By Stewart McCulloch

Bin your knife; it may save a life – that’s the stark message from Scotland’s Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson as an amnesty aimed at getting blades off the streets approached the cut off point.

Safer Scotland campaigners joined forces with our anonymous crimeline 0800 555 111 to encourage people to ‘Shop a knife carrier’ which led to this gruesome array of offensive weaponry being handed in.

A massive haul of 12,645 knives, machetes, swords, bayonets, flick knives and old ‘cut throat’ razors were crushed when the five week long amnesty ended - half of them from Strathclyde alone!

Earlier, the Justice Minister warned: “Once this amnesty is over, the police will be stepping up action against knife carriers as part of the enforcement phase. This will be supported by efforts to encourage the public to shop weapons carriers to Crimestoppers Scotland.”

The public had until midnight on June 30 to surrender their blades or offensive weapons. The year long anti-violence blitz has now entered the intelligence gathering and enforcement phase.

Chief Inspector Alec McGuire from the Safer Scotland coordination unit (seen here brandishing the Samuria sword) urged people to pick the ‘phone and call in anonymously – now’.    

And Inspector Jim Dunbar of Crimestoppers Scotland backed him up, saying: “This is an ideal opportunity for law abiding members of the public to help make their communities safer. If you have information about someone who is carrying or using a knife or other offensive weapon, please take the time, call Crimestoppers anonymously on

0800 555 111. All we want is your information, not your name.”

The Lord Advocate’s tough new procedures to clamp down on those who persist in carrying blades and the increased penalties and powers of arrest for these offences come in to force in the autumn.