Imitation Samurai swords are to be banned after a few well publicized attacks by people using them.
Yep another pointless knee jerk law. Sure you can make the argument that why would someone want a samurai sword, which sort of misses the point. The ban is of itself utterly pointless, and I shall point out why:
The genuine swords "of interest to collectors and enthusiasts" are not to be banned. But the copies make of cheap metal are to be banned.
So should your attacker be using a fake weapon he/she will fall fowl of the new law and if your attacker just happens to be a "collector" then I can but assume that New Labour will then reword the law to cover the genuine swords. Not that a ban will actually stop someone tooled up with a sword genuine or not out to attack from attempting to skewer you.
Anyway my point is that almost anything can be used as a weapon. This is a ban for its own sake, a knee jerk law. A reaction to sword horror stories in the tabloids. What the law makers miss is that it is not what you are carrying but what you do with it that is the important point.
Wandering about in public with a sword out is illegal. Oh and it may have escaped the law makers notice but killing people is also illegal. Yet people who set out to commit murder will according to their "logic" be stopped by another ban.
No one is talking of banning hammers and there has been many cases of those being used. They might as well talk of banning kitchen knives, or potato peelers for all the good this will do.
Maybe if the police had not been reduced by this government to little more than another branch of the civil service obsessed with stats and pointless targets, whilst a criminal underclass is largely free to go about their business. After all we have all seen with the recent spate of gun killings here in the UK how unsuccessful the ban on fire arms is...
Tags: Swords, New Labour, Cool Britannia
.
2 people have spoken:
Like yourself, i feel the ban is a total waste of time. As you say, anyone who wants to hurt someone else will find a way to do it.
The ban will only serve to make the lives of legitimate owners increasingly difficult.
The ban on handguns has made it so that the only people who own handguns are criminals.
As a prison officer, i see the mentality of violent criminals every day. They will attack each other with anything from plastic cups to batteries.
To exempt only swords made in japan is going to make practicing sword based martial arts prohibitively expensive, and effectively kill it off in this country. The average martial artist cannot afford to spend up to £3500 on a sword. Most of us use swords made in china, that are of equal quality. These swords are much cheaper and tend to be around the £500 mark.
The details of the ban have not been made public yet, but the wording of the exemptions are, genuine swords made in japan and swords of interest to martial artists.
We can only hope that this statement means that practical, non japanese made katana's will also be exempt from the ban.
True they might as well ban pointy sticks for all the good it will do...
Post a Comment