Britain begins a five-week national knife amnesty today against a background of high-profile stabbings and calls from campaigners for much more drastic action.
The amnesty, backed by a public awareness campaign, will encourage people to hand in weapons at police stations across the country.
It comes less than a week after the murder of 15-year-old student Kiyan Prince, who was stabbed to death trying to stop a fight outside his school gates.
That murder followed the killing of part-time policewoman Nisha Patel-Nasri who was knifed to death outside her London home earlier this month.
Statistics show that 6 per cent of all violent crimes in Britain are knife-related and out of 820 homicides in 2004/5, 236 involved sharp instruments.
In London alone, there were 12,589 knife-related incidents last year.
Young people aged 15-18 made up the bulk of the offenders and victims in the capital - 41 per cent accused of robbery using a knife were in this age bracket as were 17 per cent of the victims of violence using a knife.