I had thought this debate was about violent crime, civil liberties and specifically the problems which knife related incidents have within society. And although we do indeed have a plethera of violent gun crimes I related that we too share in the knife related crime problem. Not really sure how to proceed from here…

On the one hand, the iconoclastic anarchist in me says you are correct: any diminution of personal liberty is a restraint. The US has as many hang-ups on that one as anywhere else. Every society has its peculiar taboos: the US seems to have peculiar problems in matters of alcohol and bedroom-activities.

On the other hand, the UK doesn’t slaughter its innocents with firearms. Over recent years, the annual homicide rate from firearms is somewhere between one in every million inhabitants and one in every two million inhabitants. Even the red-top sensational tabloids had to invent a “surge”in gun-crime by including slight wounds from air-rifles. I leave it to you to compare the US figures.

Nor does the UK export its killing culture: did I not see the Mexican Ambassador to the US, earlier this year, complaining that the availability of guns brought in from the US was fuelling the drug-wars in his own country? That’s Mexico,for heaven’s sake!

Finally, don’t go bragging about the second Amendment. You got it from Henry II’s Assize of Arms of 1181. A statute passed in the first year of the rule of William and Mary (normally cited as I W. & M. st.2. c.2), which I suspect applied also to the American colonies, provided for “a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression”. Except, of course, that “freedom” applied only to protestants.

I would also point out that your rules which make it illegal to even have a pocket knife on you don’t seem to be a cure all answer to violent crime problems. So I don’t see how introducing regressive policing measures will in and of itself help the problem. And I speak as someone who lost a friend to a stabbing at seventeen and having one of my best friends sent to prison due to a knife fight.

I hate to quote movies but I always like the line from Natalie Portman from one of the new Star Wars prequels (and I paraphrase loosely) in which she noted that, “so this is how liberty dies, to the sound of applause”. Things like civil liberties are usually never that popular once one goes beyond the very thin veneer which our states apply to students in schools. While the feel good factor is an important part in any policy we must remember that it is only a part and not nessecarily the most important one at that. Making people feel safer, even if they aren’t is no reason to undermine civil liberties. Indeed it is one of the worst reasons I can think of.

The generality of those carrying weapons is not likely to respond honestly to the question, “Is that a pistol/knife in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” Hence stop-and-search, or deploying metal scanners, is the next requirement.

Does it reduce knife- and gun-crime? I don’t know. Does it make me feel a bit safer? You bet. That was essentially my (rather trivial) point.