Covering for Their Own Failures, U.K. Officials Blame Violent Crime on Access to Knives

Politicians who’ve dropped the ball inevitably see the solution as reducing people's freedom.

The United Kingdom is a case study in what a country looks like when instead of targeting criminals or addressing the incentives for crime, the powers that be obsessively focus on tools criminals might use and tighten the screws on an entire society, innocent people included. That's how the country degenerated into a surveillance state that prevents its citizens from carrying the means of self-defense and punishes them for saying anything the authorities consider provocative. After a murderous attack by a violent, radicalized assailant, politicians have decided the problem is access to knives.

Ignore Our Failures, It's About the Knives

"Time and again, as a child, the Southport murderer carried knives. Time and again, he showed clear intent to use them," U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote in a piece for The Sun about Axel Rudakubana, who admitted murdering three girls and injuring others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year. "And yet tragically, he was still able to order the murder weapon off of the internet without any checks or barriers. A two-click killer. This cannot continue. The technology is there to set up age-verification checks, even for kitchen knives ordered online."

What Starmer mentioned but glossed over is that Rudakubana was three times referred to a program intended to divert people from radicalization and terrorism before authorities lost interest in him. At the time of his arrest, he had a copy of an Al Qaeda training manual, which led him to being charged and sentenced for terrorism. He also possessed the deadly poison ricin that he'd manufactured himself in sufficient quantity to conduct a mass attack.

Rudakubana was a human bomb waiting to go off. But Starmer focused not on officials' failure to pay attention, but on knives—edged tools that are among humans' earliest and most important creations.

"Online retailers will be required to ask for two types of ID from anyone seeking to buy a knife under plans being considered by ministers to combat under-age sales after the Southport murders," reports Charles Hymas of The Telegraph. "Buyers would have to submit an ID document to an online retailer and then record a live video or selfie to prove their age."

It's difficult to see how an ID check is going to stand between those planning mayhem and tools first crafted 2.6 million years ago in their most primitive form and still used by people every day. My dentist forges knives in his backyard for fun. One of my nephews turns files into knives on a grinding wheel. Scraping an appropriate material against a stone will give you an edge and a point. ID checks don't seem like a barrier to people with bad intentions and the ability to make ricin in their bedrooms.

A Case History in Ridiculously Restrictive Policies

This is why the U.K. strikes many Americans as the reductio ad absurdum of policies that demonize objects rather than targeting bad actors. Opponents of authoritarian laws ask: What will the authorities do once they've made firearms difficult to legally acquire, and crime continues? Will they ban knives?

The answer from the U.K., which already has restrictive gun laws, is yes, they will ban knives—or at least impose access and carry restrictions and consider forbidding blades to have points. The result has been a black market in smuggled and illicitly manufactured firearms that will inevitably extend to knives. Harmless people are now arrested for having Swiss Army knives in car glove compartment or for possessing locking knives on the way home from jobs that require them. And the country's crime problems continue to grow.

That's bad enough, but U.K. authorities, like those elsewhere, also prefer to surveil the entire population to detect anything they could call a danger to public order, rather than focusing on specific individuals harming others.

"There are now said to be over 5.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK," according to Politics.co.uk. "Surveillance footage forms a key component of UK crime prevention strategy," but "the proliferation of CCTV in public places has fueled unease about the erosion of civil liberties and individual human rights, raising concerns of an Orwellian 'big brother' culture."

The British government also monitors online activity to an extent that Edward Snowden deemed it "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy."

That surveillance turns up comments, jokes, and rants authorities just don't like. "Think before you post," the government warns people. "Content that incites violence or hatred isn't just harmful – it can be illegal." But the authorities enforce a broad definition of unacceptable material. People have been arrested for dressing as terrorists for Halloween, for making intemperate online remarks, and for just getting things wrong when posting on the internet (they'll need a big paddy wagon for that one).

Doubling Down on Authoritarian Laws

So, the U.K.'s creeping knife restrictions fit into the context of a government that would rather crack down on an entire society than address individuals who pose threats and laws that help to breed violent behavior while discouraging self-defense.

Axel Rudakubana, as mentioned, was considered at-risk for becoming radicalized and violent. He slipped through the cracks when government officials lost interest in him, and he did what everybody feared.

But the main danger isn't terrorism, it's run-of-the-mill violent criminals.

Discussing the U.K.'s crime problem, University of Leeds criminal justice professors Toby Davies and Graham Farrell wrote last year that the "likely explanation is the illicit drugs market, which has become more competitive and more violent in the last decade." They went on to endorse restrictive knife laws and increased surveillance of the public with metal detectors, but a more sensible explanation would be removing the incentive for criminal gangs to battle over drug markets through legalization.

Britons are also forbidden to carry weapons to defend themselves. Incidentally using found objects for self-defense is allowable, but people can't so much as possess pepper spray with the intent to protect themselves. Britons have served long prison sentences for shooting home invaders.

Of course, criminals and terrorists don't really care what the law says. That leaves the main impact of the nanny/security state falling on people who intend no harm but want to speak freely, live without Big Brother's scrutiny, and defend themselves from the results of the government's failures.

Like all of us, Britons deserve a better, less intrusive government. That their officials are now in a frenzy over knives should be a warning to the rest of us of just how bad the state can get when it uses its own failures as excuses for extending its authoritarian reach.