Knife attacks overtake terrorism as top priority in UK

From the Seattle Times there's this story on an arrest in a vicious knife attack in London:

British police arrested a suspect Saturday in the brutal murders of two French students who were tied up and stabbed scores of times before their bodies were set alight.

The killings have shocked a country already worried by a spate of knife attacks involving young people; 18 teenagers have been slain in London this year.

Officers detained a 21-year-old man on a street in southeast London at about 3:40 a.m. (0240 GMT) Saturday, police said. He was being held at a London police station.

Police would not say whether the arrested man was the prime suspect in the case, and appealed for witnesses to come forward.

On June 29, Laurent Bonomo and his friend Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were bound and stabbed to death at Bonomo's rented apartment, near where the arrest was made. Bonomo had been stabbed nearly 200 times, while Ferez received nearly 50 stab wounds.

The apparent motive is, perhaps as usual, something incredibly banal:

Police said Friday the murders may be linked to the theft of two PlayStation game consoles, which they believe were taken from the apartment the night of the killings. A laptop computer also was stolen from the apartment six days before the attack.

But this strikes me as an interesting tidbit:

The brutal killings have shocked a country already concerned by a spate of knife attacks involving young people. Eighteen teenagers have died in suspected murders in London this year, compared to 27 in all of 2007. Most were stabbed, and police in the city say the fight against knife crime has overtaken terrorism as their top priority.

More proof that banning firearms does not prevent crime. Criminals just find different tools to use in pursuit of the same insane reasons they have for attacking others.