More Knife control needed in the UK!

Knife law farce as boy buys weapons
Marc Horne

A SUNDAY TIMES investigation has revealed the lack of regulation that allows knife crime to flourish in the west of Scotland.

A 15-year-old boy was illegally sold more than 20 dangerous weapons in shops — including several high street chains — with no attempt made to check his identity.

Calum Duke, a schoolboy from Glasgow working undercover, was able to buy a potentially lethal haul of blades including kitchen knives, daggers, dirks, hunting knives, craft knives and even an axe.

In some cases, shopkeepers offered to wrap the weapons, warning that he could find himself in trouble with the police if he was found with them in his possession.

The findings follow a warning by police this week that the west of Scotland is in the grip of a “knife pandemic”. The number of murders involving a blade in the Strathclyde area is three times higher than anywhere else in Britain.

Every week for the past six months, there have been 25 serious assaults with a knife and 13 of the 30 murders in the west of Scotland this year were committed with a blade.

The level of knife crime in Glasgow is similar to that in the most violent eastern European cities. The worst offenders are male and between 15 and 25. . . .

Thanks very much to Dan Gifford for sending this to me.