Call for ban on ‘Rambo’ knife sales

HIGH street shops should be banned from selling Rambo-style survival knives in an effort to tackle Edinburgh’s growing problem with young people carrying blades, politicians claimed today.

By The Newsroom Wednesday, 16th January 2002, 12:00 am

The fact many shops in the city are free to sell the hunting knives and display them in their windows simply encourages young people to buy the dangerous weapons, they said.

Now the Scottish Executive is facing demands for a crackdown on the sale of the knives, which have been connected with a frightening "steaming" attack in the Capital.

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Calls for traders selling the knives to be licensed in the same way as gun merchants, effectively banning them from high street shops, were led by Lothians MSP Kenny McAskill.

The number of people caught with knives and other dangerous weapons in Edinburgh has shot up in recent years. There were 774 cases last year, compared with 707 in the previous 12 months, a rise of nearly ten per cent.

More than 400 people were reported to the procurator fiscal in Edinburgh in 2000 for carrying offensive weapons - mainly knives - compared with 193 in 1997.

Mr McAskill said today the survival knives should only be sold by licensed trade shops to customers who can prove they need them for a legitimate use such as fishing .

"We should be clamping down on Army surplus stores who advertise them by putting them in their windows to induce youngsters to join in the sexy macho image they portray.

" Hunting knives for people who have a legitimate use for them should be bought through restricted outlets ."

Councillor Bill Cunningham, who represents the Holyrood area, including The Mound, where the city’s latest knife attack took place this weekend, agreed and said: "I think there should be tougher restrictions on the sale of knives because when they are on display they are just too tempting for anyone that passes."

A shop assistant at Leith Army Stores on Brunswick Place said it stocked hunting knives and had them on display in its window, but no-one was available to comment on the calls for tougher rules governing their sale. The politicians’ calls were today backed by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland. Graeme Pearson, secretary of ACPOS’ crime department, said: "The Scottish police welcome any effective means which limit the sale of this type of knife and prevent its subsequent use in violent crime."

A Lothian and Borders Police spokeswoman said one of the reasons for the growing number of people caught with knives was proactive policing.

"In the past year we have targeted these criminals with initiatives designed to detect them, charge them, and take dangerous weapons off the streets," she said.

A deadly Rambo-style knife was carried by a young teenage thug whose gang brought terror to Edinburgh’s Festival Fireworks finale last summer. Police said a hunting knife with a nine-inch blade was one of at least five knives being carried by the ten-strong gang who attacked at least 13 people .

The gang, aged between 14 and 17, went on the "steaming" rampage through the fireworks crowds, stabbing one 18-year-old man and attacking and robbing many more victims.

Such attacks known as "steaming", where innocent victims are chosen at random, originated among gangs in New York.

A Scottish Executive spokesman said: "The 1997 Knives Act made it an offence to market a knife in a way which indicates it is suitable for combat.