As National Review’s resident teenage knife-fighting expert, I was disappointed to read that the actor Idris Elba wants the British government to circumcise all of the privately owned knives in the United Kingdom in the hope that doing so will help reduce crime. Here’s Elba, talking to BBC Radio 4:
“Not all kitchen knives need to have a point on them, that sounds like a crazy thing to say,” he adds, “but you can still cut your food without the point on your knife, which is an innovative way to look at it.”
This does sound “crazy,” yes. But, in my modest estimation, it sounds crazy because it doesn’t go far enough. Clearly, Elba doesn’t really care about crime — at least, not as much as I do. He said nothing about hammers. He’s apparently fine with the continued ownership of scissors. He was perfectly silent on pizza slicers. It’s a disgrace. Evidently, if we really want to ensure that young Brits can’t terrorize their neighbors, we need to bring a swift end to the possession of anything that can cut, slice, stab, perforate, score, incise, etch, carve, chop, dissect, dash, gash, or nick — up to and including human teeth. I know, I know — that sounds like a crazy thing to say. But you can still consume food without your teeth, which is an innovative way to look at it. And, besides, for those who can show a genuine need, we can set up a licensing system — with a background check, of course — that enables them to take temporary custody of a set of government-approved SharpGums that, under the correct supervision, can be used to bite through anything that can’t be easily ripped.
The truth is that, in the year 2025, nobody needs a safety pin. Certainly, at some point in our history, it may have made sense to leave safety pins unregulated. But that was prior to the invention of glue, cable ties, and double-sided sticky tape. Left unchecked, there is no end to the mayhem that can be created with a bag of 24-inch nickel-plated safety pins — especially when they are combined with a pair of plastic knitting needles or an anodized-aluminum crochet hook. Experts in sociology have long contended that people who cling to their safety pins do so out of recidivist loyalty to the less inclusive world of the past, and it isn’t hard to see why. Safety pins confer immediate power, signaling to others that they must fall into line or be mauled. In glossy advertisements, Big Pin is keen to associate itself with more wholesome imagery, such as a grandmother making a shawl or a child patching a scraped-up pair of jeans. The truth, however, is more sinister.
That said, I’ll offer two cheers for Idris Elba for getting this important conversation started. For far too long, the Brits have fallen into the trap of believing that, simply because they had banned most guns, their country couldn’t possibly be filled with other terrifying objects that were directly responsible for violent crime. Now that the topic has come up once again, it is time for the British government to strike while the iron is hot — and then to ban that hot iron as a clear and present danger to the public.
Idris Elba’s War on Knifepoints Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Forward!