I have heard that swords are under threat of becoming a prohibited weapon. It is tiring to see these knee-jerk reactions by politicians. Swords have been used in criminal activities far, far less frequently than kitchen knives, iron bars, baseball bats, broken bottles, bricks and boots, to name a few popular weapons. There are a great number of legitimate owners and users of swords, people who are respectable collectors, martial artists (now required to be under a licenced teacher I should note), fencers, medieval recreationists, acting groups (Shakespeare for example), and groups such as the RSL and military messes with swords on their walls. All of these many, many respectable and law-abiding people wishing to exercise their right to safe and lawfaul entertainment or the pursuit of legitimate hobbies are being threatened by leigslation aimed at that part of one percent of criminals who happened to use a sword instead of the customary and legal baseball bat, etc. This is not rational - but political point scoring rarely is.

Who are they even scoring political points with? I know this makes me mad as hell and I intend to do everything I can to make sure that whoever intends to carry this out does not get a chance to do so if at all humanly possible, everyone I know, even people who are not interested in the Japanese Sword Arts, are of a similiar opinion, as Antony said it's just flat out useless.

People can STILL buy a 5 shot clip 1km range bolt action sniper rifle in new south wales, entirly legally, and they're desperately concerned about the public safety ramifications of Katana?

I think I'm going to be sick :/