Unless you carry your cutlery around with you, there’s not many excuses for packing a blade.

Even if you were quirky enough to take your knife and fork with you on your travels up town, it would still be against the law unless it was a folding blade of three inches or shorter.

Many people will consider that even this length of knife is too long to be legally permissible in public.

Certain trades need them, of course, and many a fisherman carries a knife, yet the chances of them coming to the attention of police is remote.

Does anyone really need reminding of the damage caused by knives in the wrong hands?

Is anyone so oblivious to the staggering numbers of deaths on the blood-soaked streets of the capital this year?

Closer to home, quite why any shopkeeper would be reckless enough to sell them to children beggars belief.

Perhaps if the law was changed to make shopkeepers ‘accessories’ to any crime committed by the person they sold the knife to, it might make them reconsider?

Quite how such a law change could be enforced against weapons sold online, would be problematic.

It looks like a loophole crying out for tougher regulation and stiffer punishment as lives could depend on it.

The status quo is too easily exploited.