I feel this is another example of the widening urban/rural gap in thought patterns.

You are in Canada for God's sake, a place where a knife can make the diference between life and death, outside the urban zone, and EVERYONE carried a knife only a few years back.

Now you have towns that are large enough that some folk never leave them, and they develop an urban mindset that is no diferent from that in Montreal or New York City.

"Someone please protect me from the knife wielding roughians!"

The only way one can go through life with the attitude that a knife is an unnecessary item for daily existance is to live in an urban setting where everything can be accessed with poptops or torn open with you teeth.

I have also noted, while going through life, that police are interchangable within their environment. An urban cop is an urban cop. You wear a badge or you do not wear a badge. Anyone with a badge is "one of us" and anyone without a badge is a criminal waithing for a chance to break the law. If you have a badge your knife is a tool. If you do not wear a badge the knife is a weapon, and you need to go to jail.