Article 15 Of The Offensive Weapons Bill

[ejstubbs]

Historically, our primary defence against this sort of thing, was that the police could take the witness stand, state that the accused had (in their view) no legitimate reason for carrying an implement of that sort, and have every expectation of obtaining a conviction. That no longer appears to be the case.

 

The new bill isn't about carrying (for which, as I said before, the 1988 Criminal Justice Act specifically allows a "good reason" defence.  The new bill is about selling, and specifically makes it an offence for someone to sell a knife if they are not in the presence of the buyer at the time of the sale, and the knife is to be delivered to residential premises which are not where "a person" (the bill doesn't say "the buyer"*) carries on a business.

 

(Having skimmed in a bit for detail the draft of the bill currently posted on the publications.parliament.uk web site, I cannot find any reference to knives with a blade of less than 3 inches being exempt.  That said, a good part of the bill does reference other acts, and in a way which makes it difficult to work out exactly what the law will actually say if/when the bill passes.)

 

* There does seem to be a fair bit of loose wording in the bill.  That could mean one of two things: either a decent lawyer should be able to drive a coach and horses through it, or the CPS will be tempted to try and apply the law as widely as possible.  Or, indeed, both.

Edited July 19, 2018 by ejstubbs

[rockershovel]

.... so, in fact, the new legislation can be wholly ignored by online vendors outside the U.K.? And/or, circumvented by delivering them to any address named as the offices of a shell company with no necessary relation to the distribution of edged blades?

 

That wasn’t quite my point, although it’s a truism that so much modern legislation falls at the fence of excessive detail, rendering it unworkable in practice. The Dangerous Dogs Act is a classic of the sort, its supposed purpose being largely rendered unworkable by arguments about breed, or otherwise of specific animals.

 

The old Common Law did quite a good job of this sort of thing, having largely grown organically around a consensus of ideas. It was generally agreed that the carrying or possession of edged weapons was undesirable, and that commonplace articles (straight razors, for example) could be classed as weapons, or not according to context. The testimony of a police officer, to the effect that the individual concerned possessed such an article under circumstances in which it constituted a threat to the Queens Peace, was sufficient for a conviction.

Edited July 21, 2018 by rockershovel