Sticking a knife into the law
by David Bentley
The Sunday Mail, Brisbane
8 February 1998
I found out something really worrying the other day. I discovered that I agreed with Liz Cunningham. It's depressing, but there it is. She thinks the Government's new knife laws are draft - and so do I.
Where will it end? If knives go on the banned list, will forks be soon to follow? What if some halfwit brains an innocent bystander with a brick? Does that mean that houses will be made of sponge rubber in future.
Why stop with guns and knives? Why not legislate against flying saucer abductions? Or cyclones? Cyclones can be very damaging. Police Minister Russell Cooper would be doing less than his duty if he failed to legislate against cyclones.
It won't work, of course. It never does. Violence and bastardry don't disappear just because the government bans a few weapons. The problem is more deep-seated.
Anyway, you don't need a gun or a knife to damage another person. A heavy ashtray or an iron poker will do just as well.
In the tropics, ashtrays and iron pokers have never enjoyed vogue as murder weapons. Mainly they remain the stuff of Agatha Christie-style detective mysteries, taking their place along with untraceable poisons from darkest Africa and exotic potions from the Orient.
This is where modern society differs so markedly. It's all handguns and flick knives these days. You hardly ever hear of anyone slipping an ashtray or an iron poker down his trouser' leg in anticipation of a bit of bother in clubland.
As a young blade, I fancied myself as a jazz pianist. Thus I spent long, noisy hours entertaining inebriates in the flesh pots of Sydney - most memorably at the rough and ready Woolloomooloo Hotel where the crowd comprised students of low life as well as the low life itself.
If the patrons carried knives, I never saw one. Disagreements were mostly settled with broken bottles, smashed against the bar and held by the neck. It was prudent to stand clear of any fracas and, afterwards, to be careful not to trip over casualties moaning on floors slippery with gore.
The moral, if there is one, would seem to suggest that violence is done by people. Weapons are incidental
Violent persons make weapons of anything to hand. A knife, a gun, a bottle, a fence paling. Whatever.
A man may be kicked grievously by hooligans in army boots. Yet, realistically, does this mean we should ban army boots?
I mention army boots (a) because I no longer wish to discuss futile legislation designed by tub thumping law and order types and (b) because I am intrigued by the notion of women soldiers joining men in the front line of battle.
No doubt you have read of this latest advance in the feminist cause. I think it is significant in that it scuttles, for once and for all, the male jibe that women will only accept glamorous jobs, not the dangerous, dirty ones.
Just how real life in the trenches will pan out is more than I can predict. My impression of the female fighters has, unfortunately, been warped by Hollywood-style epics in which Hispanic belles in clingy camouflage outfits sacrifice themselves to a guy with a bushy beard and a big cigar.
I don't think modern warfare is like that - although I applaud the army for recognising the powerful fighting machine that modern woman represents - thus freeing up sensitive new age guys who hate stabbing and shooting in favour of cushy secretarial jobs away from the firing line.
That leaves just one big hurdle to gender equality - protocol in shipwrecks. And I predict it won't be long before we hear the stoic female cry of "Men and boys first!" as the first lifeboats are lowered into the angry, glowering sea.
Reprinted with kind permission of the author
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