Tory MP Scott Mann has attracted mockery on social media after calling for strict new knife control measures including for every blade sold in the UK to be fitted with GPS tracking systems.
In a post on the micro-blogging platform Twitter, the representative for North Cornwall went on to declare that Britain should create a “national database” of people who own knives, “like we do with guns”.
Anyone found to have carried a knife outside their property “had better have a bloody good explanation”, Mr Mann wrote, adding that there could be “obvious exceptions” for activities such as fishing.
Responses to the MP’s suggestion included ridicule, as well as many questions not only on the considerable expense of fitting every knife sold with GPS tracking equipment small enough to fit into the handles,
but also over the practicality of monitoring tens of millions of knives considering the UK’s high population density and the fact such systems are accurate only to about five metres, or just over 16 feet.