Subject:  Boys have always carried knives.

Date:  Sun 7 June 2009

Dear justice4victims.org,

It appears that the increase of youth violence and gang murders in Britain is being blamed in no small part on the emergence of a “knife culture”, both in politics and the media.  Although it would be inaccurate to totally dismiss knife culture as a factor in violent crime, it is certainly not the defining explanation.  Those who believe stiff sentencing for carrying knives is the answer to the problem are wrong.

A brick or a bat make equally effective weapons, if the desire to severely hurt somebody is present, a weapon can likely be found within yards.  Statistically, more killings are caused by beating than stabbing. 

The fact is that boys have always carried knives.  I myself carried pocket and sheath knives as a boy; even my grandfather has told me tales about occasions when he used his pocket knife.  Indeed, as far as I am aware he still carries it now, into his eighties.  Boys love knives, guns and fires, and always have done.  To apply this fact exclusively to today’s youth generation is just not true.

What has changed, however, is the willingness to use them against each other.  My grandfather probably used his knife for fishing, camping and self-protection.  Today’s generation of youth appears to carry knives with a genuine willingness (and in some cases a premeditated intention) to seriously harm or kill another person, either pre-emptive or in self-defence.

Many of us men carried knives when we were younger, probably more than would like to admit.  Thankfully, the vast majority of us matured and realized that the prospect of actually using it, accidentally or intentionally, on another person, was too repulsive to contemplate, so opted to take our chances without one.

Therein lays the issue: not how do we stop young people carrying knives, but why don’t they have the morality we had; what is it that makes this generation so wiling to use extreme violence, with knives, bats, bricks and feet?  We will achieve nothing to prevent violent youth crime until this is the question we are addressing, and not being taken in by political gimmicking like knife amnesties and mandatory sentencing for possession.  Though the politicians need to be seen to be acting, it is clear that they, like us, are at a loss to answer this question.

Whatever the answer, it’s far more profound than simply blaming knives.  If we have any hope of tackling the youth violence problem we need to find a better answer and fast.

Mr. J. Whale

Coventry

justice4victims.org