To Rule the Night

Knife crime in Scotland[1] is said to be rampant, a scourge on the nation. Their own statistics, on the other hand, seem to show a decrease in knife crime. The demographics of knife crime, no matter what city or country, all point toward the criminal element coming from a lower class, unemployed, usually displaced immigrant population. This is not racist or “ethnic profiling”, it is a simple case of crunching numbers. The typical solution is always to control those people who are willing to abide by the laws of the land. Given a choice, wouldn’t you rather make laws to control rational, law-abiding citizens instead of hardened, violent criminals?

Most modern governments/societies make the same mistake of trying to control the weapon when it is the criminal who needs to be controlled. In our small hometown dojo I do not teach my student how to control an attacker’s weapon, I teach them how to control or eliminate the machinery behind it, the man. It is a waste of time to attack a weapon, especially if you do not remove the driving force behind it, causing a disconnect between the mind and the mechanism, whether that mechanism is a gun, a knife or a ballistic missile.

I often hear the statement that a knife is an offensive weapon[2]. As an instructor I would ask, as opposed to what? To take the opposite tack, is there really such a thing as a defensive weapon? If defense is nothing more than an attack in kind, then I suppose the definition fits. Of all the weapons available to a criminal a knife is one of the least capable offensively. A gun, a piece of pipe, or a baseball bat: all have superior range and certainly more power than a knife. Unfortunately, the knife is like a snake, people intuitively fear them and that makes them seem more evil. People, who might ignore an evening news item of a person beaten to death with a pipe, will recoil in abject horror at the mention of a person killed by a knife.

To rule the night, or the neighborhood, a criminal only needs to be in possession of a weapon one level above that which the average citizen might own. For example, if every head of the household had a machete standing by the door the criminal only needs a gun. If the guns are taken away, a criminal only needs a knife. If the knives are all confiscated, the possession of a lead pipe restores the criminal to king of the mountain status. Where does this backwards weapons race stop? How far do we feel we need to strip the average citizen of the means of defending himself? With nothing more malevolent than a mechanical pencil or a chop-stick a person of ill intent can kill another person.

I suppose that until a maximum number of laws have been enacted, and law-abiding citizens have been stripped of even more freedoms, the politicians won’t rest. Once that has been done and the crime rate soars, as it did in Australia, what will they do next? Obviously the next step is to confiscate the mechanical pencils, lead pipes, baseball bats, and chop sticks. “Poor old England”, that’s what my friend in Lancaster said. Will it be “Poor old America”…….next?

David Decker
Instructor: White Shadow dojo

[1] http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/06/27110147/01543
[2] Weapon: 1. Any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting, or war, as a sword, rifle, or cannon. 2. Anything used against an opponent, adversary, or victim: the deadly weapon of satire. http://dictionary.reference.com/