According to this: [https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/stabbing-deaths-by-country](https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/stabbing-deaths-by-country) the UK is ranked #183/187 for mortal stabbings per 100k deaths worldwide. The figure itself is 0.08 mortal stabbings/100k deaths, which is (to 2d.p. at least) the same as the other four countries at the bottom (Ghana, Tunisia, Oman, Monaco). For clarity, Iceland (lowest violent crime rate in the world) is #164. USA is #111. Yet, in England (including in the King’s Speech House of Commons discussion yesterday\[?\]) politicians talk as if there is some ‘knife-crime epidemic’ and it’s ‘on the rise’ (actual quotes). I live in England, and have my entire life. Naturally, I’ve never been stabbed, nor do I know anyone who’s been stabbed.
Is there tons of non-fatal stabbings/slashings that no-one talks about? I don’t understand how a country can have a ‘knife-crime epidemic’ whilst having the fifth lowest fatal stabbing rates globally.
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Because screaming loudly about dangerous immigrants is the primary talking point of one of your political parties.
And just like US politicians screaming about “Illegal immigrant invasions” in the US, they’re not going to let a little thing like facts or statistics get in the way of a good political narrative.
TLDR: It’s not, but your media and politicians benefit from lying about it.
They have gun control that works. So if somebody goes nuts, they‘ll stab some people instead of shooting a lot of them.
Easiness of opportunity.
The UK controls (to some degree) the circulation of firearms. At least when you compare it to the USA, Sweden, or some countries in LATAM.
But knives? You can get into any home and find plenty. In France where I live, I can enter any train station and buy one in the supermarket inside.
Aren’t guns illegal in UK?
The answer is that it’s mostly politics.
There are a handful of things that are widely accepted by everyone to be Bad Things. Deadly stabbings are one of them. If you go on TV and say “We’re against knife crime”, there is no pro-knife crime lobby who’s going to disagree.
This makes it an *easy* thing for politicians to make grandiose pledges about, because literally nobody is fighting a “pro-knife crime” argument and their points will never be examined. Plus, since knife crime is bad, it’s a straightforward good thing to stand *against*.
Also, if you’re looking to curry favour, it’s really easy to pick a few recent serious knife attacks and use them to fearmonger and convince people that knife crime is, actually, a problem that needs to be solved. Just look at this stabbing that happened the other week. Doesn’t someone need to do something about it? I’ll do something about it.
Compare this to, say, the XL Bully problem. There exist people who will advocate for XL Bullies, so if a politician were to stand up and say “we will be the party that will ban dangerous dog breeds”, there will be people out there who are passionate about dogs and will vigorously challenge, fact check and generally object to the argument.
The issue is the age of the victims and the perpetrators. It’s a serious problem amongst school age boys.
https://benkinsella.org.uk/teenagers-remain-the-most-likely-age-group-to-be-murdered-by-a-knife/
I think it’s mostly mislabeled. There are lots of young people carrying knives for protection and thats actually the problem, what would normally be a few punches is getting turned into stabs.
While the numbers aren’t very high, they’re preventable and that’s why it’s being considered an issue.
Maybe down to inner city rappers who can’t get their hands on guns. Also, they very fact that knives were made illegal to carry. Anyone caught carrying a knife would add to the knife crime statistic. I usually carry a small lockable pocket knife. I also drive an old land rover defender with a machete, axe, bolt cutters, and often a chainsaw in the back…and a Stanley knife in the cubby box…also a huge Irish shovel which is perfect for digging graves. Can’t be too careful with all these potential stabbers out there.
[This neat little map](https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc653/index.html) courtesy of the ONS may help illuminate it for you, as you can see the amount of knife crime nationwide is basically “I guess it happened to somebody at some point.”
Then you get to London… and you see that it’s ~7x higher than the minimum. And that would certainly get worse in specific areas if the map provided more granular data. So a more accurate, or at least honest, description might be to say that we have rising issues with knife crime *in very specific areas*.
This topic was also a favourite refrain of the Tories with them making [push](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/10/schedule/26/enacted) after [push](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/zombie-knives-banned-in-england-and-wales) after [push](https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/62/2/378/6322945) to attempt to address it. Now whether they really saw it as a problem or were just using it as a “tough on crime” campaign point is a different question, but they certainly fed into the narrative of an epidemic which as you highlight isn’t exactly true.
Because gun control works. But that does not mean that underpriviliged people who often happen to have foreign roots will turn to a life of crime.
However it is much easier to call it “knife crime” and associate it with minorities rather than admit that your policies fuck many many people over and they have little chances in life. In fact it allows you make their lifes more miserable and take away more chances.
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