This is the best summary I could come up with:
A man has been jailed for brandishing a replica of a sword from the Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda on the streets of a Warwickshire market town, which he said was a “fidget toy” to keep his hands busy.
Anthony Bray, 48, of Nuneaton, was sentenced to four months in prison after being found in possession of a bladed article in public.
The article in question was a replica of the “master sword” from The Legend of Zelda series which had a total blade length of 6in, Warwickshire police said.
On 8 June, officers were made aware via CCTV of a man, Bray, walking down Queens Road, Nuneaton, with the sword in his hand.
Sgt Spellman, of the patrol investigations unit, said: “We take a zero tolerance [approach] to bladed articles in public, and Bray has fallen afoul of this.
Police said Bray admitted that the sword could be perceived as threatening if someone else had seen it, but he insisted in interviews he would not have used it as a weapon.
The original article contains 290 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 40%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The Blade of Evil’s Bane should be carried by everyone at this point.
Four months of prison? It sounds like the man is disconnected from reality but hardly a real threat to society.
Seriously. I’ve seen letter openers more threatening than that “sword”. Was it dumb? Sure. Does he deserve a slap the wrist, absolutely. But prison?? No way. What the actual fuck?
The stupid thing is that the UK is literally running out of prison spaces currently so that we are considering letting long term prisioners out on licence early to free up room.
Yet apparently this man needs to have his life turned upsidedown in order to occupy one of those spaces for four months.
The blade was only 6 inches that’s a master dagger at best lmao
The article conveniently fails to mention whether it was sharp (extremely unlikely, the cheap steel used for these can’t really hold an edge), and even more conveniently crops out the tip of the “blade” so we can’t even see if it was pointed (also extremely unlikely, toys like this almost always have blunted tips).
This isn’t a weapon, it’s a toy. Sure, you could hurt someone with it, just like you could hurt someone with a baseball bat.
I reckon the police wanted to bust him for some other reason. The Master Sword was just their excuse.
Washington Post had a better picture: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/04/zelda-master-sword-jail-nuneaton/
I’m guessing it’s pretty much a letter opener. From a read, letter openers count, and many people are mocking the idea of a letter opener being included in such a ban.
