LONDON - Rishi Sunak's British government has launched a legislative crackdown to completely ban large-bladed knives and machetes, used on several occasions, according to news reports in recent years, in attacks, ambushes or even showdowns between so-called baby gangs.
It will be illegal to possess, sell, manufacture or transport these potentially lethal weapons.
While fatal shootings are very rare in the UK, knife crime has increased in recent decades.
Murders committed with knives remained stable in the last year recorded - between the summer of 2022 and 2023 - around the peak of 250. An alarming figure that had prompted Idris Elba, a popular British actor also known for action roles in detective plots and a symbol of the island's black community, to launch a campaign in this regard, finally calling for the banning of the so-called "zombie knives", the knives inspired by horror and pulp films, very widespread among youth gangs.
Already last August the Tory government announced its intention to ban them but only now has the promise materialized.
He criticizes the Labor opposition, according to which the Conservatives had already said in the past that they wanted to ban these dangerous bladed weapons but that legal loopholes remained.
In fact, the previous legislative crackdown only applied to large-bladed knives with stickers containing words or images considered threatening.
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