Knife Control? Canadian Crimes Trigger Fretting Over Blades.

Once upon a time, gun rights advocates warned
that when the control freaks were done piling restrictions on
firearms, they’d discover that violent crimes failed to evaporate
and so next turn their attention to anything sharp or pointy. After
all, people have committed mayhem on one another with blades ever
since some long ago caveman realized that the sharp piece of flint
in his hand looked like a good fit for an annoying neighbor’s neck.
Well, rest assured that the doomsayers were right: After a couple
of nasty stabbings in Canada, knife control is on the radar north
of the border.

To their credit, though, many people seem to realize that
restrictions on sharp things may be even less enforceable than
eternally pointless gun controls.

Knives are already more intrusively regulated than many people
realize. As A.
Barton Hinkle noted noted earlier this month, “The laws
governing knives can be surprisingly restrictive—and in some ways
even more restrictive than firearms laws.” In his home state of
Virginia, concealed carry permits are available for handguns, but
not knives.

Knives are one of the world’s oldest weapons, and they continue
to feature in violent crimes. In 2011, 17.2 percent of
American homicides were committed with a “knife or blunt
object”—almost as many as were committed with long guns. In

Britain and
Canada, the number is closer to one-third.

On Tuesday, five people were
murdered at a Calgary house party by a knife-wielding man in a
crime police call “the worst mass murder in Calgary’s history.” The
same day, four people were
stabbed at a mall in Regina, Saskatchewan, and a student was
stabbed at an
Ontario high school.

Now Canadians are talking about—you guessed it—knife
restrictions. Edmonton already considered banning “dangerous
knives.” Saskatoon
discussed the same.

In the U.S., a Pennsylvania high school suffered a
horrendous knife attack just last week, leaving 20 people
injured. In contrast to Canada, that triggered little, if any,
serious discussion of restricting bladed weapons. That may be for
the same reasons that derailed the earier Canadian efforts and has
some pundits admitting the limits of of any future legislation:
Bans and restrictions really don’t work, and knives are impossible
to regulate.

In 2010, Glen Luther, a law professor at the University of
Saskatoon,
said about a proposed ban, “How can you ban knives without
coming to grips with the fact that they’re used lawfully by people
from all walks of life?”

Just today, Brian Zinchuk, a columnist for Saskatchewan’s
Battleford’s News-Optimist commented, “The gun kooks were
right. Take away their guns, and people will turn to knives.” He

added:

When the gun control debate was going strong, this came up. Some
gun advocates, in pointing out that registration did not stop
crimes, mockingly said what was next, registering knives?

Well, as horrible as it sounds, they had a point.

The gun registry came and went, and gun crime still occurred,
although thankfully, Canada has not seen a rash of gun massacres
since Ecole Polytechnique and Taber.

What can we do about knives? Not a damned thing.

Knives are the most basic of tools, going back to sharpened rock
and bone. We cannot function without them. We can’t even eat
without them. No amount of regulation, legislation or feel good
campaigns can effectively control knives, although I’m sure someone
is going to try.

Criminologist Janne Holmgren even
told the CBC that the push for knife restrictions is a “moral
panic” and that “sometimes fear drives a lot of legislation,
unfortunately.”

Good thought. We need more like them—or maybe Janne should just
print that on a card and hand it out.

As it turns out, Matthew de Grood, the mass murder suspect in
Calgary used a kitchen knife—one that he grabbed on the way through
the house where the crime occurred.

Some British physicians have a proposed solution for that: They
want to ban
sharp tips on kitchen knives. Yes, that’s a serious
proposal. Well, it’s intended to be serious, even if there’s a
Monty Python-esque quality to the idea of restricting paring knives
lest somebody run amuck.

What’s next? Banning baseball bats?

Probably so. But that will also run into a fundamental problem:
No particular weapon is an indispensable item. Weapons exist on a
continuum of objects able to cause mayhem. Guns, knives, cans of gasoline (as
killed 87 people in the Happy Land arson)—they’re just tools
that can be replaced.

People are the real weapons. When people decide to be dangerous,
they just find tools that will help them do the job.