London Mayor's Office Warns of Death for Children Carrying Knives
As Conservative Tribune reported last week, the city of London actually surpassed the murder rate of New York City, despite London’s gun ban and strict gun-control laws.
The high number of murders in the capital of the United Kingdom has largely been attributed to a surge in knife crime — they still suffer from some gun violence in spite of the gun ban, by the way — which has led to law enforcement’s crackdown on bladed weapons and other items that could be utilized as dangerous weapons.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who in the past has bragged about how safe his city is/was, recently announced a number of measures his administration was taking to address the “scourge of violent crime” in the city.
In sharing that announcement via Twitter, Khan ludicrously stated, “No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.”
No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law. https://t.co/XILUvIFLOW
— Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) April 8, 2018
One aspect of the mayor’s crackdown on knife crime is through the creation of a violent crime task force and expansion of police “stop and search” powers, which Khan had previously rolled back to near non-existence for fears that such tactics were “racist” and discriminatory toward young minorities and immigrants.
The mayor also helped launch a public relations campaign aimed at young Londoners titled, “London Needs You Alive,” which “brings together role models and youth influencers to send a positive message to young people — that they shouldn’t put their lives at risk by carrying a knife.”
The PR campaign is embodied in the following video featuring several diverse young Londoners sharing the reasons why their lives are needed, and ended with a few stating the phrase, “So I don’t carry a knife.”
While it is possible the creators of this campaign may have intended to state something to the effect of “kids shouldn’t risk others’ lives by carrying a knife,” that is not how the actual message came across.
Rather, both the new policy announcement and accompanying PR campaign video catchphrase imply that the simple act of carrying a knife automatically places a young person’s life at risk, as if the inanimate knife itself will somehow compel the young person to stab someone or be stabbed themselves.
That sort of reasoning is in line with ludicrous anti-gun arguments which assert that the mere presence of inanimate objects like firearms automatically endanger the lives of everyone around them, and avoids the root causes of violent crime, such as lax enforcement and sentencing of criminals, reluctance to take down criminal gangs composed largely of minorities, basic cultural clashes or the fundamental fact that some people simply hold evil in their hearts.
But as we all know, knives don’t cut or stab people by themselves, just as guns don’t shoot people on their own.
Furthermore, there are millions of people — young and old alike — across the U.S. and other civilized nations who routinely carry a knife on their person every single day, for the purposes of work or protection, who somehow manage to avoid stabbing someone or being stabbed themselves.
Given that obvious fact of reality, one can only wonder exactly where the mayor of London sees the greatest danger posed to young people from knives as coming from — the actual knives themselves, criminals misusing knives in a violent manner, or in the government’s response to the mere act of carrying a knife.
Considering this is a country that has effectively banned the possession of firearms and acts of self-defense, and is now jailing people for saying the wrong “unapproved” or “offensive” things, that third possibility is actually the most worrisome of them all in terms of individual freedom and liberty.
A previous version of this article ran under the title “London Mayor’s Office Threatens Death for Children Carrying Knives,” implying a deadly intent on the part of the mayor or his government that was inaccurate. The title has been corrected, and we apologize for the error.
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