Ban pointed kitchen knives and subsidise the sale of stab proof vests.

As previously mentioned, the Tories are not our friends and now as the result of two people getting shot dead in London they have decided to press ahead with the bonkers proposals in their recent consultation and even add to them, see if you can get through the press release without wincing.

In the face of hysterical headlines, the usual cry of “something has to be done” has been made, so this nanny state nonsense is apparently going to be it. As the BBC points out, armed crime hasn’t really changed that much, it was actually going down but has ticked up again in the past couple of years (the figure for 2010 includes the mass shooting in Cumbria, which makes the drop look more dramatic than it actually is). I cannot think of anything in recent memory more “nanny state” than a Home Office spokesman speaking after a shooting and saying that types of weapon that had literally nothing to do with the incidents being asked about will be banned. It sounded so impotent and callously bureaucratic.

What exactly two murders with handguns (already prohibited) have got to do with acid, “zombie” knives and .50BMG rifles is an interesting question, but logic has never been a strong point when it comes to weapon laws in the UK. Shotgun licencing was introduced in 1967 after the murder of three policemen in 1966 – using handguns.

Home Office consultations are usually an exercise in trying to say that black is white, then receiving responses to the effect that black is black and white is white, then the Home Office disregards them and insists that black is most certainly white and how dare you for suggesting otherwise. Thus foolish legislation prevails as a public relations exercise.