Retailers will be required to report suspicious or bulk purchases of knives, and those caught selling blades to under-18s will face tougher sentences under a new raft of measures to clamp down on young people’s access to weapons labelled Ronan’s law.
Who?
Named after Ronan Kanda, the 16-year-old killed in Wolverhampton in 2022 by a teenager carrying a 22in ninja blade he had ordered online, the new laws are part of a raft of anti-knife crime plans announced by the government on Wednesday.
So, not a teenager carrying more than one knife? So why the bulk purchase thing?
A government-commissioned review has found that age verification for buying knives online is “a huge vulnerability”, and that 15 illegal dealers had sold more than 2,000 knives in an 18-month period.
Metropolitan police commander Stephen Clayman, the national lead for knife crime who led the review, said: “I could go to a legitimate dealer and buy 300 knives, and the dealer has no obligation to tell police that someone’s just bought that, or the fact I bought five knives each week for the last 10 weeks.
Well, no, of course not, you idiot! Because what's more likely, that they bought them to sell off individually to Shaniqua and DeWayne to settle beef in the ends, or that they are supplying chef's shools and catering colleges? It seems we hadn't quite scraped the bottom of the 'knife crime idiocy' barrel after all....
“We need to plug that and understand who is buying these knives. Because they are then selling indiscriminately to children and young men, predominantly men, because there are no age verification safeguards.”
How many of them? And how many are not? So you're going to start investigating legitimate business to catch the one, maybe two, people misselling? That doesn't sound likr a good use of time to me. As a wise woman once pointed out:
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “It is horrifying how easy it is for young people to get hold of knives online even though children’s lives are being lost, and families and communities are left devastated as a result.”
And how horrifying is it that they don't have to, because there's multiples in every kitchen in the country. Gosh. Maybe it's not the method, maybe it's the person, Yvette?
Ronan’s mother, Pooja Kanda, said her son “didn’t stand a chance” against the weapons. “How was this allowed? A 16-year-old managed to get these weapons online and sold them to other people,” she said.
“We welcome the government’s plans to tackle the online sale of these weapons, and the proposal of a registration scheme, which will continue to implement stricter measures on the online sale of bladed articles. We have so much work to tackle knife crime; this is a much-needed beginning.”
Because we all know they aren't going to stop at this idiocy...despite being very well aware of where it's going to lead:
The prison sentence for people caught selling weapons to under-18s will be increased from six months to up to two years, and both the individual who has processed the sale and the chief executive of a company face being charged. The measure will be implemented even after an official review found that longer incarceration had driven the country’s justice system to breaking point, and that successive governments had prioritised longer prison sentences over cutting reoffending.
We really are governed by morons, aren't we?
1 comment:
How easy is it to fashion a knife or machete out of a piece of steel and a few bits of wood for a handle? I could knock one up in half an hour in my workshop. It might not look very great, and it wouldn't be tempered steel, but it would be more than enough to kill someone. Hell even a screwdriver can be turned into a perfectly functional lethal weapon with 30 seconds on a grind wheel.
Even if every legal method of obtaining knives and similar weapons were closed off, those who want them will get something that does the job. Knives have been around for millennia, anyone can make them, its like trying to stop people having access to bows and arrows, or spears.
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