Chief Angela Levasseur of the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in remote northern Manitoba has a big knife problem. Machetes — foot-long, bush knives popular with campers and farmers — have become the weapon of choice for young gang members terrorizing her 3,500-member reserve.

“Over the last two years we have seen a really high level of machete crimes committed by youth and on youth in our community,” she said from Nelson House, 850 km northwest of Winnipeg. “It’s just too easy for anyone to possess a machete.” That’s now changing.

Due in part to Levasseur’s lobbying, Manitoba recently passed Canada’s first machete law. The Long-Bladed Weapon Control Act regulates the sale of any knife longer than 30 cm. Since the beginning of the new year, sales are now restricted to people 18 years and older, purchasers must show photo ID and retailers must track sales.

Based on the demands of advocates such as Levasseur, this may only be the beginning of new knife control measures in Canada — all troublingly modeled on our long and fruitless attempt at controlling guns. 

The province claims its new law will keep big knives out of the hands of young criminals. That seems unlikely. Once the act takes effect, it will still be legal for an 18-year-old to buy an arm-full of machetes and hand them out to fellow gang members. Tougher measures require changes to the federal Criminal Code.   

Ottawa is now being pushed in that direction. Coincident with Manitoba’s new law and following a series of horrific knife attacks in Vancouver, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma recently wrote to her federal counterpart asking that machetes be declared a “prohibited weapon,” which would amount to a permanent ban.

And in Manitoba, Levasseur is already lobbying for stricter rules, including a higher minimum age and a requirement that all machetes come with a serial number, allowing for a central knife registry. She also wants rules on safe storage. “Just like how gun owners have to safely store their rifles, I think people who buy machetes should have to lock them up as well,” Levasseur said.

To most Canadians the idea of comprehensive knife control likely sounds utterly impractical. A national knife registry? A requirement that you lock up your chef’s knife every night after chopping vegetables? Don’t be absurd.

Yet experience in Britain reveals what can happen when politicians lose their minds over knives.

Since the 1980s it has been illegal in the U.K. to be in public possession of a fixed-blade knife longer than three inches. Naked razor blades have been illegal since the 1990s. This year the new Labour government announced a full prohibition on large machetes described as “zombie-style” knives.

Despite decades of progressively stricter laws against knives, however, Britain is still plagued by stabbings. In August the lobby group Action On Armed Violence (AOAV) released a report titled “Knife crime on the rise in the UK”. It revealed a seven per cent rise in knife violence in 2023 over the previous year and 20 per cent growth in robberies involving knives since 2019. “I don’t think knife crime is going to go away anytime soon,” said Iain Overton, executive director of AOAV.

The reason, Overton observed, is that knife crime is largely the domain of “young men with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of pent-up rage.” In the 1980s, it was knife-wielding soccer hooligans, today it’s street gangs of young immigrants from Africa. “This presents some really thorny issues in dealing with why these young black men are drawn to violence,” Overton said. “Some problems are just so enormous that they seem insurmountable. So what does the government do? It says ‘let’s ban knives.’”

A similar sense of cynicism hangs over Manitoba’s new law. While it’s easy to have sympathy for Levasseur’s situation, her solutions make little sense. Indigenous youth confined to a remote northern reserve with nothing to do and plenty of extant anger will inevitably look for ways to cause public havoc. Knives are simply the easiest means to achieving that end, not the cause of the violence itself.

As for using gun control as our guide, keep in mind that homicides by shooting hit an all-time high in Canada in 2022. Trying in any comprehensive way to control knives — which are far more ubiquitous and useful than firearms — will simply make life more difficult for ordinary, law-abiding citizens without significantly impeding criminals. The real cause of our recent panic over knives is not blades that are suddenly sharper or longer but a lax legal system that fails to properly deter crime.

While large bush knives may be the weapon of choice for young gangs today, in their absence, smaller knives will do just as well. As will baseball bats, brass knuckles, vials of acid or sharpened crowbars. Criminality lies in the inclination of the criminal, not their methods or tools.

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor of C2C Journal, where a longer version of this story first appeared.