UK Sword Ban

[Zanshin]

Here in the UK, a ban on purchasing Samurai swords comes into effect in April.

It has been met with mixed reactions, and although the government claims that it wont effect "martial arts enthusiasts" or collectors of "Authentic Swords" the boundaries are very unclear.

Many of the quality suppliers of Iaito and Shinken in this country will not be taking orders after the cut of date, (even though they are clearly supplying to bona fide martial artist), for fear of prosecution it would seem.

In truth, I am all for the banning of horrible replica "Katana" that can be picked up for $ 50.00 in your local high street, but in order to create a "catch all" piece of legislation, it means that we all suffer.

How likely is it that your average "spotty hoody" is going to want to shell out on a decent Iaito, which despite not having a razor sharp edge, will set you back over $ 600.00.

Here is an article from the BBC. What do you guys think?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7138735.stm

[DWx]

Knife/sword crime is definately a serious problem in the UK. There's always stuff on the news. I'm leaning towards in favour of the ban but I think there needs to be some sort of reasonable provision for martial artists/collectors. Perhaps they could bring in something similar to the shotgun licenses (don't know if normal gun licenses work the same). Once the police have done background checks and checked you have appropriate storage facilities (a safe), the license allows you to purchase a shotgun from any dealer and to carry the gun with you when necessary for sport or hunting reasons etc. But then again one of the points made in the article:

But she points out: "People need some protection but criminals could use anything. The biggest amount of knife crime is actually domestic violence. Guns were licensed but shootings have only increased."

It will be a tough one to decide but if the government want to introduce a ban in then licensing will probably be the way to go to allow martial artists and collectors to buy the swords.

On the other hand do samurai swords actually account for that much of knife/sword crime? When they held that armistice last year I remember most of the knives looking like some weird and (not so) wonderful contraption from a film or just standard kitchen knives. There weren't too many actually swords either.

[NightOwl]

I doubt it will do much on violence (look at how well the British ban on guns has worked out), and it will probably make a dent in the 'samurai sword' of the $100 variety. Probably will make life for sword based martial artists harder as well. In the end the root cause of violence isn't the weapon- it's the person/culture of violence using it. That's what really needs to be addressed IMO.