I think that the legal discussion on D-Guards is an important one to have. It helps us to understand knife culture in other parts of the world and also helps keep us informed about the kind of proccesses capable of occurring within governments.
Whether an attempt to limit access to weapons is a good idea at all is up to you. It's happening in Australia though so it's worth looking at the logic and implementations that are at play here.
The rationale in this case is that while there is a non combative utility for D guards (protecting the hand in brush etc) there is also an offensive/combat utility (punching, blocking incoming blades), particularly for D guards that are knuckledusters (another banned item) with which the physical definitions fail to distinguish. The government has made a call that the non combative utility is worth sacrificing to eliminate public access to the combat utility. This is generally in line with their stance on other prohibited items, that tools with the capacity to kill should not be accessible unless there is a functional utility valuable enough to justify their import.
One positive thing that can be said is that there is at least a logical core of a some kind here that is consistently applied in the classification of tools, weapons etc. The issue comes in how the evaluation is made of risk vs practical use as well as where the line is drawn. For example a majority of people could likely agree that private citizens shouldn't be able to freely import ICBMs with nuclear warheads. The risk is very high and the utility is very low. On the other hand it's unclear whether a majority of citizens would support prohibition of machetes and this is something that's just been legislated in Victoria.
Another issue is that both Australia and the UK use morphological weapon classification (if it has certain features that fit a classification then it is classed as such, rather than going by name) which helps to avoid customs evasion at import but brings its own issues with it as there's a lot of collateral damage as a result of the blunt and less targeted definitions that are used.
I'd like to stress again that I personally don't support such legislation but think that it's useful and helpful to develop an understanding of the processes at play. It allows me to be a better advocate for knives when talking to non-knife people and might help you navigate similar situations in your own communities.
Take care,
Andrew and the team at Kailash
