Perspective request from our UK ?? brethren..

[El Presidente]

  On 4/11/2018 at 3:42 AM, Ethernut said:

 

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It is the same pony-tail marketing department that came up with Phoebe the Tobacco Dog.

Cake for the masses. Keep their focus off the pollies.

 

 

[Nino]

  On 4/12/2018 at 12:35 AM, Vortigan said:

It's one part of the broader rise in violence and tensions across Europe as a whole. I know, and so do you, what's largely central to it but I'm not allowed to say it, of course.

 

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Exactly - same in Germany now with knives for the last few years ....

[Nino]

Latest of knifings in Germany - this morning a guy knifed to death his kid and wife in public in downtown Hamburg

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/hamburg-jungfernstieg-vater-ersticht-kind-und-ex-frau-a-1202559.html

Better use the 3 monkeys above again ....

[...]

  On 4/12/2018 at 1:13 AM, El Presidente said:

 

It is the same pony-tail marketing department that came up with Phoebe the Tobacco Dog.

Cake for the masses. Keep their focus off the pollies.

 

 

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Illegal, dangerous and slippery slope problems inducing tobacco ?

Will somebody think of the children ???

Poor dog though, could have lived an honest life of getting walked and petted by honest folks but she had to work in politics.... sad! ?

[gweilgi]

  On 4/12/2018 at 3:00 PM, nino said:

Latest of knifings in Germany - this morning a guy knifed to death his kid and wife in public in downtown Hamburg

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/hamburg-jungfernstieg-vater-ersticht-kind-und-ex-frau-a-1202559.html

Better use the 3 monkeys above again ....

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Hamburg ... from a Bavarian perspective that's not in Germany but in Südschweden (South of Sweden)....

Violent crime is always bad, but relatively speaking, there could be worse.  On the very same day that a guy walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in the US and shot 20 kids as well as 6 teachers, over in China a bloke went into a local primary school and tried to do the same, but armed with knives and a hatchet ... and failed to kill a single person.  

Sadly, I can see more of this happening.  The enormous media attention given to terrorists using cars and knives to murderous effect are inspiring common and garden nut jobs to do copycat crimes.  Short of outlawing kitchen knives and private transport, there is no way of stopping them... 

[Ryan]

A lot of this is media hype. Knives are not banned in the UK.

There will always be boy scouts and hunting is still popular.

A group of boy scouts camping, or anyone else camping or in the countryside and they have pocket knives/pen-knives, fine.

Somebody out stalking deer with a rifle and a knife to clean the thing, fine.

Three kids on the tube or the bus late at night in the city and they have hunting knives or kitchen knives, well that's worth questioning, and I think that's fine.

[SloppyJ]

  On 4/11/2018 at 12:54 PM, Ethernut said:

Thanks for your time gents with your perspectives gents from over the pond. 

Just keying off comments about fisticuffs. I completely understand and identify with that. I think I recall a statistic that in the 1960's the top 2 problems in High School were chewing gum and talking.

Fundamental differences in weapon culture between us aside... When I was a young man in high school (I'm 43) I recall guys bringing guns to school hanging on the gun racks in their pickup trucks. It was innocuous (in my little world anyway). Never. Ever. were we concerned about them using them on a human being. It'd be very unthinkable. I've been in a more than a few fights myself and only once was I concerned about a guy pulling a knife in that era. Now? I'm darned careful to keep my emotions in check with anyone "in the wild." 

We've seen a fundamental change in how people view human life and their outlets for their frustration in the last 30 years of my lifetime. It's scary for sure -

Thanks for your time in responding UK brethren!

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Ether, while I'm a little over 2/3 your age, I can totally relate to your sentiment. I remember gun racks and not thinking twice about them. Hell, most people in my family had gun racks. I also remember having to hide my archery equipment in my truck so I could go hunting after class when I was in high school. I remember stuffing a shotgun behind my seats and covering it with blankets so I could go duck hunting after class. In my mind it was unthinkable to ever use these weapons on another human being. However, if caught, I would have been expelled no questions asked. 

Fast forward to today, you'll hardly find me without my concealed pistol because there's no telling what other people's intentions are. I won't take a chance risking my family's safety. I hope I never have to use a weapon against another human but I'm not naive enough to write it off completely. 

I came across some interesting research about soldiers in WWII. It said that only ~15% of the soldiers were willing to shoot at targets even when being fired upon. Shortly after, the military switched their targets to the human silhouette that is still largely popular. It really makes you think about how we have been conditioned to value human life less than our previous ancestry. 

[CaptainQuintero]

  I've seen the news but like most things that are reported about on the news in the UK it's mostly a London centric issue  The inner city has always had gang related knife crime, apparently up to 30 stabbings a day (mostly youth on youth) but the thing that has changed recently is the number of fatalities. The vast majority of the stabbings have previously been non fatal, now a lot are dying from the wounds. So whether gangs are now having a different intent when they attack people, or the emergency services are under too much strain, or a combination of the two I'm not sure.

  The thing with the news of that because something is being reported, it doesn't necessarily mean it's something new, it could simply be someone highlighting it to push a certain agenda through the shockingly poor media we have here.

A big pinch of salt is needed for reading the news here, especially I've found if is being reported on across the pond as it's usually being done so to try and push a current US political issue