Following the death of a teaching assistant who was stabbed by a 14-year-old pupil during a bag check at a secondary school in eastern France on Tuesday, Prime Minister François Bayrou has announced…
In a bid to tackle what President Emmanuel Macron described as "a senseless surge of violence," the French government will issue a decree "within 15 days" banning the sale of knives to minors.
Do they propose to invade every home and remove knives from every kitchen? How will they enforce this?
US schools have been called “the finest minimum security prisons that money can buy” due to our obsession with access control, security screenings, book bag bans, etc. Look at how well that’s worked for us.
Presumably when they say they'll ban sales to minors, they don't mean they'll go and remove knives from kitchens. They mean they'll make cashiers check the age of customers they suspect might be under 18 when selling them a knife. The same as booze and cigs.
And, like “booze and cigs” (how American!), kids who need a knife will just grab one out of the kitchen as they head out the door.
There are a thousand legitimate reasons for young people to own and learn to use knives. Banning sales after one incident is a ridiculous overreaction that’s simply political posturing. I expect better of Europe
That will be rough for people like me who moved out on my own at 17. Also, a million things could be used as a weapon. Scissors? Screw driver (among many other tools)? This doesn't seem like a practical way of handling the problem.
They're just looking to stop kids going and buying knives they're obviously not going to use for cooking. It's not as ridiculous a statement as you're making out here, to be fair.
Knifes are not only for cooking, and they are just fun to play around with, when I was a kid we built makeshift shelters in the forest near the town with knifes and hammer and even a saw.
The problem is not the knife, but the children not being property disciplined on how to use them. Restrictions on this common of an item will never work because even if you make the perfect system so no child can ever buy one, they will just get one from home or use a broken piece of glass.
There are a lot of dangerous things in our world, restricting the access to them is just impossible and frankly stupid.
When i was a child, we would always go to the south of france on vacation. That was also the place where i got all my mall ninja shit from. I wasn't used to stores or markets where you could just buy a machete and a butterfly knife as a 10 year old. Also fireworks. I completely understand the ban, and i still absolutely love some good knifes, it's just expensive knifes now.
That's just stupid declaration to please far right electorate. As a government, you cannot just do nothing when this happen. But, honestly, what can you really do in this specific case ? So you do some stupid declaration to please old and grumpy people, and in a few weeks, nobody will think about it.