Gun and Knife crime

[delboy54]

15 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

This might sound extreme but if it keeps kids safe maybe have metal detectors/scanning machines in schools. If keeps our kids safe in schools and out of schools might be something to consider 

I used to go to Technical College years ago and a group of the guys on my course said they had to spend a year at Lewisham Tech College in London and this college had metal scanners (airport type) at the front door and this was in the mid 1970's.....!

[delboy54]

A school chum of mine way back in 1972 bought an unexploded anti aircraft shell into school (it was a bloody great rusty thing) that he found while exploring an old USA WW2 airfield.....that was exciting especially when the bomb squad got called in....and yes it was a live round

In his defence though, he didn't intend to use it or set it off......just a bit of harmless innocent fun!

Difference is todays kids would have have tried to set it off or chuck it on a fire

[Genie]

A 14 year old has been charged with the murder of 15 year old Alfie Lewis, unbelievable.

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

A 14 year old has been charged with the murder of 15 year old Alfie Lewis, unbelievable.

14 **** hell

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

A 14 year old has been charged with the murder of 15 year old Alfie Lewis, unbelievable.

Quite apart from the victim, that's his life totally **** ed. 

[Genie]

14 year olds carrying and prepared to use knives in a fatal attack, it’s absolutely shocking. 

[Demitri_C]

2 hours ago, Genie said:

14 year olds carrying and prepared to use knives in a fatal attack, it’s absolutely shocking. 

Dunno about everyone else when i was 14 my parents sister and alot of my older cousins would know where i was.

If i ever carried a knife they would have beaten the shit out of me

[Genie]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

Dunno about everyone else when i was 14 my parents sister and alot of my older cousins would know where i was.

If i ever carried a knife they would have beaten the shit out of me

It never even occurred to me to carry a weapon of any kind at that age. 

[mjmooney]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

It never even occurred to me to carry a weapon of any kind at that age. 

Nor me. Paradoxically, however, when I was at primary school, I (and most other boys) had sheath knives. Not in school, obviously, but when playing out - for whittling sticks, etc. My missus confirms that her brothers were exactly the same. Different world. 

[His Name Is Death]

20 hours ago, bobzy said:

I think social media makes this a lot harder than any of us (well, maybe those without teenage kids) realise.  I imagine there'll be majority "invisible" bullying these days and the mental impacts will be huge.

And I don't know on the second bit - it will just depend.  I know @AvfcRigo82 likes to think back of times when kids all had perfect manners and skipped through meadows for fun, but I remember having a knife pulled on me in Shirley Park (hardly the roughest area!) when I was a teenager.  We also had incidents of knives and - for some reason, very memorably - snooker balls in socks being brought into school as weapons.  I don't remember anyone being fatally stabbed (and I think the types of knife used now are much more potentially dangerous), but weapons have always been around and in the hands of dickheads.

I know no one wants to be an old man complaining about "kids these days" and will go to painful lengths not to be. Still, if you think the violence and mental bullying back then was remotely comparable to now, you're only deceiving yourself.

I'm sure most people remember incidents like that back in their own day. I was at high school in the mid to late 00s, in a pretty rough school in West Yorkshire (next to some rougher ones), and by that point there were definitely dickheads bandying weapons about. One of them stabbed me in the leg, and there was also a lot of physical and mental bullying going round. I still wouldn't consider it as normalised as it seems to be today, though.

I'd love to ask my Dad more about going to school in Aston/Nechells/Duddeston in the 60s and 70s. He can remember isolated incidents, too, and doesn't have a particularly rosy view of that time, but even he baulks at some of the recent articles about teenage violence.

[GarethRDR]

At the age of 14, the deadliest weapon I owned was this:

[villaglint]

7 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

At the age of 14, the deadliest weapon I owned was this:

I remember reading at the time they got banned in NY because people were filling them with acid. 

[Demitri_C]

13 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

At the age of 14, the deadliest weapon I owned was this:

I once filled this up with egg and flour doused a girl in school that i had a crush on. 

Got detention but went down as a legend with the kids in my year

[mjmooney]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

I once filled this up with egg and flour doused a girl in school that i had a crush on. 

Interesting seduction technique. I'll bet she was all over you after that.   

 

[Demitri_C]

1 minute ago, mjmooney said:

Interesting seduction technique. I'll bet she was all over you after that.   

 

Thankfully she had a sense of humour said i had a dangerous side to her that she liked and did end up going out a couple times

 

[His Name Is Death]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-67429350

Quote

Two 12-year-old boys have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was killed in a street stabbing in Wolverhampton.

 

Detectives investigating the murder of 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai said the schoolboys were arrested at their home addresses.

 

Mr Seesahai died after being stabbed on land off Laburnum Street, East Park, just before 20:30 GMT on Monday.

 

Officers said dedicated patrols would be stepped up following local concern.

 

Det Ch Insp Dave Sanders said the investigation was "moving at pace".

 

He added the two boys remained in custody and Mr Seesahai relatives were being kept updated as the probe continued.

 

"We continue to encourage anyone with information to contact us," he said.

12?!

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, His Name Is Death said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-67429350

12?!

I was just catching up on this thread having seen this story and saw people shocked about a 14 year old. Now we're down to 12.

I know I sound like a sad old man but I'm sure drill etc videos and music exasperates this issue. Knife crime is definitely normalised in a lot of lyrics and imagery.  Kids have always and will always be influenced by their music idols. 

[His Name Is Death]

50 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I was just catching up on this thread having seen this story and saw people shocked about a 14 year old. Now we're down to 12.

I know I sound like a sad old man but I'm sure drill etc videos and music exasperates this issue. Knife crime is definitely normalised in a lot of lyrics and imagery.  Kids have always and will always be influenced by their music idols. 

I agree. I know people are invested in dismissing this because they (a) don’t want to come across as old, conservative and out of touch and/or (b) they enjoy the music (like me), but a lot of the behaviour at my high school was clearly heavily influenced by music and the lyrics and imagery associated with it, namely (in my case) gang culture becoming more mainstream via hip hop and garage.

Going along with it because it was ‘cool’ changed the personalities of people I knew quite dramatically, my brother in particular, and some never grew out of it. I can say for sure that their later involvement with gangs could be tied back to copying what they saw on The Box, MTV, etc.

Edited November 15, 2023 by His Name Is Death

[Seat68]

Without question music influences people behaviour. Not a day goes by when I have to stop myself travelling to Reno and shoot a man. Shoot a man just to watch him die. 

That's nonsense of course, and my feelings are this, music is the soundtrack and not the influence. Music may speak to you about your lived experience, or it may glamorise a lifestyle, but my feeling is that although it may influence a small amount on the whole it is more soundtrack than manifesto. 

[Rustibrooks]

14 minutes ago, His Name Is Death said:

I agree. I know people are invested in dismissing this because they (a) don’t to come across as old, conservative and out of touch and/or (b) they enjoy the music (like me), but a lot of the behaviour at my high school was clearly heavily influenced by music and the lyrics and imagery associated with it, namely (in my case) gang culture becoming mainstream via hip hop and, at the time, garage.

Going along with it because it was ‘cool’ changed the personalities of people I knew quite dramatically, my brother in particular, and some never grew out of it.

Agreed, I listen to a bit of drill time to time (mainly apart of my gym playlists) and I can easily see where kids get influenced. I didn’t believe it so much before but it’s hard to deny it when you see 12 year olds stabbing people these days. 
 

There’s a bloke on TikTok that’s a faceless account, he shows everyone how easy it is to get certain knives in the UK. He doesn’t show you where he gets it from, but I think his overall message is that it’s super easy for these kids to order these things. 
 

I sometimes work alongside young people and some of the stories I’ve heard from them are horrifying. These are stories that have not hit the news as well, but where I grew up I’m not totally shocked as well. It’s why I’d much rather see kids making TikTok’s of them doing silly dances in public, rather than chase people in the street with swords/knives.