Reply to: Security at Heathrow

[Ketchup]

I would be curious to hear what purpose the knife was originally bought for

[RasputinDude]

I cant think of any valid reason to have a lock-blade knife.

Folding knives can fold in on your finger when you are using them. It's not pretty nor pleasant - that is the reason that people use knives with locking blades.

[Pondlife]

After having to repack checked in luggage because a 26Kg and 20Kg bag isn't the same as 2 x 23Kg I realised just before security that my swiss army knife was in my wife's hand luggage (I'd just used it to cut tags off the baggage). Security didn't notice it but did pull the multitool I'd also forgotten about in mine. Same thing happened 2hrs later at CDG, they let the knife through but confiscated a bottle of water. (I didn't realise we'd be going back through security in Paris.)

Close one but lesson learnt.

[MyUserName]

Evern more so if it were female.

I have often wondered whether issuing a gun and free use of it to all women but no men, would actually result in a net drop in violent crime?

Or allow knives on planes, in fact give a knife to every passenger. Then watch someone try to hijack the plane.

Also, have no door between the cockpit and passengers - merely a soundproof wall. Include a button the stewardess can press which causes a message to come on in the cockpit telling the pilot he needs to land at the nearest airport. Once the light is on it cannot be switched off so no other signalling is possible.

[BrilloPad]

Evern more so if it were female.

I have often wondered whether issuing a gun and free use of it to all women but no men, would actually result in a net drop in violent crime?

I suppose if I keep out of the house one week in four I might be safe.

[BoredBloke]

When I worked in geneva I used to pack my trusty Swiss army knife in my checked luggage. One day I was travelling back with hand luggage and only realised that the knife was in the bag when it was too late. So when I got to the main train station I put it in a left luggage locker. I shouldn't have bothered because a few weeks later a woman was travelling back with her kids. One of them found his Leatherman in his carry on luggage. She took it off him and explained things to the security guard. They just waved it through! On another occasion I was taken to one side and had to empty my bag, full of dirty clothes. They had spotted the adapter for my headphones which they thought was a bullet.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Oh come on chAPS a middle class, middle age male (assumption about the demographic) is hardly the sort of person we need to worry about walking round with a knife.

Evern more so if it were female.

I have often wondered whether issuing a gun and free use of it to all women but no men, would actually result in a net drop in violent crime?

[Ignis Fatuus]

Exactly this, with the amount of knife-crime in the UK, i think he should have been arrested. I cant think of any valid reason to have a lock-blade knife.

I can: it is safer, i.e. less likely to slip and cut the user.

And BTW why should the fact that some people commit crimes with knives be enough to make criminals out of those who wish to carry a knife but have no intention of committing a crime with one?



PS RasputinDude is right of course, it's legal if you have a good reason. But the burden of proof is shifted, it's up to you to show good reason. Just wanting it handy is not good enough, and you do have to take positive steps to remove it from yourself in between justifiable occasions of carrying it. Which again is imposing on the innocent just to make it easier to control the guilty.

Yes, I do know why they do so. And no, I don't want me or any of my family to be stabbed because the wrong person carried a knife. But I do have philosophical reservations about punishing the innocent just to cast the net wide enough; I think such measures should be (more) carefully considered by government before being enacted; and seeing that other countries manage without such laws, I suspect that Britain is more regulated than most. Or is it more violent than most?

[MyUserName]

Some of my re-enactment group were coming back via Heathrow after doing a show in Tabor. One of the girls had a terrible cold and felt very ill and when they checked her luggage they pointed out a large dagger shaped object in her bag (it might have been on some kind of x-ray scren or something) and asked her what it was, she replied:

"Well it's a dagger, isn't it!"

They let her carry on.

[Malcolm Buggeridge]

Oh come on chAPS a middle class, middle age male (assumption about the demographic) is hardly the sort of person we need to worry about walking round with a knife.

[The Spartan]

I always carry a Leatherman multi-tool around very handy piece of kit I generally don't leave home without it, but then there is having sense I wouldn't take it out on a night on the town.

[RasputinDude]

Most people are missing the point here: if a knife has a locking blade then it is a criminal offence to carry it in public in the UK. Nothing to do with airport security regulations.

No it is not. If it has a lock, then it is classed as a fixed blade instead of a folding blade knife. It is a defense to carry such a knife if you have good reason to do so. I have to go through this every year with parents when we do a backwoods camp and the Explorers have sheath knives. Perfectly acceptable in the right environment. As is buying a kitchen knife and carrying it home.

(obviously, having a knife in your hand luggage at an airport isn't an acceptable defense)

[Ketchup]

Most people are missing the point here: if a knife has a locking blade then it is a criminal offence to carry it in public in the UK. Nothing to do with airport security regulations.

Exactly this, with the amount of knife-crime in the UK, i think he should have been arrested. I cant think of any valid reason to have a lock-blade knife.

[BrilloPad]

I have a good friend who is Immigration at Gatwick and occasionally have got him when coming through. Once, with my boss coming back from Germany, he called security over and got me taken away in front of the boss thinking it was a good wag.

I hope you walked back Gangham style......

[BA to the Stars]

Perhaps the OP's boyfriend just wanted a full body search