I like this British musician named Jake Bugg. He's got a song about going to this house party at some criminal's house and one line is about a friend taking him aside and warning him, gravely, that everyone there's got a knife. It almost ruins the song as an American, because the line's just hilarious. "Everyone has a knife? What, you mean like literally any gathering of adults whatsoever that doesn't have bouncers patting people down and/or metal detectors? Everyone has a knife at the grocery store for god's sake!"
(Not literally everyone, of course, but it's entirely normal, non-threatening, and fairly common to carry a pocket knife or knife-including-multitool in the US—anywhere you go that's not screening for metal objects, some of the people there probably have knives, it's not on anyone's radar as something to be worried about. It's like being warned that everyone's wearing underwear, or something)
Oh, yikes, fixed-blades and things as long as shortish machetes? OK, yeah, people don't usually carry those here. Folding pocket knives in the 3"-6" range are common, but not fixed or very-long blades.
Yeah, anything larger than a pocketknife is explicitly illegal to carry in the UK, plus a whole bunch of random moral panic stuff like nunchucks. What the verse means is people carrying knives with intent; that you're entering a subculture where people might stab you in a drunken argument that turns into a fight.
(Used to be Glasgow, these days it's London, always young men in "gang" contexts)
This means the original "tape a knife to the dashcam" gag would be illegal. For car self-defence purposes you're better off with a tyre iron, "breaker bar", socket extender or something else that's a plausible car tool that you just happen to grab.
> What the verse means is people carrying knives with intent; that you're entering a subculture where people might stab you in a drunken argument that turns into a fight.
Right, yeah, I got the intent, it just comes off real goofy in a place where sometimes you see people open-carrying guns, and a hell of a lot more are concealed-carrying, and I was certainly imagining long-side-of-normal folding pocket knives, not something closer to combat knives.
(Not literally everyone, of course, but it's entirely normal, non-threatening, and fairly common to carry a pocket knife or knife-including-multitool in the US—anywhere you go that's not screening for metal objects, some of the people there probably have knives, it's not on anyone's radar as something to be worried about. It's like being warned that everyone's wearing underwear, or something)