Lone Ranger
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'TIME TO REVIEW LAW' ON SWORDS
News/Current Events News
Source: Press Association UK
Published: 11/29/99
Posted on 11/28/1999 23:09:55 PST by kattracks
A Labour MP is urging Home Secretary Jack Straw to review legislation on the ownership of machetes and swords.
The moves comes after a naked man ran amok in a south London church, attacking people indiscriminately with a Samurai sword.
Dennis Turner said he was "horrified" to hear about the attack at Thornton Heath church, three years after a similar incident in
his Wolverhampton South East constituency.
Adults and children were wounded in 1996 when they were attacked by Horrett Campbell, 32, who wielded a two-foot machete during a teddy bears' picnic at St Luke's Nursery School, Wolverhampton.
Nursery nurse Lisa Potts, then 19, was struck six times with the machete and won the George Medal for trying to shield children from him.
Unlike legislation which outlawed handguns after the 1996 Dunblane tragedy, there is no law to prevent people from having a
ceremonial sword hanging in their home.
Mr Turner said Sunday's attack heightened pressure on Mr Straw to look again at the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, which
makes it an offence to carry a sword or machete in a public place, but not to keep it in the home.
"What we need to do is invite the Home Secretary to review the present legislation and now is the right time in the light of what happened in Wolverhampton and now this further attack in south London," he said.
"I would think that there is always a risk to public safety of anyone having a machete or sword in their possession."