Posted on 06/20/2006 7:55:11 PM PDT by blam
One in four shops is caught selling knives to children under 16
By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor
(Filed: 21/06/2006)
More than a quarter of shops that stock knives are illegally selling them to children under 16, according to a survey by trading standards officials.
Despite concerns about rising knife violence, a significant number of shopkeepers are failing to check the ages of teenage customers or are wilfully turning a blind eye.
Richard Beckett, 14, shows knives bought by teenage volunteers
However, there was some evidence that the recent spate of stabbings and the Home Office amnesty may finally be changing attitudes in the high street.
In Powys, where trading standards officers carried out research using 13- and 14-year-old volunteers, 13 out of 41 shops approached sold knives illegally to children. Yet in Staffordshire, all of the 10 traders who were approached at the end of May refused to sell knives to teenagers under 16.
Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute, said: "Year after year we have highlighted the problem of under-age sales. So it is extremely disturbing to find that so many traders are still prepared to sell knives to people who are under 16.
"We have actively supported raising the age for purchasing a knife from 16 to 18. This should make it easier for traders to check the age of a purchaser, and harder for young people to buy knives."
The research, presented yesterday at the institute's annual conference in London, was carried out by 14 trading standards departments in England and Wales. Volunteers aged 12 to 14 were asked to approach shopkeepers and buy knives. A total of 184 attempts were made and knives were sold on 53 occasions.
In Slough, Berks, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl bought two carving knives and a bread knife.
Dean Cooke, from Slough trading standards, said: "We are appalled that, after all the work we have done to make shopkeepers aware of the law - and with all the recent publicity that has been given to knife crime - some traders still think it is acceptable to sell knives to children."
Businesses can face a fine of up to £5,000 or six months in prison for selling a knife to a person who is under age.
This is wrong... People in England should be required to get a license to operate cutlery in their kitchens.
Which offers a clue as to the feigned "concern" that is asserted within this Telegraph opinion piece.
Good times.
First they outlaw the guns, then they outlaw the knives. What's next? Sporks?
I hear you. If the kids want a knife they will make, buy or steal one. This time the regulators have to see the impracticality of the policy whether they admit it or not.
Richard Beckett, 14, shows knives bought by teenage volunteers
Those knives can do less to emasculate this young socialist tool than the culture and government that has already so violated him.
The world wasn't yet completely insane when you were a yute. Nowadays you would be placed on ritalin and put into a group home for daring to posess such fearsome implements of death, and possibly be executed for being resourceful enough to make them yourself.
Amen, brother. What a tool he must be.
Yeah, me and my brothers use to buy black powder at the Gibson's department store near our home. We would drill a hole in the end of the empty CO2 cartridges from the pellet pistols we bought, fill em full of the black powder, and plug the hole with a Mule Kicker firecracker. Then we had a firecracker that would really make some noise.
When I was in grade school, anybody who didn't have at least one blade on his knife that would shave hair off his arm was a wuss.
In spite of that, we hardly ever killed each other.
The UK is gone. We've got to do our best to keep the US from sliding down that tube.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of those really look like steak knives.
These sweet dears in England can outlaw knives, then in a few years they can outlaw tree limbs. What do these dimwits fail to understand about getting undesirables out of society? Lock them up, deport them, exile them, kill them. Expecting that violence will go down because the gummint outlaws the latest weapon is a fool's errand!
I fondly remember the BB Gun wars we had in the neighborhood. Somebody always violated the one pump rule though. Nobody lost an eye either.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of those really look like steak knives.
I remember gettting my first pocket knife when I was 6. It was yellow with brushed nickle and had 2 blades. I remember going to the 5 and dime and picking it out from a display board and my Dad giving it to me. Nice memory.
I hate the wussified mess Western Civilization has become.
We're (USA) next.
What insanity. Knives are one of the first tools ever made or used by primitive man... and these fools somehow think that not allowing young men and women to *buy* knives will prevent mischief?
I think it will have the opposite effect. The government that refuses to trust me with a pocket knife deserves no loyalty and commands no respect.
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