As the number of knife attacks continues to rapidly grow in Germany, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has proposed a stricter knife-carrying ban than the one already in place. Critics argue, however, that an even stricter ban will not hinder perpetrators, mostly migrants, from committing heinous crimes, and the state should instead focus its efforts on putting a stop to illegal immigration from Africa and the Middle East.
Germany already has stringent regulations on carrying knives in public, with blades over 12 cm banned except in certain circumstances. However, the ban visibly does not seem to have any effect. This has not deterred Social Democrat interior minister Nancy Faeser from suggesting on Sunday, August 11th that the legal limit for knives carried in public should be shortened to 6 cm.
Faeser told the Sunday edition of the German daily Bild that the left-liberal coalition government is aiming to “create a general ban on handling dangerous flick knives.” She said she also wants more police surveillance at train stations.
The interior minister of the southern state of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann—of the centre-right CSU party—criticised the plan, saying “It is doubtful that further knife bans can solve the problem of knife crime.” The recent stabbing and murder of a police officer in the south-western city of Mannheim, for example, was committed with a knife that was already prohibited under current law, he added.
None of the mainstream politicians are willing to name the real cause of the problem: the influx of illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East, some of whom are accustomed to ending disputes with physical violence.
As conservative publication Apollo News commented on the issue:
Measures such as prohibition zones or knife bans have so far only been sufficient—if they have been sufficient at all—to combat symptoms. Faeser does not address the causes that lie in migration policy.
As The European Conservative has reported for the past few months, knife-related attacks have spun out of control in Germany, with almost daily news reports about life-endangering attacks being carried out in different parts of the country.
Most recently three separate stabbing incidents happened within 24 hours in the capital, Berlin. A 39-year-old man was stabbed in the Berlin-Mitte district at a subway station, and a 34-year-old man in the Neukölln district, which is mainly inhabited by migrants. The victim of the second attack is in life-threatening danger. Nothing is known about the nationalities of either of the perpetrators.
In a third incident, fifteen to thirty men are said to have gotten into a dispute with five other men. The attackers hit the men with stones and beer bottles, beat them and sprayed them with gas. One of the victims was also wounded with a stab to his shoulder blade.
Most of the perpetrators of violence in Berlin “are young, male and have a non-German background. This also applies to knife violence,” Barbara Slowik, the police commissioner of Berlin recently said in an interview.
The Charité hospital in Berlin said last week that the number of patients treated for stab wounds this year has already reached 50 to 55—a number they usually tend to in a whole year. According to police statistics, close to 13,844 knife-related attacks were committed last year throughout Germany, a significant increase compared to the 10,131 cases recorded a year earlier.
Police have registered an increasing number of knife attacks at railway stations: last year they recorded a total of 777 knife attacks, while in the first six months of this year the number has already reached 430. The majority of the perpetrators are “non-German.”
