Is it legal to own a knife in London?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife laws in the uk“
About Gabriella
Written by: Gabriella
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Is it legal to own a knife in London?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife laws in the uk“
About Gabriella
Certainly! I moved out of London in 1980, & I still have a few knives I owned while living there. A couple of kitchen knives & a penknife*, at least. Oh, & a dissection kit, complete with some very sharp blades.
I didn’t move far, so I’m still governed by the same national laws, & I own lots of sharp things, including an axe. I bought them all openly & legally. Still in this country, my sister’s bloke owns a samurai sword. It sits on a sword rack in their house, together with a wooden blade for kendo. He bought them in Japan & brought them back here, openly (declared to customs & baggage handling) & legally.
I’ve seen ordinary people, civilian air passengers, walk into a British airport carrying rifles. Totally legal. They were bagged, with ammunition packed separately, declared, & checked in at the appropriate baggage check-in, with licences shown. Their owners were going on a hunting holiday. Two airport police dropped by to check all was well, & chatted amiably to the hunters about the guns (at least one of the cops seemed to be a gun nut) & what they’d be hunting. I think that chat was their motive for stopping, not any concern about the dangerous people with guns (shock horror!) in an airport: a small break to their routine. Nobody else paid any attention as far as I can see. I did because I was behind them in the same queue.
Just another normal day in our totally gun-free (They’re all banned! Banned, I tell you!), no-knives-allowed (yes, the law says all food has to be sold already cut up) country.
*The penknife is stainless steel with a sturdy plastic handle, bought while I was at school for its usefulness in prising things off rocks on the seashore while not rusting. I recently saw an identical one in The Museum of English Rural Life , in a display of miscellaneous tools & the like . . .
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I’ve got an entire set in my kitchen. A friend who’s a professional butcher has a much more impressive set than mine – of course it’s legal to own a knife. We haven’t moved over to chopsticks.
I also have in my pocket a swiss army knife. Again that’s legal for me to carry around with me; the blade is less than three inches and it’s not lockable. My friend the butcher occasionally carries knives as the tools of their trade – that too is legal. For that matter when I bought my large kitchen knives I carried them through the streets of London in my bag. That also was legal.
It’s illegal to carry a knife longer than three inches and with a fixed or lockable blade in public without a good reason, and it’s illegal to threaten people with knives. What’s a good reason? According to government guidelines on selling, buying and carrying knives :
Good reasons for carrying a knife or weapon
Examples of good reasons to carry a knife or weapon in public can include:
taking knives you use at work to and from work
taking it to a gallery or museum to be exhibited
if it’ll be used for theatre, film, television, historical reenactment or religious purposes, for example the kirpan some Sikhs carry
if it’ll be used in a demonstration or to teach someone how to use it
A court will decide if you’ve got a good reason to carry a knife or a weapon if you’re charged with carrying it illegally.
Owning a knife being illegal? I know jokes are made about English cooking, but come on .
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Is it legal to own a knife in London?
Of course it is. How would we cut or prepare our food, or cut up our carpets?
If you’re outside with a knife, however, and you’re stopped by the police you may need to explain why you have it. You can’t carry one exclusively for self-defence.
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Sure it is. I have drawers full of them at home, not to mention various knives in tool boxes, and – oddly enough – the spike bayonet for a Lee-Enfield Rifle No. 4.
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No. Today unforced to make 500 cheese sandwiches with a spoon.
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The law(s) pertaining to knife use in the UK are national, not city ordinances. Across the country, if you are carrying a folding, non-locking knife with a blade-edge of less than 3″ long, you are entitled to carry that in public. If you are carrying anything beyond that but is not outlawed under the Offensive Weapons act (so, no flick knives or butterfly knives), it can still be carried if you have a good reason for carrying it.
Good reason in this case means a contemporaneous reason why you need that specific knife – for example “I am travelling from work, where I just used this knife to cut through 50 p…
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Sure, but it’s not legal to carry, in public, a flick-knife or a sharp knife with a blade more than 3″ long, unless you have a good reason which doesn’t involve stabbing people (you’re going camping; you’re in full Highland dress; you’re a chef carrying their tools etc etc).
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Yes it is perfectly legal to own a knife in London. It is also perfectly legal to own a Gun, and a car, and a motorcycle.
However for the last 3 you need a licence.
For details of gun regulations in London see Firearms licensing
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