German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants to further restrict the carrying of knives in public, to combat a perceived rise in knife crime. The opposition has criticized the plan as impractical.
The German government has promised tougher knife laws after the police reported a rise in the number of stabbings, especially near train stations — though the statistics remain controversial.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has called for the law to be changed so that only blades of 6 centimeters (2.36 inches) would be allowed to be carried in public, rather than the current 12 centimeters. An exception would be made for household knives in their original packaging. Switchblades would be banned altogether.
…
The government pronouncement came after police statistics recorded a 5.6% year-on-year rise in cases of serious bodily harm involving a knife, with 8,951 incidents in 2023. The federal police, which is responsible for safety at Germany’s airports and major railway stations, also reported a significant increase in knife attacks in and around stations, with 430 in the first six months of this year.
Yeah. You ban knives, people will switch to axes, machetes, bats, pipes, chains, brass knuckles, and so on. I’ve been saying this for a long time about the US as well. You can ban guns in the US and you’ll just end up with knife crime like this. You need to actually address the root causes of socioeconomic inequality that actually drives crime (and lack of mental health care too).
I think I’d take knife crime over mass shootings.
Yeah, because a semi or fully automatic assault knife can just as easily be used from the window of a hotel to make dozens of victims.
And criminals having knifes will just mean the police has to start wearing knight armor and carry swords and shields.
Your comment aligns perfectly with the Reich wing gun nuts, but you try to sell it using “let’s adress inequality”… Do both!
Allowing the amount of unregulated firearms into your society as the US does and then prohibiting the CDC to actually research gun deaths is just weird to everyone else. But does perfectly line up with the statistics that non-whites die from gun violence at larger %… So then it’s OK.
How do you propose we lower the number of guns in our society in a way that disarms criminals and doesn’t violate people’s right to self defense?
Vote 2/3 majority Dems into both houses and change the fucking constitution to shut op the “muh rites” argument and enact sane gun control.
That’s not how Constitutional amendments work. You have some homework ahead of you.
Uhm, 2/3 in both house and congress and then to the states, isn’t it?
Good luck getting enough states to agree to this “seize everyone’s guns” idea.
In fact, good luck getting 2/3 of Democrats in congress to agree to that.
So the government can decide what rights are? If the Republicans get a 2/3 majority and amends the Constitution to say that LGBT+ people can be killed at any moment, does that make it right?
Also, let’s assume your proposal happens. What specific policies do you mean by “sane gun control”?
The government decides what rights are. Correct. Republicans with 2/3 majority can and very likely will say something like that about LGBTQ people.
Do you believe that Nazi Germany was justified in killing 11 million people? Because that’s the logical conclusion of your belief.
What I said is not a belief, it’s a fact. Who sets people’s rights and what rights they set are different things and the justifications are different. Understanding who and how sets the rights does not logically lead to what rights are set. The Nazis killing people was justified to them by a bag of reasons. I don’t think it was justified. But that doesn’t change the fact that the government sets those rights, that the Nazis were in government and they set the rights they felt justified. Understanding this might actually save lives by not letting the people who would kill get in government.
I know it doesn’t lead to any particular right being set, but your argument that rights are set by the government still leads to the conclusion that, because the Nazis were in power, they had the right to decide that Jews, gay people, other ethnicities, etc. no longer had a right to life. It would also lead to the belief that the Nazis had the right to protect those people if they wanted to. It would open the door to whatever oppression, discrimination, protection, liberty, and whatever else the ever-fickle government decided. Nobody would be right to resist it because “the government sets the rights, therefore it’s okay”.
You’re making a jump here that I have a hard time believing you’re making in good faith…
Saying “The government makes the laws and decides what rights people have” is just miles away from saying “the government is justified in making whatever laws it pleases.”
Yes: the Nazis were in power, and took away peoples rights. Me recognising that that’s how governments work does not mean I support the actions of that government or think they are morally justified in doing what they did… obviously.
But if the government can decide what rights there are, then anything they do is morally correct, no? Unless you’re going to hold the government to a higher moral standard than themselves, in which case the government doesn’t actually grant rights; it can only protect or violate them. If we have a higher moral standard than the law, then human rights do not come from the government, they are defined by whatever that higher standard is.
I think the Nazis were an insane and utterly contemptible political party that destroyed a struggling nation to slake their own thirst for power. But if the government decides what rights there are, then they can simply legislate out of existence the rights of anyone under their jurisdiction. Thus, anything the government does to them is justified.
“Sane” laws are what I think are reasonable. If you disagree, you are not reasonable.
See how that cute little argument works?
Yes, I do find it dishonest to say both “the government has the right to grant and revoke rights” and “there are only some laws that are reasonable”. You can’t really take a moral stance against the government like that if they decide you no longer have the right to disagree with them.