Responding to the Government’s announcement that certain machetes and ‘zombie knives’ may be outlawed, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said:
We all want to see dangerous knives off our streets, but this Conservative government has consistently failed to keep our communities safe.
With crime rates on the rise and so many cases of all kinds going unsolved, it’s clear that this is a party that cannot get even the basics of policing right.
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4 Comments
Existing laws allow police to stop and search for offensive weapons – machetes and zombie knives would already count as offensive weapons if carried in public. The problem is that the police are constrained from using stop and search powers in areas where carrying offensive weapons is a greater issue for feel of being accused of targeting stop and search operations in a racist way. In this context, making machetes and zombie knives will make little practical difference and will only have an impact if such items are discovered during a house search that may have been initiated for some other reason.
This latest attack on knives is just one more bit of publicity for the Conservatives during an election campaign.It has been done a number of times in the past.
Yet another attack on our liberties. When will we stop allowing criminals to dictate what our liberties can be? The crime is assault/murder NOT the ownership of the weapon. If we continue following this abhorrent and flawed logic then we are one Christmas turkey carving incident away from having our kitchen knives banned too.
The ownership and possession of a weapon in public is a threat to our liberties and even more so when they get into the wrong hands. That’s why there are so many shootings in the US, too often in the news nowadays, where gun ownership is out of control. Stop and Search is also an effective tool in preventing knife crime if used proportionately and as part of intelligence led policing. Even the mayor of London approved the use of such powers in areas where there have been major incidents and wide scale disorder.