There are weapons that can be banned for ordinary people, and most countries have it, for example in the case of submachine gun. Then there are those that can be possessed by an ordinary person, but only a handful of people can be worn in public.
And then there are knives. Maybe and kitchen.
These can be transformed into a murderous weapon without the state can do anything about it.
The latest example is Friday’s attack in Hamburg, Germany, in which a mentally sick 39-year-old woman hurt 18 people and almost killed a few.
But the so -called “Knife Crime” (a crime through a knife) is on the rise in several western countries. This is especially the case for the British, where there is a crazy number of knife attacks every week – an average of about a thousand per week.
Experts have long been thinking about how to reduce this trend. There are several causes, some of them are already introducing, such as a ban on wearing any knives (including kitchen) in public. However, other solutions are almost impossible to apply in practice.
They introduced the Station. Did not help
Up to 18 people were injured on Friday evening in the main railway station in Hamburg, Germany. Although some of them were in critical condition, so far all the victims have survived. The Hamburg police said on Saturday that four of the victims who suffered life -threatening injuries are in a stabilized state.
The police said there were “very concrete evidence” of the suspect’s mental illness and no evidence that the attack was politically motivated.
The woman stays in police custody.
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof is the second busiest railway station in Europe, which will check about half a million passengers a day. The latest attack occurred on Friday night, when the station was extremely overcrowded – more than usual, as the summer holidays began in Hamburg.
The railway station is considered a frequent place of violent crime and drug use. In the vicinity of the railway station in October 2023, respectively. In April 2024, a ban on the use of weapons and alcohol to prevent battles.
As part of the increased police activity in 2024, more than 500 weapons were confiscated, including 350 knives and installed more than 200 cameras inside the station.
However, this was not enough, and this is also evidenced by the fact that the knife attack is simply difficult to prevent.
But the woman was quickly overwhelmed by two passers -by, thanks to which he did not claim a mass attack, at least so far. One of her put her leg and heard her, the other in her chaos pulled a knife out of her hand.
Since spring 2023, the so-called quattro-streifen (patrols quattro) has regularly patrolled at the railway station, but it does not seem to help this time. Between 2023 and 2024, the number of annual cases of violence at the railway station decreased from 720 to 546 cases, but the number of crimes using knives increased from 12 to 23.
Will the “allowed” blade will help?
Last year, the German government promised stricter knife laws after the police recorded an increase in the number of stab attacks, especially near the railway stations.
Last year, an attack in Solingen, North Rhine-Vesrfal, was an initiative. In the evening of August 23, 2024 there was a mass stabbing in which three people died and eight were injured. The attack was followed by a 24-hour search, which ended in the arrest of a suspect, 26-year-old Syrian refugee by the police.
The then Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) called on the amendment of the law so that only 6 centimeters long knives could be worn in the public instead of the current 12.
“Knives are used to commit brutal violent acts that can cause serious injuries or death,” said Faeser Augusta for ARD public service television. “We need stricter weapons laws and stricter controls.”
“It is clear to me that our security services must have more powers to detect such perpetrators in a timely manner, especially in the digital space,” said Dirk Wiese, Vice -President of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democratic Party for Rheinische on Saturday. “We also have to finally make progress in the area of banning the use of knives.”
The worst is in Britain
Knife attacks in Germany have been growing in recent years.
In January, a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man were killed in the Park in Aschaffenburg with a knife attack, while several other people were injured. Only a month later, a Spanish tourist was stabbed at the Holocaust Memorial.
Last December, six people were killed and hundreds suffered injuries after the car thrust into a crowd on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the east of the country.
The suspects of these previous attacks were migrants, which led Germany to tighten border controls, and during the February federal elections in the country, immigration became a key topic for voters.
The link between a large number of knife attacks and their occurrence in the given areas is rather social – simply, the poorer the country, the more often these attacks are also showing numbers from England and Wales.
If there is a country that has a special experience with this kind of crimes, it is definitely the United Kingdom.
Experts: Strengthening the police will not solve this
Some argue that the increase in crimes committed by knives is the result of the government policy of austerity measures, while others are a consequence of cuts in police work.
“We are skeptical about both of these explanations,” says British professors and crime experts Toby Davies and Graham Farrel from the University of Leeds.
There is no clear mechanism to lead to an increase in crime committed by knives when most other types of violence and property crime continue to decline, they say in the article published
In the case of thorough examinations of the strategies of the fight against the crime of knives committed, it was not possible to find clear evidence of successful approaches. It is therefore not clear how the additional sources, such as strengthening police patrols, reported, is reported by researchers engaged in prevention of crime.
A more likely explanation of the growth of “knife crimes” is the market for illegal drugs, which has become more competitive and more violent in the last decade. Between the two crimes, at least indirect, the link can be seen.
Increased global cocaine production and trading with it means that although the Border Forces of the United Kingdom capture more drugs than ever before, in a decade before the pandemic, more cocaine has reached the street than in previous years.
Clear connection: Drugs and knives
During this period, there was also a significant development in domestic drug markets, which are strongly linked to the violence of gangs and the crime of committed knives.
Cocaine consumption in persons aged 16 to 24 in England and Wales increased by 90 percent between 2012 and 2019, studies say. This trend is similar to that of the recorded crime committed by knives and practically correlates.
Nevertheless, most of the murders with a knife is still committed by kitchen knives. And these are virtually impossible to regulate.
In Britain, the law is forbidden to wear any knives in the public “without the apparent cause”. In other words, if you have a regular kitchen knife on the street, you have to prove that you need it, otherwise you commit a violation of the law.
The increase in crime committed by knives in several European countries, especially in the United Kingdom and Germany, is a complex problem that is influenced by a combination of social, economic and political factors, British scientists say. Although each country has different problems, some are common.
The key factors behind the increase in crime committed by knives in Europe can be summarized as follows: the violence between the youth and the activity of gangs is growing. Younger individuals, especially teenagers and persons around the age of 20, are increasingly victims of the perpetrators of a knife crime.
In some urban areas, young people lead to wearing knives involved in gangs, the pressure of peers and the perceived need for self -defense.
One such phenomenon that encourages the abuse and violence of young people is drug trafficking in the United Kingdom.
Poverty and unemployment contribute to everything, and it is also seen in Britain – the poorer the district, the more knife attacks.
According to experts, social media can also escalate conflicts and promote violence. Video of battles or threats on the Internet can provoke retaliation in the real world using knives.
In some cases, the political discourse is mentioned in the tensions related to immigration and social integration. However, data often shows that migration itself is not a predictor of a knife crime – economic factors such as marginalization, unemployment or poor availability of housing are more important.
