I agree with the key points in Iain Brennan’s article, weapon-carrying is a complex behaviour. It is not driven by “social media, drill music, and middle-class drug use” as the mainstream media would have you believe.
Knife crime is driven by “individual factors like a history of violence, interpersonal factors like peer offending and community factors like neighbourhood disorder”. Brennan can only suggest as plausible, what I will say emphatically, “austerity, which has resulted in dramatic cutbacks to public and charitable services for young people” is a key contributor in the rise of weapons carrying. The services that could’ve helped, by “working with peer groups of at-risk young people” have all been cut. Blaming the evils of youth culture is a distraction, drawing attention away from the real causes, and the policy makers responsible for this tragedy. People need to join the dots.
No funding, no services. No services, no interventions. No interventions, a rise in violence.