Originally posted by Darion
Yeah, except this isn't what happened and granted, I'm not 100% familiar with English laws, but I somehow doubt that a maybe-racially-motivated BB gun shooting is synonymous with repeatedly stabbing a soldier with a knife and thus your analogy and its barely veiled appeal to emotion are pretty poor.
A letter opener isn't really any more of a knife than a bb gun is a gun, I don't think. Though I've never tried stabbing somebody with one, I can't see it functioning on the level of something like a switchblade.

Given that you called the letter opener a knife though, I don't think my "appeal to emotion" was poor at all. You immediately did what you've been complaining about in this thread, by trumping up the weapon involved. That basically proved my point, and thus it's mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.