This weekend in Germany, the Interior Minister (Nancy Faeser, SPD) spoke up and said she is pursuing a new law which would ban people from carrying knives in train stations or aboard trains.
If you got stopped and frisked by the cops? You'd be talking about jail-time....just for having a knife on you.
Is this building up to a crisis business....with knife attacks?
Generally, I'd say a minimum of once a day, if you follow my region (Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Darmstadt).....you read a police report where some knife was pulled to either threaten people or to rob folks. I won't say it occurs that much in train stations or onboard trains.
Odds of this being passed? I'd give it 50-50 odds.
Just a guess, but if it passes....I would imagine that frisking in stations will start up and at least a hundred people a week across the nation will be charged on the knife law.
2 comments:
I don't know about Germans. I've carried a pocketknife with me for over 50 years. And up until 9/11 I carried it on planes as well. There is even a group here in the states called Knife Rights Foundation.
I am wondering about the wording on this potential law. From age 25, to the point I retired from work...I always had a 'multi-tool' on me (1.5 inch blade out of the dozen items on the 'tool'). Most German handymen will have something like that on themselves. But if you frisked a thousand German just out walking around...maybe three or four will have a knife (not a multi-tool).
What I think they are creating is a 'we-will-frisk-you' law that fits only into train-stations or trains/subways. If you just said the Bahn security folks will have a ideal group (men only, ages 15 to 25, non-German looking) that they will frisk forty times a day, and three of them on average will be prosecuted on the knife law.
In this scenario, Bahn security would curtail or drive out the bad-boy crowd in six months...making them feel threatened by entering any Bahn facility or train.
I'll just note that Wiesbaden was the first city in Germany to create a no-weapons zone (mostly shopping district, after 9 PM, back in 2019). You get frisked there in the appropriate hours and have a knife? You get no sympathy, and the fine business is up to 5,000 Euro. This was designed to be a frisk-zone and I think the first year...there were a dozen guys taken in front of a judge.
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