be an effective weapon, if wielded properly.
But since the UK has strict gun laws, the only things left to ban are knives. It won't happen, but it is humourous.
This looks like the Jack Williamson story "The Humanoids." Recommended reading. To protect us in Asimov-like ways, the robots make sure we stay out of the kitchen and shut down home workshops, but provide us with play-dough so we can amuse ourselves.
Why not? Why shouldn't they be monitored or regulated?
It seems a little out there in some ways, and I don't know if I would support such legislation in Canada, but it is probably an issue that should at least be addressed.
Big kitchen knives are useful for some things. Do I really need to list them all out, or will you trust me?
Stupid idea for law. Won't pass. People have always been and always will be idiots. If it's not knives, it will be yo-yos next. It's not the weapon, it's the person. Period.
Unless you're talking about nukes... then it's all about the weapon.
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited May 27, 2005).]
quote:
Why not? Why shouldn't they be monitored or regulated?
I guess it's just the association I have with kitchen knives. They were used often in our house and I use them all the time in my cooking now, mostly for vegetables. To have a ban on something that, for me, is in near constant use just seems absurd.
Like HSO said, anything can be a weapon. And a person who's angry enough will find something to use: a knife, a rock, an airplane (the big ones are great for smashing into buildings). Maybe one day we'll all wake up and discover hands have been banned because they're used to strangle people. In fact, that would make a neat story (I'm serious).
I'm sorry if I've offended anyone here. I'm getting off my soapbox now.
(btw, wbriggs, thanks for mentioning that story. It sounds interesting.)
[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited May 27, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited May 27, 2005).]
It won't pass, but I'm not surprised someone is calling for a ban. Might even be a good idea . . . until they come out with the intelligent knife that can tell the difference between a live human and a dead cow.
Almost anything can be a weapon. There's simply no point at all in trying to prevent people from having access to everyday items that are potentially dangerous.
Why don't we all just pad the walls of our houses and remove all items from them? Heck, even a piece of paper is dangerous. Those paper cuts can lead to gangrene.
You take a five pound chunk of frozen ground beef, and want to remove about two pounds of it without having to thaw out the whole thing or resort to keeping a bandsaw in your kitchen. What are you going to do, particularly if you don't have me there with a chinese cleaver? Sorry, but the man says you can't have a butcher knife in your kitchen.
Ultimately, the typical physically violent criminal tends to be quite able to maim and kill the average human without resorting to a weapon at all. The entire progress of modern civilization is dependent on attenuating that linkage and giving the average abilities to fight the superior.
But no, this idea is not fundamentally more silly than most gun laws. It's a bit more newsworthy, because most people think that kitchen knives are somehow fundamentally different from guns, but the basic concept isn't any different.
Survivor, do you cook? I mean, cook seriously? I'm a bit of a foodie and can't imagine working without my 10-inch butcher knife. This has nothing to do with butchering meat, strangely, but lots to do with chopping, dicing and mincing. Most chefs I know say that it's their favorite tool.
And yes, if I were going to use a kitchen knife to inflict lethal injuries on a human aized animal, I would definitely use the cleaver. I could butcher a whale with that thing, I really could (not that I would).
There are two points here. On the one hand, there are only a few things that you really need a long, pointed knife to do around the kitchen. But on the other hand, a point is not an essential element of allowing a knife to inflict the most serious possible wounds. Removing most pointy knives would be possible, albeit horrendously expensive. But it wouldn't accomplish anything.
I say, let the market work. If points on kitchen knives were really all that useless and dangerous, they would have gone the way of points on diving knives long ago.