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From: moviePig <nobody@nowhere.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Self defense injustice in the UK
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2025 11:15:55 -0400
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On 5/31/2025 11:57 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> On May 31, 2025 at 7:48:37 PM PDT, "moviePig" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 5/29/2025 10:30 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>   Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>>>   Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>>>>>   2025-05-29 1:43 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>   
>>>>>>   Woman accepts ride home from man she recently began dating. However,
>>>>>>   he's drunk, drives in the opposite direction, stops the vehicle, and
>>>>>>   begins sexually assaulting her. She pulls out a knife she carries for
>>>>>>   self defense and kills him with one thrust.
>>>   
>>>>>>   She turns herself into police.
>>>   
>>>>>>   This is the UK. Do I even have to tell you what happens to her next?
>>>   
>>>>>>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TYoStIDRJE
>>>   
>>>>>   That was truly obscene. Both sets of lawyers agreed that it was
>>>>>   unquestionably self-defence yet she got 17 years in the slammer.
>>>   
>>>>   I don't even think this is recent law. She committed a crime by using
>>>>   the knife she had brought with her anticipating she might need to defend
>>>>   herself. She'd been sexually assaulted previously.
>>>   
>>>   I found it. It's not new law.
>>>   
>>>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms#United_Kingdom
>>>   
>>>   	Since 1953, it has been a criminal offence in the United Kingdom
>>>   	to carry a knife (except for non-locking folding knives with a
>>>   	cutting edge of 3 inches (7.62 centimetres) or less) or any
>>>   	"offensive weapon" in a public place without lawful authority
>>>   	(e.g. police or security forces) or reasonable excuse (e.g.,
>>>   	tools that are needed for work, or bows and arrows used for
>>>   	sporting purposes). The cutting edge of a knife is separate from
>>>   	the blade length. The only manner in which an individual may
>>>   	carry arms is on private property or any property to which the
>>>   	public does not have a lawful right of access (e.g., a person's
>>>   	own home, private land, the area in a shop where the public have
>>>   	no access, etc.), as the law only creates the offence when it
>>>   	occurs in public.[41][42] Furthermore, Criminal Justice Act 1988
>>>   	Section 141 specifically lists all offensive weapons that cannot
>>>   	technically be owned, even on private property, by way of making
>>>   	it illegal to sell, trade, hire, etc. an offensive weapon to
>>>   	another person.
>>>   
>>>   	Furthermore, the law does not allow an offensive weapon or an
>>>   	ordinary item intended to be used or adapted for use as an
>>>   	offensive weapon to be carried in public before the threat of
>>>   	violence arises. This would only be acceptable in the eyes of
>>>   	the law if the person armed themselves immediately preceding or
>>>   	during an attack (in a public place). This is known as a "weapon
>>>   	of opportunity" or "instantaneous arming".
>>
>> I'm guessing that, if he'd tried instead to choke her to death, then her
>> knifing him would've been allowed as self-defense ...suggesting that
>> rape isn't a serious enough offense to warrant lethal reprisal.
> 
> No, it's the fact that she carried a weapon as insurance against *any* attack
> that violated the law. Apparently in the UK, the only weapons you're allowed
> to use to defend yourself are whatever happens to coincidentally be at hand
> the moment you're attacked. If he was choking her and her flailing hand
> happened to fall on a rock and she smashed his skull in with it, that would be
> legal, but anything possessed or carried to be used as a weapon *in case of
> attack* is illegal.
> 
> It's also a crime in the UK to keep any implement-- like a cricket bat-- as a
> weapon. You can legally have the bat, but if you use it on an intruder, you
> better be able to show that it was merely a weapon of opportunity, and not
> kept as a weapon of self-defense, like next to your bed, for example. The cops
> will actually question why you keep a cricket bat in your bedroom and not in
> the garage with all your other sporting equipment. Same goes for knives.
> Knives kept in the kitchen = legal. Knives kept in the bedroom = criminal
> offense.
> 
> People in the UK are actually advised by victims' advocacy groups to keep
> other sporting equipment-- soccer balls, cricket pads, baseball gloves, etc.--
> in their bedrooms along with the bat to avoid this kind of trap. There have
> even been cases where people have been threatened with charges merely for
> having large dogs as pets since they can be seen as "keeping weapons" in one's
> home.

I do get that (...including its rationale, but that's a different 
discussion).  But what I'm theorizing is that if, say, he'd first 
attacked her with his own knife, the sentence she'd have gotten for 
defending herself with hers wouldn't have been much more than one would 
get merely for carrying.