[yarper]

It's unlikely we could have more strict laws on knives in the UK. It's illegal to carry them and illegal to own many types of them (e.g. flick-knives).

Essentially if you have a knife on your person, and you've not got a damn good reason (e.g. it's a breadknife and you're on your way to work at a bakery) you're committing a crime.

Cars are basically impossible to legislate against. What they did is already illegal.

So to answer your question - what's left when everything is already illegal?

[snarfy]

> what's left when everything is already illegal?

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

There are plenty of other ways to address this that are not legislative. A legislative approach would only be counter productive. When people are breaking the laws, making more laws doesn't help.

We would probably get much better reduction in these types of events if we spent the same resources on supporting mental health issues than wire tapping the internet.

[philipov]

Why would they want to solve the mental health issues when they provide so many good excuses for wire tapping the internet?

EDIT: People don't understand politics for the same reason they don't understand Facebook. If you're not the big lobby consultant getting these people elected, you are the product.

[ad_hominem]

I don't think better mental health support would have any effect on Islamic terror attacks. These religious zealots are not mentally ill in the traditional sense.

[DanBC]

People with mental illness are not violent. Knowing the mental health status of someone gives you very little predictive power about whether they pose a risk of violence or not - even if we restrict ourselves to severe illness such as psychosis.

Even if you were to find that every single terrorist has a mental illness (and we know that most of the killers in the UK didn't) it still gives you no useful information.

Violence is prevalent. Mental illness is prevalent. There's obviously going to be some overlap. It's a coincidence, not a cause.

[jwdunne]

To note, this legislation covers a wider array that may shock our American commenters here.

If the police pull you over and find a baseball bat without a ball, you are in violation of the offensive weapons act.

Forget about handguns with legislation like that - which are also illegal but under a separate piece of legislation afaik.

We are less liberal in a lot of ways, both socially and economically but not consistently. In some areas, the reverse

[jamessb]

An offensive weapon is an article made, adapted or intended for causing injury.

Since a baseball bat is not made for causing injury, and is generally not adapted for this purpose (though it might be, e.g. by stacking nails into it), it would be necessary to show that it was possesed with the intention of causing injury. Note that posession for the purpose of 'self-defence' is not a legal defence.

Knives are different - it's an offense to possess a 'bladed' (excluding non-locking knives under 7.62 cm / 3 inches) or 'sharply pointed' article in a public place, even if there is no intent to cause harm, with certain exceptions (lawful authority, for use at work, religious reasons, or national costume).

[jwdunne]

I've seen police officers search for a ball when finding a baseball bat in someone's possession, implying that, without a ball, they consider it an offensive weapon.

This has been in the context of searches based on unrelated suspicions but the strong implication was there i.e "there better be a ball in the car to go with this".

Knives it's much more clear cut there. The baseball bat thing sticks out but to be honest, in the UK, a baseball bat may well be more commonly an offensive weapon than used for sport - the sport is no where near as popular.

I was going to add that I doubt officers would demand to see wickets and ball when finding a cricket bat.

[orf]

Sure, but those laws are not enforced to the letter of the law, but to the 'spirit' of the law. Which means your not going to get arrested for taking your kid and their bat home from practice just because you forgot the ball.

[jwdunne]

Not at all. I've seen this when police are searching cars owned by young drivers without children.

My point was that it can and has been broadly applied. If an officer believes an object is intended to cause harm, you can be arrested for it.

In contrast, the US enshrines gun possession as a basic constitutional right so baseball bats and knives are small fry. This was the comparison I was trying to extend.

[peterwwillis]

They could require places with the highest pedestrian traffic have elevated walkways for crossing streets, and reinforced barriers between the roadway and pedestrian traffic. Or ban cars and stick to trolleys, buses, trains.

At some point, after we've exhausted all options, we might have to ask ourselves why so many people want to kill random strangers, and then deal with that.

[zigzigzag]

I've never liked May's authoritarian tendencies - no way does that stuff remain restricted to targeting Islamism - but your last paragraph is in fact exactly what they are doing.

Having asked the question of "why do they want to kill random strangers", the answer they arrived at is "because they were brainwashed by religious fundamentalism they found on the internet".

Obviously nobody knows yet the specifics of this case, but I'm not sure why they think that given that the Ariane Grande event seemed to be radicalisation through family. It wasn't clear the internet played much role.

However, the UK Government has made repeated references to plots that were foiled (no details provided). If those plots were investigated and the root cause was frequently identified as "spent too much time surfing jihadi ideology" then I can see why they'd conclude the answer is internet regulation.

[infodroid]

> Having asked the question of "why do they want to kill random strangers", the answer they arrived at is "because they were brainwashed by religious fundamentalism they found on the internet".

To a reasonable person, it should be obvious this is just a proximate cause and not the root cause. Browsing the internet and then being exposed to hateful ideas doesn't automatically turn you into a murderer.

The deeper cause is surely that "jihadi ideology" is effective at appealing to European youth. But nobody is talking about why this is in fact the case or what are the reasons why it is so attractive to some people.

For one thing, the problem of jihadi terrorism isn't going to go away without confronting the ideology head-on. I think we must have a painfully honest discussion about "jihadi ideology" and to debunk it. Radicalization isn't an inevitable outcome of being exposed to these ideas but is rather the result of losing the argument with friends, loved ones, civilization.

Banning this stuff isn't going to make it less appealing to some people or to make it disappear from the internet. But it does give government the power to censor ideas they deem to be dangerous and liable to "brainwash" the youth. And you have to ask whether you trust your politicians to use such powers responsibly.

[Spooky23]

You mention "European youth"... my guess is that many of these people who end up radicalized do not self-identify as European.

This is a problem in open societies like the US and Europe. There a lot of "sects" choosing to wall themselves off, but they are learning to wield considerable political power in doing so.

[EliRivers]

But nobody is talking about why this is in fact the case or what are the reasons why it is so attractive to some people.

I think a lot of people are talking about that, and have been for some years. There's certainly a lot of articles to be found about it going back a few years, and many of the intervention and prevention programmes discuss the appeal of jihadi ideology to European youth.

[laretluval]

There will always be a set of mentally ill people who have the potential to be influenced to violence by rhetoric: not everyone is rational. In these circumstances, why do you think it is desirable to create an unfettered communication platform that allows everyone easy access to this population?

[infodroid]

Unlike famous mass shootings and stabbings in recent years by depressed or mentally disturbed individuals, most jihadi fighters don't have such problems. The fact is that jihadi terrorists usually turn out to be otherwise normal people. They are as rational as you or me, and people can't seem to accept or understand this. Just look at the numbers of Europeans travelling to Iraq, Libya, Syria to fight, to sacrifice their lives for this ideology. Or the tens of thousands who are already in ISIS. You can't tell me that most of them have mental problems.

A major problem in Europe is that there is no challenge to jihadi rhetoric, except for the far-right freak show, because the whole thing is taboo. You can't defeat jihadi ideology by pretending it doesn't exist, which is what you're effectively doing when you restrict online access and communication. It's a knee-jerk yet cowardly way to avoid confronting the problem.

[jononor]

Everyone is influenced by rhetoric (to some degree). Everyone has irrational weaknesses. It is one of the reasons why a monopoly on communication is very dangerous.

[jimnotgym]

So would you also ban books about it? News articles maybe?

[Broken_Hippo]

Exactly. To me, if the reason why folks kill others is because they were brainwashed (due to religious fundamentalism or not), the correct action would be to solve the issues that cause folks to be drawn to such fundamentalism.

[krona]

> I'm not sure why they think that given that the Ariane Grande event seemed to be radicalisation through family

Just on a point of fact, Abedi almost certainly wasn't radicalized by his own family, although some of them knew it was happening.

From The Telegraph/NYT:

Salman Abedi is understood to have made calls to two mobile phone numbers based in Libya, which were not registered to his family, moments before the massacre that killed 22 people.

Abedi, 22, has been connected to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) terror group Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, based in Libya, which is credited with being behind a number of attacks in Europe, including the Paris attacks which left 129 people dead and dozens injured after coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and the Saint-Denis Stadium. Two senior US intelligence officials told the New York Times that Abedi was in contact with al-Battar members both on his visits to Tripoli and by phone while in the UK.

There is lots of other information which ties these dots together, such as the particular materials and techniques used to construct the bomb he exploded.

[acqq]

That info doesn't mean that he haven't received radical ideas in his mosque and his family. Unless you consider "Islam will rule the world soon" and "death to the homosexuals" not radical. Specifically in the mosque site there were "favourite videos" of one U.S. Islam preacher with these messages.

"Freedom" of religion is not understood properly today.

[krona]

"Islam will rule the world soon" and "death to the homosexuals" are not radical ideas in Muslim communities, and certainly aren't sufficient to incite anyone in the legal sense.

Radicalization takes place within an atmosphere of complicity, which is part of the problem, but hardly the root cause.

On the other hand, teaching young impressionable men how to make a bomb designed specifically to kill people, and to give them the mens rea, motive and encouragement is radicalization.

[jdietrich]

There's already a massive vehicle-proof barrier system surrounding London's financial district:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_and_Environmental_Zone

[joncrocks]

We've tried this in the past :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Pedway_Scheme

[xaa]

I assumed as much. The question was half-rhetorical, though: such regulations did not and could not prevent what happened. There seems to be a law of diminishing returns on regulation: sure, common-sense things like not allowing weapons to mentally ill people go a long way, but increasing regulation past a certain point doesn't reduce problems and only restricts freedom.

So in that case, the question becomes, has the UK already passed that point for internet regulation? I don't know the answer, but I assume that plotting specific attacks or making specific threats online is punishable in the UK just as it is in the US.

[marcosdumay]

> what's left when everything is already illegal?

Looks like it's enforcement.

What, from the looks of it, would be nightmarish enough. No need for any new law.