Re: Self defense injustice in the UK

On 6/1/2025 3:02 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

On Jun 1, 2025 at 8:15:55 AM PDT, "moviePig" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:
 

On 5/31/2025 11:57 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

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

  On 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.
    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.
    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.

>
I do get that (...including its rationale, but that's a different
discussion).  But what I'm theorizing is that if, say, he'd first
attacked her with his own knife, the sentence she'd have gotten for
defending herself with hers wouldn't have been much more than one would
get merely for carrying.

 I've never seen any commentary or quoted law from the UK that says the
sentence for carrying a weapon and using it self-defense is mitigated if the
attacker is similarly armed.

I'm assuming there's judicial discretion in a sentencing.  Again, it's hard to imagine a 17-year sentence for simple carrying.