The Slippery Slope

The New York Times and the BBC are reporting an editorial in the British Medical Journal that's calling for... get this... banning the sale of long, pointed kitchen knives. That's right - not only are British citizens unable to own firearms to protect themselves (though criminals can get them easily enough), but in these doctors' opinions, they shouldn't even be able to own the kinds of kitchen knives they want! Yikes.

As if that's not enough, another story from Britain tells the story of an overzealous airport security guard who took a recording artist aside at Heathrow security because he had a shirt printed with the image of a gun - he was told it was "unsuitable for flying in" and that "if the T-shirt was embossed it could be used as something". Double yikes.

How do people come to these asinine conclusions? I intend to find out Sunday, when 60 Minutes' feature story is about the .50 cal rifle. I'm very interested to see what kind of spin they're going to put on it, especially after seeing the commercial spot for it, which went something like this: "Due to terrorist fears, the .50 caliber rifle has been banned in California, but it can still be purchased in every other state, blah blah blah." I'll post back after the show with comments and fact-checking.