Although the number of fatal stabbings has mostly held steady over the past 10 years, headline-grabbing attacks and an overall rise in knife crime have stoked anxieties.

A familiar horror reached Pooja Kanda first on social media: There had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, who was home alone at the time, saw a detail she dreaded and knew all too well.

A man with a sword had killed a 14-year-old boy who was walking to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son, Ronan, was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates while walking to a neighbor’s to borrow a PlayStation controller.

“It took me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said about Daniel Anjorin’s April 30 killing in an attack in London’s Hainault district that also wounded four people. “It’s painful to see that this has happened all over again.”

In parts of the world that ban or strictly regulate gun ownership, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crimes. Many end up in the hands of children, as they can be cheap and easy to get.

  • @lennybirdEnglish
    9•8 months ago

    Last I checked, physicians must treat both symptoms and diseases simultaneously. E.g., the Shock. The bleeding. The excess fever.

    Similarly there’s no reason both cannot be tackled simultaneously here as well; for the root cause is often far more difficult to address than treating symptoms.

    So yes, address the root causes such as:

    • Reducing societal stress (reduce work weak, lower socioeconomic inequality)
    • Expand and improve baseline education levels
    • Provide Universal healthcare with free access to mental health including therapy.

    … But also address the symptoms, which means that when someone does inevitably fall through the cracks, they’re not given free and easy access to gun that is lethally more effective than a knife.