Re: Self defense injustice in the UK

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

May 31, 2025 at 7:48:37 PM PDT, moviePig <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

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.

I honestly don't understand why moviePig isn't standing on his feet,
applauding the perfect illogic of UK criminal law.

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.

"I was eating in bed, officer."

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.

Good heavens