Comment on Ninja sword owners will be paid to surrender weapons before ban

• tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  This “Ninja sword” is apparently a straight sword:

  2.4. The legal definition that we tested as part of this consultation was as follows:

  A fixed bladed article with a blade between 14-24 inches (the length of the blade being the straight-line distance from the top of the handle to the tip of the blade) with:

  (i) A single straight cutting edge; and;

  It sounds like most katanas and such, what I think people probably normally think of when they think of a “ninja sword”, are already banned under existing legislation:

  www.katanamart.co.uk/…/27-uk-samurai-sword-law

  Samurai and other curved Swords

  On April 6th 2008 a law came into effect banning samurai and other curved swords with a blade length of 50 cm or more; there are some exceptions for registered martial artists, re-enactors and even certain genuine Japanese swords.

  Here is to the law:

  gov.uk/…/import-controls-on-offensive-weapons#imp…

  An amendment to this act was passed, which came into effect on the 1st of August 2008. It allows curved and samurai swords which are handmade using traditional forging/production methods to be sold without a license.

  Apparently the Japanese did use straight swords for a while.

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokutō

  Image

  Maybe the issue here is that importers avoided their previous restrictions by selling straight swords, and they’re making a new class to catch those and for God-knows-what-reason are calling it a “Ninja sword”.

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