Friday, February 06, 2009

Knife Wars and government powers.

Statistics released yesterday also show possession-of-knife offences jumped by a third between 2006 and 2008. Other startling figures included:

A third of knife crimes happen in public areas and over a quarter happen in the home.

More than one in six knife crimes occur in shops.

Nine out of 10 knife crime offenders are male and seven out of 10 knife victims are male.

Three out of 10 knife crime offenders are under 20 and one in seven victims are under 20.

Launching the campaign, How Big Do You Feel?, Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy said it was particularly aimed at young people.



That was from the Examiner.


It was with rolled eyes and a sneery tilt I see Dermot Ahern has decided to ban Samurai swords from being bought or imported into the country. Coz you know how folk are always getting attacked with swords, right?
This is not unlike the restricted dog act, knee jerk policy acted on with disturbing haste, mild mannered Germans shepherds, Staffies and Dobermans and Akitas all tarred with the one ignorant brush and now Samurai Swords. Dangerous you see.
Frankly- as I look out across my frozen garden this morning- I'm surprised the government hasn't considered banning ice. Dangerous you see. Or cars, dangerous you see. Or large televisions, I believe more than one child has been killed by them falling this year, dangerous you see. Are they next? Oh say it ain;'t so, the Paramour will be heartbroken.
Year after year after year after year more stupid things are being banned in this country and more iffy powers introduced. The Gardai can search you without a warrant now? Will they be able to come into your home next without one? How about schools? How about we just commit ourselves fully to a government run island where we can told what to wear, what to think, what to do and what to feel. Anyone objecting can be chased by a large white ball down a hill.
The bill will also ban the sale and importation of swords, particularly samurai swords, which have been used in a number of attacks. Mr Ahern said while homicides involving knives doubled from 18 in 2006 to 37 in 2007, they fell to 15 in 2008.
Yes fucking samurai swords are dangerous, but only in the wrong hands. Most Samurai swords I know of are gathering dust criss-crossed on people's living room walls. Why shouldn't they have them? Why not ban Stanley blades while we're at it. I know they're normally used as tools for cutting shit, but hey, they've been used in attacks- probably in way more attacks than swords, I'd like to see the figures on that. Ornaments, bad, tools good? You can be killed by both so where is the logic?
This is claptrap of the highest order. Most stabbings in THIS country are carried out by very ordinary kitchen knives in the hands of very ordinary idiots, usually with too much drink on board ( hey! Lets ban that too dangerous you see). Are we going to ban kitchen knives? There are several knives in my kitchen that could take your bloomin' head off, will I expect the gardai to come a knocking some time soon?
Of course with congestion charges coming and the government cracking down on 'non essential traffic'( who gets to decide what is essential and non essential, why the government) we the plebs will not be concerned with swords and searches, oh no, but we should be, because once again one more pointless rule has been forced upon us and we're just supposed to sit there and be grateful that our betters know what's good for us.
Bollocks.
Enforced stupidity, I am against it.

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23 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

"possession-of-knife offences jumped by a third between 2006 and 2008. A third of knife crimes happen in public areas and over a quarter happen in the home."

Hmm, I've my trusty Swiss on me at all times unless I'm leaving the country. Makes me a knife criminal I suppose, but not a statistic, yet.

11:08 a.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

Criminal! You could kill someone to death with the botttle opener or the teeny tiny scissors and rasp. Rasp attack, you know you wanna.

11:20 a.m.  
Blogger Pat said...

Banitis abounds. Where will it all end?

11:27 a.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

It won't, becasue nobody ever seems to challenge the thinking behind a ban. Like where is the logic in this? So what if samurai swords are dangerous. Lots of things are dangerous, that's life. The dog thing has always pissed me off, because it is demonstrably true that being a certain breed of dog does not make said dog vicious or dangerous in any way. So why are certain breeds of dogs restricted and others not. It's ludicrous.

11:36 a.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

I know what you're saying about the dogs Missus, but some breeds are very agressively territorial and are kept for that reason, without any attempt being made to condition it out of them.

Btw, is my scythe a 'knife', or is there another category for banning agricultural implements like sickles and slash hooks?

11:44 a.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

I completel reject that. Collies and Jack russells are aggressively territorial, yet they aren't on the list, actually most dogs are territorial, how they react to being encroached depends on the owners.
It's a bogus list where breeds are lumped together without any thought to the matter at all. If there is a problem with certain breeds of dogs being owned by certain types of individuals then they should enforce the dog licence law that already exists.

Scythe are curved so are scimitars, so I'm assuming you'll need to be handing that in to your local garda station. If you need to be cutting stuff down you may invest in a goat, but non horned (dangerous)

11:54 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The dog thing pisses me off, though I do think that "dangerous" dogs should be muzzled, purely because I myself am scared of most dogs, my dog, a Labrador, who is the most placid thing in the world until someone comes into the house when I am on my own and then she lets rip, barking her head off, she sounds scary, she's never gone for anyone but I still wouldn't trust her not to in certain circumstances.
A friend of mine has a Staff, when I heard they had gotten one I was scared to be in the room on my own with him, until I realised he was more scared of me (and other dogs which we discovered on a walk one day) than I was of him, total softie.
The knife thing is ridiculous, I have lots of knives, sharpened to within an inch of their life, I have probably about 30 of them, they are for my job, but I could take someone's head off them no problem with any one of them, my Dad carries a Swiss on his person at all times, along with a Leatherman (sooo sharp) and a Maglite, that's for his job too but if he was that way inclined he could kill someone with them or at least do some serious harm, you could kill someone with most household implements if you wanted to, it's all about who's hands they are in, in the case of knife attacks it's the wrong ones. Hands that is.

12:27 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Its always the way - as long as they appear to be doing something, they can get away with doing nothing...

12:35 p.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

The classifcation 'dangerous dogs' is ridiculous, any dog can be dangerous, you can have the biggest slob of a rottweiler or the crankiest intolerant spaniel. Everything depends of socialisation and training. Also I firmly believe ALL dogs should be under control when out, there is nothing more terrifying for a person nervous of dogs, than to have one running directly at them, very unfair.
(Staffies are among the most adorable wiggly softies out there. I heart them so. High tolerance for nonsense too. There is a gorgeous one here that FLINGS itself on its back everything I meet the owner out, waiting for bellie rubs, which naturally i provide complete with high pitched squealing)

You're spot on about the knives, will folk who use knives for work be searched? Tool boxes ransacked. I don't like this search policy either. 'yer honor, I believed she wqas carrying a knife.' Well how convenient.

12:37 p.m.  
Blogger morgor said...

I wonder what the incident ratio of swords is compared to say slash-hooks?

Anyway, when's that ban coming in?

I'll need to stock up on my arsenal...

I wonder does this include scottish claymore swords . . . . hmmmm

1:19 p.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

Get a light saber Morgor, there's not mention of them.

1:28 p.m.  
Blogger daisy mae said...

speaking of the dog thing, they're trying to pass a ruling in montana that no "dangerous dogs" or mixed breeds that include "dangerous dog" will be allowed. should this law go into effect, it would allow the government to confiscate said dogs from shelters and people's homes and euthanize them.

all of this from the state that tried to make miscarriages a felony.

1:29 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FMC I just remembered a hilarious moment in time - I was 17ish on my way home to my smelly student house with my knife kit in my hand, now the knife kit they give you with the knives are shit, as in the knives fall out of them all the time, so there I was walking through Rathmines when the biggest and most menacing one falls out and this old lady comes running after me brandishing it saying "sorry love is this yours!?". People were literally jumping out of her way. Poor old lady, and it was me who was the killer in disguise!
About the dog fear, I have it, I didn't used to, until we got new neighbours with really vicious Golden Retrievers (no really) who would knock me off my bike a lot as a child, ran at me barking at every opportunity and then bit my friends 5 year old brother on the face, and the dog NEVER got put down or the owners reprimanded in any way. Since then if a dog barks at me or runs at me I freak. It's a horrible affliction to have, especially living in the countryside where everyone has a dog and leaves them outside in the garden with no supervision.

1:53 p.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

Daisy Mae, that's barbaric. And also a strange one, I wonder how on earth you could infoce it and waht consisutes a cross breed? If that was the case all mongrels are surely suspect.
Bab, your neighbours were fools and should consider themselves very lucky they were not sued silly.
Oh if a dog ever does run at you don't run. ost dogs who rush out are just making noise. But running makes it worse, and try not to make eye contact, be as big as possible without flapping about. It might save you from being attacked. Especially in a prey driven dog.

2:10 p.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

Hoever, it goes without saying should anyone come running at you with a sword, run away very fast indeed.

2:13 p.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

I have been threatened with menaces by a Rottie because I had the temerity to be in my front garden, after dark.

There was a Rottie curfew and no-one had told me. He was all, "Well, do you Punk, do you feel lucky?" because it was his road, his estate, his parish, his fucking country, as far as he was concerned.

Now another dog might bite me, (and I have been bitten, as a child, while on the public path minding my own business) but the damage they can do is relative to their size. A boot will sort out a Jack Russell. With a Rottie you be lucky to walk again if you kicked one in self defense.

2:35 p.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

Aye, but he didn't bite you, the bloomin' Jack Russell bloody would have. *



* sweeping generalisation.


Of course a bigger dog will do more damage, that's a given. But does being bigger make him more susceptible to attacking? Nope. The most aggressive blasted dog I EVER ran across was a Kerry Blue. Pure unbridled energy coupled with a really deep hatred of just about everything that moved. Owned by a doctor too, although I don't know where I'm going with that.

2:45 p.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

What are you implying, he was self-prescribing?

I knew a Kerry Blue when I were a young 'un. He was grand with humans and worse than a psychopathic fox with chickens.

A bit of empirical research from A&E and GP records would help.
How many people bitten by dogs? What breeds, where known?
Severity of attack by breed? Circumstances of attack - eg in a public place?
Ownership of dog known/established?

3:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was peed on by a bloodhound when I was little, now where's the law banning that? Years, years, I say it's taken me to get over it.

Also, any law that attempts to curtail the use of deadly force and allows me to walk around free in society with these two hands is doomed to fail.


Sigh. If only I really was that bad-ass.

3:11 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The neighbours are still silly, the original gangster dog is long gone, they now have two Retrievers and they are even more menacing, so much so that I refuse to walk the 4 mins to the shop and instead drive, just in case they come out and scare me.
Normally when faced with a dog I shout a bit all "G'wan, GO HOME" and stuff like that, or I will stomp my foot and go for them a bit, it normally works but then my heart is pounding like the clappers for about an hour afterwards.
Once and only once I was faced with a knife, on holidays in the UK, I went to the shops late one evening to get some more vino, telling the friend I was staying with "no you stay here I will only be a minute", on the way home some little shit ran at me said "gimme your bag innit" or something and showed me his blade, I was either drunk or stupid or both and was all "Em I will not now f*ck off back home to your Mammy", he looked at me sort of confused and then legged it. Bizarre and very scary when I realised what could have happened had I not been so lucky.

3:56 p.m.  
Blogger fatmammycat said...

'Gimmie your bag innit?' I'd have clobbered him with elbow of good grammer, the dolt.

7:03 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

He was about 13 or 14 I would say, though what he was doing out at that time on his own in the dead of winter is beyond me. I sort of felt sorry for him. I heard lots of bad grammar that weekend actually like "he were proper wasted so he were", leaving out lots of words like "the" and "it" as well. It were a right laugh so it were! :)

9:20 p.m.  
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4:44 a.m.  

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