What ?

Plans to ban the manufacture, import and sale of most kinds of replica guns have been outlined by the government.

The measures are included in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill.

The bill proposes an increase in the age limit for buying knives from 16 to 18, and search powers for head teachers who suspect they are being carried.

Binge drinking-related disorder will also be addressed, with proposed plans such as suspending alcohol sales in bars that persistently sell to minors.

The proposals are part of the government's attempts to restore "respect" in communities, town centres, and schools, which it says is among its top priorities.

Knives remain the weapon most commonly used in violent incidents, prompting the minimum age at which they can be bought to be raised from 16 to 18.

This government gets more and more difficult to parody. But we can see another iron law of liberalism in action. When faced with an increase in crime, rather than rigourously enforcing the (in most cases perfectly adequate) existing laws, the government prefers to enact new ones. If they impinge upon the law-abiding ? Omelette, eggs and so on.

They could cut violent crime with exemplary sentences, murder by the death penalty or by making "life" imprisonment, in practice about 12 years, live up to its name.

But no. The government has long since given up trying to reduce the propensity to commit crime. Instead it relies on reducing the opportunity. And we all become a little less free.

I don't want to live in a world where people have the desire to commit crime but not the opportunity (not that I think this hopeless bunch are actually capable of reducing the opportunity. These laws are unlikely to have any practical effect - but if my son wants that blank-firing Walther we'd better get it quickly.). Give me a world of free people. We had that once.