Ban the Blade

The Third Casualty

by Manuel Miles

Fact continues to leave fiction in the dust.  The FAA, the US government’s commercial aviation bureaucracy, has banned scissors and cutting tools from airliners.  This has led the airport security hordes to confiscate passengers’ pocket knives, nail files, and now, even knitting needles. 

Yes, the kindly, elderly lady quietly knitting across the aisle from you is a threat to the New World Order!  This is reminiscent of the Monty Python skit, “Hell’s Grannies,” in which gangs of young thugs were terrorised by little old ladies brandishing bumbershoots. 

Meanwhile, there is continuing silence from the FAA about taking the logical step of arming airline pilots with side arms.  Thus armed, I suggest, air crews would no longer tremble at the sight of the blue-rinse set.  But that was last week’s column.... 

This week, I have decided to convert.  My policy now is one of blind loyalty to the State.  You see, in times like these, we have to unite.  The world has changed, and we can no longer afford to pretend that we are not in a war--a war with the deadly scourge of the evil blade!  Therefore, I suggest that all edged implements be banned from civilian ownership.

I can hear the knife nuts’ protests already: “Knives don’t kill people, people kill people!”  Well, we now know that it is people with knives who kill people.  We can ignore their silly arguments about needing “hunting” knives, too--when is the last time anybody brought down a charging bull moose with a knife?!  For the State, oops, I mean, the people, to be safe, we have to ban the blade.  Only police and soldiers have a real need for edged weapons, and only they can keep us safe from terrorists, just as they did on September 11th. 

There will be some minor inconveniences, of course.  Cardboard boxes will have to be made with “pull tab” openers.  We will all have to get used to buying our steaks precut to bite-size pieces by specially licensed butchers.  The occasional police raid to search for sharp objects in our kitchen drawers will be necessary, too.  However, “the price of liberty is eternal confiscation,” as a great man once said.

This measure is long overdue anyway.  In The Peoples’ Republic of Canada, where I reside, edged weapons account for 29% of all murders, year in and year out, second only to firearms, which cause 30%.  [Baseball bats, bare hands and hockey sticks wreak most of the other 41% of the annual slaughter, but that is unimportant, right?]  Yet to date, only guns are restricted, registered and licensed.  This is constantly touted as being worthwhile “...if only one child’s life is saved,” yet it is entirely legal to carry a sword here.  Well, if only one airplane is not hijacked, it is certainly worth giving up our silly love affair with The Deadly Blade! 

Canadians will surely feel safer once this epidemic of slicing and dicing of one another is ended by our caring, concerned government.  (Americans would, too, of course, but first they have to be disarmed of their guns.  One slippery slope step at a time, comrades....)

Some of my readers may resist my call for an end to sharp and pointed objects, but just remember friends, that sweet-looking septuagenarian in seat 14C might be knitting an “Afghan”!  It kind of makes you think...or does it?

October 20, 2001

Manuel Miles, aka Kaptain Kanada, is a politically incorrect writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  He is rude, nasty, intolerant, insensitive, hateful, hurtful, and proud of it. If something he writes hurts your sensitive New Age feelings, don't bother to whine to him about it; he doesn't care.  He is a self-professed enemy of the state, and his personal goal is "...to die fighting for Liberty."