Knife amnesties.

Reports in the news suggesting

that knife amnesties are a waste of time and money are absolutely spot on. Knife amnesties are dead in the water. If anyone intends to arm themselve with a blade there's very little to stop them. Certainly not knife amnesties.

Ok, a few of the knives handed in by the law-abiding MAY one day have fallen into the hands of a psychopathic killer but the vast majority of them would not. It isn't the knife sat in a drawer or cupboard that is a danger, in much the same way cars that are parked in the drive or garage aren't dangerous. It is only when either are handled by idiots or the psychotic that the trouble starts.

And anyway, if a psycho wishes to arm himself for a killing he merely has to scrape up a £1 ($2) and visit a cut-price store where he can purchase a whole set of razer sharp knives and maybe get change.

A certain 99p ($1.99) shop chain in my area sells kitchen knives in sets of half dozen including a sharpener! Or one can buy a replica of the knife that killed special constable Nisha Patel-Nasri at the same store for the same 99p.

Though I was shocked to learn that 300,000 kids take knives to school for self-defence purposes, why have ministers felt the need to introduce a specific law to cover the carrying of such weapons in school? Surely the law already covers the carrying of knives in public so why have another for a specific area? After all, unless these knives are on sale in the school tuck-shop (sweet shop) they have had to be carried to school by the pupils themselves.

The facination of knives starts at a very early age. I am 67 years of age and without any criminal record and yet 56 years ago - as any eleven year old boy would - I wanted a knife.
This advert in "The Daily Herald" a newspaper of the day, caught my eye:

"Apply for a Kaye's Catalogue and get this FREE! kitchen knife."

There was a picture of the knife and even an application form to get it offering FREE! postage.

I duly filled out the form putting a wrong age and calling myself Mrs Strickland who was a neighbour, but giving our address which was five doors away from hers.

Each day I checked the post with anticipation until one day I arrived home from school and found the parcel unopened on our kitchen table. My mum told me to; "Be a good boy and take this round to Mrs Strickland." which I gladly did. But of course I opened it enroute, trousered that knife and treasured it.

However, I didn't have time to treasure it long before it was confiscated by my headmaster. My dastardly crime? Throwing it at the school toilet door. The kids of today are quite different. They themselves admit to carrying knives for their own "protection" or if they have a beef with a school mate. They even state their postcodes as gangs memberes. So why don't our security forces organise good old police swoops to clear the misguided knife thugs from our streets? How many more of our kids are to die on our streets before the police act to attack the sharp end of street crime?

The moral to this tale if there is one: If I, at ten or eleven years of age a mere innocent boy, could show the initiative and guile to acquire a possibly dangerous weapon in very stringent times. what - if anything - can stop modern youth from arming themselves to the teeth?

Knife amnesties? Gimme a break!