Monday, August 11, 2008

Doctors Against Sharp Pieces Of Metal That Don't Have A Blunt Round Nose, Part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted something about British doctors lobbying to eliminate kitchen knives.

Here's an excerpt from the BBC article:

One idea, first proposed in 2005, is a response to a grisly mundane truth expressed by Met chief Ian Blair this week - that "the most common knife involved in these deaths is a knife from a kitchen".
The proposal came from three emergency medicine specialists, and it's a simple one: getting rid of the points on the ends of longer kitchen knives
.

Now, since the grisly beheading of a Greyhound bus passenger, the Canadians are making similar proposals. (Even if you know all about the beheading, go ahead and hit that link. I bet you didn't know that God allowed the beheading to take place because Canada has legalized same-sex marriage, did you?)

According to The Toronto Sun....

Some of our parliamentarians have been getting a bit too much sun during their summer holidays.
That's the only explanation for the discussion by some opposition MPs about the possible introduction of a knife registry, following the gruesome, fatal attack on a Greyhound bus passenger late last month.


You've got to ask yourself this question: What the hell are they thinking? There are millions and millions of knives in Canada. Canadians go hunting. Canadians cook things. Canadians cut ropes. Canadians are ready and able to cut just about anything but their ties to England. (Sometimes I think they would've done that years ago, if it wouldn't mean a victory for the French-Canadians.)

Here's Kerry Thompson again, writing for the Toronto Sun:

A knife registry? Really? What would I have to declare, paring knives, a bread knife, the plastic knife I used to put tuna on crackers while I was having lunch at work the other day?
Most knives are sharp. That helps them serve their purpose, you know, to cut things. There would be no way to single out knives that are used for hunting and ones used to cut chicken for that stir-fry you're making for dinner. Or ones used to, say, kill people?


Now we get to the good part. Doesn't Canada already have a gun registry? Here's Thompson again:

I'm not going to say the gun registry has turned out well, but I think there's a need to register firearms. But knives? In terms of dollars, if you think the gun registry went over budget (ballooning to $1 billion from an estimated $2 million), try to imagine the cost to register millions of knives (how many come in each new set of flatware from Ikea alone?) in this country.

The freakin' gun registry budget went from $2,000,000 all the way up to $1,000,000,000 ? How often do people get budgets wrong by that many orders of magnitude? Have you ever taken your car to in for repairs, gotten a $200 dollar estimate, and then gotten a bill for $10,000 ? (I think I got those ratios right.)

Here's more Kerry Thompson, who stated above that there's a need to register firearms, even if "the gun registry has not turned out well". This is the second thing that Thompson gets wrong:

This is clearly a problem of some politicians failing to think before they speak, something they're known to do from time to time. In this case, the summer sun obviously got to them.

No, Mr. or Ms. Thompson, your politicians knew exactly what they were doing. They once sold you a two million dollar gun registry, and charged you a billion dollars for it. You, for one, obviously bent over and took it. You're a journalist who can't find a way to speak out against your country's Victim Disarmament Laws.

Now, they're coming back for another billion. Yes, billion. And we're talking about valuable Canadian currency, not the USA play dollars that are already devalued from being overcommitted to political schemes like this one.

This is about expanded government control and expanded government revenue, nothing more.

And if you need to have something cut, mail it to me.

4 comments:

Dr Ralph said...

WS -- your wit is so sharp, what need have you for knives?

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Doctor,
As a true libertarian, my fondest hope is for the blessings of sharpness to be extended to everyone.
Just as long as sharpness isn't mandated by some horrific government program.

Dr Ralph said...

WS - I suspect you have nothing to worry about government-mandated sharpness. Dullness seems to be the official standard.

TarrantLibertyGuy said...

Perhaps the Canadians should also register these dangerous items:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/201626_tl130.html
(Killed by Lava Lamp)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE6DE113CF93AA35753C1A965958260
(Police killed by bucket)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/6442153.stm
(Killed by can of insulating foam)