The rise in knife attacks in Britain is prompting a crackdown and fueling public concern

LONDON – A well-known horror first reached Pooja Kanda on social media: there had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, home alone at the time, saw a detail that she feared and knew all too well.

A man used a sword to kill a 14-year-old boy who was on his way to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son Ronan was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates as he went to a neighbor to borrow a PlayStation controller.

“It brought me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said of the April 30 murder of Daniel Anjorin in an attack in London’s Hainault that also left four people injured. “It’s painful to see this happen again.”

In parts of the world where gun ownership is banned or strictly regulated, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crime. Many end up in the hands of children because they are cheap and easy to obtain.

Although the number of fatal stabbings in England and Wales has remained largely stable over the past decade, headline-grabbing attacks and a general rise in knife crime have stoked fears and led to calls for the government to do more.

“Knife crime,” where knives are used to commit crimes or someone is caught illegally possessing a knife, rose 7% in England and Wales last year, the government said last month, noting that some places did not were taken into account. In London, the number of such crimes increased by 20%. The other two British countries, Scotland and Northern Ireland, keep their own statistics.

Because knives are so readily available, there’s only so much you can do. Of the 244 fatal stabbings in England and Wales in the 12 months to March 2023 – the latest figures available – 101 were committed with kitchen knives, far more than with any other type of blade, according to the Office of National Statistics.

But the rise in knife crime and a steady stream of shocking attacks, including those in which Ronan Kanda, Daniel Anjorin and three people were killed in Nottingham last year, have brought the problem to the forefront.

“It seems like something like this is reported in the press every day,” Sanjoy O’Malley-Kumar, whose 19-year-old daughter Grace O’Malley-Kumar was one of the Nottingham victims, said afterwards on Good Morning Britain. the recent attack in London.

In last week’s local elections, candidates debated measures such as stops and searches.

Even movie star Idris Elba has commented.

“I can now pick up the phone, type knife and be inundated with ads for it,” the London-born star of “The Wire” and “Luther” said during a protest in January.

The UK has strict restrictions on gun ownership and there is little debate about it. That’s partly because the 1996 massacre of 16 primary school students in Dunblane, Scotland, led to a ban on owning handguns. Firearms used for hunting are subject to strict regulations.

Restricting knives is more difficult, but the government is trying. It is already illegal to sell a knife to anyone under 18 or carry it in public without a good reason, such as professional or religious reasons.

And certain types of blades are already illegal, including switchblades and so-called zombie knives, which come in different sizes, have sharp and serrated edges, and contain text or images indicating that they are used to commit violence under the 2016 Prohibition Act should be to them.

A new law will come into force in September banning the sale of machetes, closing a loophole that companies have exploited to get around the ban on zombie knives. However, it remains to be seen whether the new law will have much impact, with machetes causing just 14 of the 244 fatal stabbings in the 12 months to March 2023, and seven zombie-style knives.

“Knives are harder to regulate than guns, and there are already large numbers of them even if they were ‘banned,'” said Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics.

History and statistics point to an ongoing problem in a country where memories of the 2017 vehicle and knife attack in London that killed eight people and injured nearly 50 are still fresh. Three extremists inspired by the Islamic State group drove into pedestrians on London Bridge and then stabbed people in nearby Borough Market.

According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of homicides committed with sharp instruments such as knives, machetes and swords has exceeded 200 since the 12 months to March 2016, when 210 people were killed this way. They reached a record high of 282 two years later and have remained roughly stable since then, falling slightly during the pandemic lockdown.

While according to US government figures, firearms are used in around 80% of all homicides in the US, most killings in London involve blades. But brazen and seemingly random attacks like this month in east London are unusual.

“Sporadic acts of violence are similar to shark attacks. They are actually very, very rare, but they are very popular,” said Iain Overton, chief executive of Action on Armed Violence, a London-based charity. “I don’t think random public killings are particularly common in the UK.”

The frequency of brutal attacks has increased feelings of fear and mistrust in cities where attacks occur most often.

The Bristol Post published a timeline in March of more than a dozen stabbing incidents in this seaside city since the start of the year. It included reports of the stabbing deaths of three teenagers within 18 days and another teenager who was stabbed in February.

Meanwhile, in Wales, a teenage girl was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after stabbing a student and two teachers at a secondary school on April 24, police said. That was just six days before Daniel Anjorin was killed.

When Ronan Kanda was murdered, one of his attackers, then 16-year-old Prabjeet Veadhesa, bought a sword online and picked it up at the post office. He brought his mother’s ID to pass security at the post office, but no one asked to see it, according to court testimony. To make the tragedy worse, Ronan was killed in a mix-up, police said.

The details of the knife attacks vary, but Pooja Kanda said she sees similarities – especially the emotional nature of what comes next: confused, broken families, anger that something like this could happen to a child, or anyone, again.

She petitioned the government to ban sword sales with exceptions and submitted 10,000 signatures, but was rejected.

Britain’s Home Office said in a statement that straight sword crimes were rare and were not being addressed by police as a particular problem. So in the law that goes into effect in September, officials instead focused on zombie-style knives and machetes. The Interior Ministry said curved swords were banned in 2008.

Kanda, a working single mother, said it would be wrong to attribute all knife attacks to poverty. In fact, there are many reasons for this.

“The law is very weak. People are not afraid of going to prison,” she said. “There is a huge ego, a culture around it. To show what a great man you are. Kids have the misconception that it’s cool to do that.”