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

• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “This is a samurai sword, I’ll have you know. 😤”

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  • tal@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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