Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[scriver]

"Vindicateddespair"

Use your fucking language son

[MorleyDev]

Combining words like that is more a trait of the German language than of English though.

But since we already have taken schadenfreude and gesundheit from German, google tells me vindicated is bestätigt and despair is verzweiflung, so maybe "bestätigtverzweiflung"? Don't actually speak German so probably broke all of the grammar rules there though.

Plus it's too long and will not be as easily remembered by english speakers, whilst Gesundheit and Schadenfreude seem to have more staying power.

[scriver]

use your language

[MorleyDev]

My language is already a bastardised mashup of the Germanic and Romantic languages anyway, making it more of a mashup is perfectly reasonable given the historical precedence

(Also there isn't really an alternative to "bless you" in English since even if it's lost the religious connotations, I just don't feel comfortable going around blessing people. So sorta forced to stick with the German loan word of gesundheit there. No, I don't think I'm putting too much thought into it.)

[Loud Whispers]

I wanted to make a remark on that knife control law: I don't really know anything about the UK, but isn't a law like that, you know, kinda un-enforceable? Any prison anywhere can show you that anything even remotely sharp can be fashioned into a weapon. Doesn't take a genius to fashion something formidable that could pass through a metal detector. Honestly, a law like that seems like it's daring criminals to get even more bold and depraved than ever before, especially with that bit with the police funding getting strangled? I'm not even sure what to make of the whole situation, but it's fascination reading about it from you guys; all we have in America is hundreds of pointlessly cruel shootings every year.

I suppose it's more about giving police the power to arrest someone for having a knife rather than having the elimination of street knives as a realistic objective

My language is already a bastardised mashup of the Germanic and Romantic languages anyway, making it more of a mashup is perfectly reasonable given the historical precedence
(Also there isn't really an alternative to "bless you" in English since even if it's lost the religious connotations, I just don't feel comfortable going around blessing people. So sorta forced to stick with the German loan word of gesundheit there. No, I don't think I'm putting too much thought into it.)

Every time you say bless you just think of its origins in the black plague. Then it'll have metal connotations

[JoshuaFH]

I wanted to make a remark on that knife control law: I don't really know anything about the UK, but isn't a law like that, you know, kinda un-enforceable? Any prison anywhere can show you that anything even remotely sharp can be fashioned into a weapon. Doesn't take a genius to fashion something formidable that could pass through a metal detector. Honestly, a law like that seems like it's daring criminals to get even more bold and depraved than ever before, especially with that bit with the police funding getting strangled? I'm not even sure what to make of the whole situation, but it's fascination reading about it from you guys; all we have in America is hundreds of pointlessly cruel shootings every year.

I suppose it's more about giving police the power to arrest someone for having a knife rather than having the elimination of street knives as a realistic objective

So, an expansion of 'technicalities' so police can be justified doing whatever they want?

[MorleyDev]

It's more that British law with possession of weapons is very focused around intent.

Carrying a knife for 'self-defence' is still regarded as carrying a weapon with intent to use it to threaten, injure or kill another person. And that is the actual thing that is illegal.

Preemptive self-defence is not allowed as an excuse. Heat of the moment self-defence is fine, so if assaulted in your kitchen pulling a knife off the kitchen table would be perfectly allowed, though will probably result in you being temporarily detained by the police for a bit of time whilst they do the initial investigation and questioning (to both prevent you from fleeing or interfering with any evidence, allow them to question you, and to protect you by making sure no reprisals are likely). British self-defence law is actually surprisingly permissive on that front, despite what the newspapers like to claim. Benefit of the doubt is actively encouraged for judges in areas where it may be considered legally grey.

Hence, if a police officer sees someone with a knife out of packaging, or searches someone and finds one, and they don't have an immediate and obvious practical reason to be possessing it, they have to power to arrest/detain them and/or seize the knife under the reasoning that it's possession of a deadly weapon with intent.

For example, Scout Leaders are allowed to take a variety of knives with them on the scout camping trips, but are expected to go be responsible with them at all times (obviously) and to go straight home and put them away in a secure location as soon as they are done acting as Scout Leaders.

[Cyroth]

Combining words like that is more a trait of the German language than of English though.

But since we already have taken schadenfreude and gesundheit from German, google tells me vindicated is bestätigt and despair is verzweiflung, so maybe "bestätigtverzweiflung"? Don't actually speak German so probably broke all of the grammar rules there though.

Plus it's too long and will not be as easily remembered by english speakers, whilst Gesundheit and Schadenfreude seem to have more staying power.

The correct translation of vindicated in this context would be "gerechtfertigt", so gerechtfertigte Verzweiflung. No way to combine those two, though. Sorry.
The e needs to be added to gerechtfertigt because Verzweiflung ("despair") is female, because what else would it be.

[Loud Whispers]

So, an expansion of 'technicalities' so police can be justified doing whatever they want?

In theory, in practice the police mostly use it to scare kids into giving up knife and sword carry - the police'll arrest loads but like a 1/10th will result in something harsher than a warning, at least for people caught carrying the first time. It also has the social engineering effect of making carrying a knife a weird and taboo thing for law abiding society. Police can rarely do whatever they want, and are forced by logistics to just do what they can. Also basically everything MorleyDev said. In that regards I imagine it's much more about disarming the general populace than stopping criminals from acquiring knives, so that when normal people head down to the pub and inevitably have one too many pints, they don't end up doing something too stupid with a deadly weapon on their person

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Doesn't take a genius to fashion something formidable that could pass through a metal detector.

Yet, outside prisons, stabbing with home-made shivs isn't really much of a thing. That's a hypothetical, and it's not really borne out by experience or common sense. Home-made non-metal shivs just aren't as good at killing things as proper knives. There would already be a much bigger market for wooden or plastic knives if they were at all effective.
"Look out, he's got a sharpened stick!"
Sure, in prison they can sharpen a toothbrush and hold you down and stab you with it a bunch of times to kill you, for sure. But that's an enclosed environment where you can't get away, and they can take all the time in the world to plan the attack. Mugging people on the outside with just a sharpened toothbrush isn't going to be a very effective way of robbing people. Shivs work in prison because people are forced to live in very close proximity and they can carefully plan and time the attack - and they need to outnumber you 3:1 for it to really work. That doesn't mean they'd be a particularly effective weapon in the outside world.

Well, I mean... No. No, that's just wrong. Wooden knives/shivs are entirely capable of fucking you up. Same goes for hard plastic, a traditional stone stabby, ceramic, or fucking pasta.

However, metal knives are durable, so they retain their edge and structural integrity even after a lot of repeated use.


The difference is how much effort people are actually willing to put into making the damn thing. Which, as it turns out, ends up not being a whole lot when the situation is a heat-of-the-moment type deal.

I can confirm, in the UK ceramic, plastic, glass, stone and other non-metal knives are illegal (unless you're using them domestically for preparing food). There's loads of modern high tech ones like carbon fibre knives, plastic composites which are hard and durable as fuck, and they do see use in London in order to bypass the occasional random search from police, who have metal detectors at their disposal. Improvised non-metal knives and shivs aren't just hypothetical either, with police having even confiscated ones that were made out of plastic rulers. Sharp sticks have been used to kill man since man learned how to sharpen sticks ;P

[Reelya]

Sure, but you can bet there isn't a 1:1 replacement when people don't have the more convenient killing devices. Say you ban carrying of knives, and say 20% of the would-be knife murders get replaced with makeshift-shiv murders, that's still an 80% reduction. So, while replacements with knives-for-guns are possible and replacement of shives-for-knives are possible ... in actual practical reality, the bans do in fact massively reduce the relevant crime frequency.

"But one guy might still get shivved no matter what you do" is no reason to backtrack on all weapons control and let people open-carry any and all types of weapons, but that seems to be the anti-weapon-control logic in a nutshell.

If you don't personally carry a big fucking knife around with you everywhere then you're undoubtedly safer if other people aren't allowed to. And frankly, if you pull a huge knife in self-defense that's just as likely to backfire as it is to scare the attackers off.

[Kagus]

I was going to make some crack about repealing both knife and firearm bans at the same time, but I couldn't decide if the best example of that would be a musket with a bayonet, a gunblade, or a Sharps rifle.

[Loud Whispers]

Sure, but you can bet there isn't a 1:1 replacement when people don't have the more convenient killing devices. Say you ban carrying of knives, and say 20% of the would-be knife murders get replaced with makeshift-shiv murders, that's still an 80% reduction. So, while replacements with knives-for-guns are possible and replacement of shives-for-knives are possible ... in actual practical reality, the bans do in fact massively reduce the relevant crime frequency.

The ban is only as useful as your ability to enforce it, so we've not seen an 80% reduction, we've only seen increases whether measured by deaths, reported incidents or crime survey by guns and knives and other weapons (anything from utility items like hammers or sports items like bats, to other things like knuckle dusters). In actual practical reality, you can't control knives when buying knives from the grocers to amazon is easy as fuck. I don't want to give the impression that shivs are the issue here, since they make up an immense minority of confiscated knives and swords, with such improvised shivs being found in schools with metal detectors (I can't find any statistics regarding the seizure of non-metal knives, only a police officer saying they find them from time to time).

"But one guy might still get shivved no matter what you do" is no reason to backtrack on all weapons control and let people open-carry any and all types of weapons, but that seems to be the anti-weapon-control logic in a nutshell.
If you don't personally carry a big fucking knife around with you everywhere then you're undoubtedly safer if other people aren't allowed to. And frankly, if you pull a huge knife in self-defense that's just as likely to backfire as it is to scare the attackers off.

Imo I only see two reasons to support disarming the general populace; the first is that high rates of depression and gun ownership converts too easily into high rates of suicide by gun, the second is that low rates of gun purchases subsequently reduces the noise generated when security services are looking for signs of terrorist plots. I used to believe there was a third - that disarmed civilians allows for disarmed police, but our police had to rearm due to terrorism anyways, and their morale is at an all time low with thousands of attacks against police nationwide everyday.
Disarming the public and making self defence outside of the home illegal hasn't made the public safer, it's just meant that those who can't afford private security have to guard themselves - ironically, encouraging them to travel in groups and arm themselves. Bloody awful, reflected right down to the youngest kids wearing the most expensive sportswear they can find, since that signals they've got protection from a gang. Armed or disarmed populace doesn't seem to predict the level of violent crime that populace will face. I tell you what I think stops people from getting shot, stabbed, bombed, burned or acid attacked - is good policing, good communities. I'll wall of text on that later

[smjjames]

I was going to make some crack about repealing both knife and firearm bans at the same time, but I couldn't decide if the best example of that would be a musket with a bayonet, a gunblade, or a Sharps rifle.

You can still affix a bayonet to modern weapons, theres just somewhat less of a practical reason to do so.

[Kagus]

I was going to make some crack about repealing both knife and firearm bans at the same time, but I couldn't decide if the best example of that would be a musket with a bayonet, a gunblade, or a Sharps rifle.

You can still affix a bayonet to modern weapons, theres just somewhat less of a practical reason to do so.

I know, but saying "rifle with a bayonet [...], or a Sharps rifle" is poor form, and muskets are the most classically correct bayonet mounts anyways.

And if you're putting a bayonet on something that isn't a longarm, then you're just playing Borderlands ya daft ninny.