No one with a shred of humanity could fail to sympathise with Leanne Lucas. On 29th July 2024, she was hosting a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance and bracelet-making workshop in Southport when Axel Rudakubana walked in and started attacking the children, killing three of them. In trying to protect the children Ms Lucas herself was stabbed five times.
When people suffer terrible things, they often throw themselves into searching for a means to help others avoid the same fate. Ms Lucas thinks she has found her cause. The Daily Mail reports:
[…]
After her horrific experiences, the teacher had assumed there would be tighter controls around kitchen knives and was shocked to find there weren’t.
She said: ‘Every time I learnt something new, I’d think, “That doesn’t sound right. Surely there are laws in place so that couldn’t have happened.” The more my eyes have been opened, the more I’ve been able to formulate an idea.’
She does not seem to be entirely clear in her mind whether that idea is a cultural change or a legal one. If my only source had been the BBC’s article on the same topic, I would have thought she was only advocating that people voluntarily adopt a different style of cooking that employs knifes with rounded tips rather than traditional knives with sharp tips.
This idea will not work. The sort of person who would take her proposed pledge to commit to exchanging their pointed knives for round-tipped ones could have a nuclear weapon in their cutlery drawer and still be no threat to anyone. But I have no objection to her proposing it as a desirable cultural change. I do have an objection to her proposing to ban pointy kitchen knives, as if the existing ban on murder lacked only this finishing touch to be effective.
As I said in an article for the Libertarian Alliance written five years after another massacre of children:
When the parents of the Dunblane children spoke there was every reason for the world to hear about their terrible experience. There was never any particular reason to suppose that their opinions were right. In fact their opinions should carry less weight than almost anyone else’s should. This point is well understood when it comes to juries. It goes without saying, or, at least, it once did, that guilt or innocence must be decided by impartial people. Decisions of policy require the same cast of mind as decisions of guilt and innocence.
We want to comfort those who have suffered unfairly. One way you comfort someone is by agreeing with them, by allowing them emotional license for any outburst. In the ordinary course of life and death, though, even as we say, “yes, yes” to a distraught person we discount – not ignore, but discount – the content of what they say. Phrases such as “He didn’t know what he was saying” or “She was mad with grief” illustrate this. Then, after a while, they are expected to get back to something like normal.
[…]
However it came about, nowadays we give the bereaved parents at Dunblane, the survivors of rail crashes, and similar groups both the license to say anything due to the distraught and the intellectual consideration due to experts. They can’t have both. Not because I’m too mean to give it to them, but because the two are logically incompatible. The press and public have handed power to those least able to exercise it well.
Brilliant. Thanks Natalie.
This is why I get a bit cynical when being asked to support “Cathy’s Law”, or “Susan’s Law”, or “Adam’s Law.”
Performative virtue-signaling has expanded our crim statute books for no good reason.
I’ve referred to it as the “more illegal” theory of criminology: The idea that criminals are only willing to act illegally up to a certain limit, and thus we can stop crimes by pushing their illegality out beyond that limit.
But … as if the existing ban on murder lacked only this finishing touch to be effective. is brilliant, and I’m going to use it myself.
Although I like your point, I think there is another side to it. Even though survivors are not especially filled with extra wisdom or somehow experts, what they are is witnesses that can expose aspects of society that are often hidden. By telling an emotional story they can bring dry statistics to life. Was it Stalin who said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. So, I think to BobbyB’s point attaching a victim’s name to a bill does give it a bit more substance and connection. We can see this in the US with some of these stories that bring to light the consequences of illegal immigration, by naming the people who pay the ultimate price for Biden’s fecklessness, or evil agenda depending on who you believe.
However, this also has a major downside in that elevating the dry statistic to an emotional connection to a real person, it oftentimes overstates the statistical significance of some criminal action. For example, the likelihood of people being injured by a pointed kitchen knife is, in reality, miniscule. The Dunblane shooting was so shocking because it was so rare, and it often leads to over legislation on the most miniscule of threats. A lot of very bad and oppressive law is made on the principle of “if it saves just one life.”
After all, if you banned all cars that would save a lot of deaths from road traffic accidents, even though the cost to society (including extra death) would be gigantic.
I’ve always said, you quite obviously don’t give Mothers Against Drink Driving the final say on legal alcohol limits.
I’ve yet to see a “Mothers against rape gangs” group.
Perhaps the fear of repercussions for mentioning the subject, including from the legal system, has been a deterrent.
The mere idea that pointed kitchen knives can be banned by the state is so insane, so totalitarian in scope, that the UK must be approaching a psychological & political criticality.
But Mothers Against Rape Gangs in England would be a great name. “MARGE today called for a ban on pointy knives”
I’ve just checked my kitchen drawers and I possess no less than 14 pointy knives (prep, bread, etc) plus six steak knives with sharp points and Rambo like serrated edges.
It’s as if they knew that saying ‘Don’t look back in anger’ wasn’t going to cut it anymore so chose some other bullshit to distract the public.
”And the silly people sing: “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
And the morons sing and sway: “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
I can assure you I will look back in anger ’till the day I die”” – Morrissey, Bonfire of Teenagers
It is modern British (and, indeed, international) attitude – moving further and further away from seeing humans as human beings (people) with free will (moral agency) to seeing humans as non sentient – as lacking any moral control over their passions.
So, for example, if a human has access to a pointed knife they will use it to stab people – and if the knife has no point a human will use the knife to slash the arteries of people – thus, the attitude holds, knives must be banned, and no human can be expected to defend people subjected to attack.
No right of self defense – and no moral duty to defend other people. That is very much a mainstream position now – and not just in Britain. A few miles away from me (in Peterborough) a women was jailed for 17 years for defending herself with a knife – she had been raped previously and the man who was raping her on this occasion was also strangling her – but the court did not care about these details, they (the judge – and the appeal judges) were just outraged that the women had a knife and used it in self defense to kill her attacker.
Ditto if someone has a car – they will use the car to kill pedestrians in large numbers (it has been done), therefore cars should be banned. Apart from, of course, the state – which may have cars, and do what it likes with them.
This political and cultural thinking has philosophical roots – specifically in what a human is deemed to be (are humans free will moral agents, persons, or not) and whether there are deemed to be any natural justice limits to state power.
Remember, in relation to this particular case, people were sent to prison for saying the murderer of the three little girls was a follower of Islam – the murderer claims to be a follower of Islam and had been researching Islamic (or “Islamist” if I must) terrorist tactics – but this was held to be irrelevant by the courts.
Meanwhile an official of “Hope Not Hate” (parts of which get taxpayer subsidies) claimed on social media that evil anti Islam people were throwing acid into the faces of Muslim women and Muslims should fight back – he was lying. The Gentleman was not sent to prison, or indeed even prosecuted.
Another Gentleman, a Labour Party Councillor, told an angry mob (a mixture of leftists and Islamists) that they should “cut the throats” of right wingers.
Has he been sent to prison?
Has he been sent to prison?
I draw your attention to the recent case of the now former Labour MP for Runcorn who beat up a constituent including several punches while the victim was still on the ground.
His original sentence of ten weeks was clearly too harsh as just three days into his incarceration it was suspended and he walked free.
I think we have enough laws that are trendy and overkill and marketing-based, and I immediately mistrust any law that needed such a tug on heartstrings for its passage.
I would vote “no” on the “I love cute puppies” bill just out of principle.
@bobby b
I would vote “no” on the “I love cute puppies” bill just out of principle.
You heartless bastard. Sure it has an apportionment of one billion dollars to study the effect of global warming on puppies with a no bid contract to the biggest donor of the bill’s sponsor, and a fifty million dollar fact finding mission to the Bahamas for congress people and staff looking to see the impact of puppies on the welfare of “African Americans”.
But they are so darned cute. How can you send them away. You probably want to send puppies to the gas chambers, right?
A loyal subject of the Crown who, when the perfidy of the “crown” and parliament grew intolerable, once said:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
– Samuel Adams
John – noted Sir.
Bruce – Samuel Adams would not have been shocked by the Christmas broadcast of 2024, I must admit that I was shocked by it. Although it is true that a distinction must be drawn between “the Crown”, the institution, and the person of the King or Queen – who do not write the speeches they read out.
Wonder whether Leanne Lucas has thought to ban tools as well? Anyone with an angle grinder, hacksaw or file and a bit of steel bar can turn out a pointy object, maybe not much use in the kitchen but perfectly adequate for murder.
Oh I expect so. He does sound a bit of a Nazi.
The fans of pointy-knife bans would no doubt consider Suzanna Gratia Hupp to be an example of “Survivors can be wrong.”
“Make it easier to carry concealed handguns? ‘More guns, less crime’? Insanity! INCONCEIVABLE!!!”
@Barbarus
Wonder whether Leanne Lucas has thought to ban tools as well? Anyone with an angle grinder, hacksaw or file and a bit of steel bar can turn out a pointy object, maybe not much use in the kitchen but perfectly adequate for murder.
I don’t think you even need to go that far. Any tool store has lots of pointy objects, chisels and claw hammers come to mind. And it isn’t particularly sharp, but I can assure Ms. Lucas that if a malefactor stabbed someone with a screwdriver there would not be much practical difference in the outcome than if they had used a rather pointier thing. I mean wander round my local Walmart — it is a store of death.