More name irony.

Here.

A father who defended his family from drug-crazed thugs by wounding one with a Samurai sword has been cleared by a jury.
...
The blow almost sliced off the ear of Michael Severs, one of the thugs.

Severs? Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Lucky lad, though. He got his ear sown back on and the traditional non-custodial sentence despite threatening to rape and kill the family of David Fullard, the guy who hit him with the sword. Nice to see that the UK is still living up to its NuLabour ideal of being tough on crime and on the causes of crime by going after victims of crime who stood up to the bastards. Oh, that's unfair of me, isn't it? They're also pretending to be burglars as well (H/T Leg-iron).

/facepalm

If they end up having trouble wearing their designer sunnies properly due to being short handed in the ear department they'll have only themselves to blame.

The obvious point to be made here is that there is little downside for the criminal. The soft sentence is almost a dead cert these days, you'd have to be phenomenally unlucky to be caught anyway and the public aren't allowed to fight back. Ah but hang on, you say, there's all this stuff being talked about how David Cameroid is going to let householders fight back and didn't both David Fullard and Munir Hussain got let off, so it's going to be okay... isn't it?

No.

For one thing both Fullard and Hussain along with numerous others have been victims of crime that have then been victimised by the criminal justice system as well. What the criminals did was bad enough but they then endured trials for far more serious charges while the crims got the kid gloves - charges for actions that would never have occurred had the criminals involved not first initiated violence and the threat of violence against them. For another Munir Hussain's sentence was merely reduced to a non-custodial one - he's not been let off. For a third even if we could do what we liked in our homes, and I bet you that's not going to happen in the UK any time soon, we can't stay there. What do we do when we go out? As Leg-iron pointed out in his bit about the cops playing at being robbers burglary is in decline - so many of us have things that are both more valuable and much more portable on us when we're out than some cheapo consumer electronics at home. And as now the only option is to rely on the police being, as the cliché goes, only minutes away when it's seconds that count. Or at a push I suppose you could take photographs everywhere you go so the police follow you around all day, but it's hardly practical for everyone to do it.

The answer is obvious: recognise the right of people to defend the only lives they will ever have with whatever tool, device or weapon they choose (providing they can do so without harming innocent third parties). Leg-iron again (the rest is just as good):

I have no objection at all to Sikhs being allowed to carry a knife. Not a single objection to raise on the matter. I object most strongly to being told I can't carry one and it's not because the Sikhs can, but for the exact same reason they give for being allowed to. Their reasoning is that they have never stabbed anyone so can be trusted with a knife. I have never stabbed, or even threatened anyone with a knife. Millions of people in this country have never done so either. So why can't we be trusted with them?

Why not just ban anyone convicted of a violent offence from carrying a weapon? It doesn't have to be an offence involving a weapon. If someone is demonstrably of a violent character, ban them from having any kind of dangerous weapon and review it, say, every five years. Ah, but that would involve actual thinking on the part of the government and the judiciary and they can't be bothered with all that. Far easier to lump the trustworthy in with the few who really are nutters and then fine people for having something they've never troubled any one else with.

So I say let the Sikhs have their knives. Instead of shouting about 'them' being allowed to have them, shout about 'us' not being allowed. Don't get distracted.

The only thing I can add is to ask why just knives? Let me be clear that I don't want to carry a gun in public, okay? But I do want to be able to carry a gun in public, and more importantly I want my neighbours to be able to carry a gun in public as well. I want criminals paralysed not by 9mms in the spine (though if push comes to shove...) but by the uncertainty over which of their potential victims might be armed. A fifth of the population would probably be more than enough to ensure that criminals go back to house break ins, only having first made really, really really sure that nobody is home.

Until then our best means of defending ourselves might as well be this.