BOSTON -- Police say they are seeing a surge in the number of gang-related attacks involving machetes, the huge knives that are a ubiquitous tool in rural Latin America, with blades as thick as an axe and nearly as long as a sword.

The troubling trend has led some departments to crack down on machetes, and not just in urban areas. Some suburban communities have also enacted new laws to ban the knives.

“Ban the knives”???  Someone who has taken even a single semester of high school shop is over educated as machete maker.  You can't successfully ban something that virtually everyone knows how to build and for which there is a ready market.  These idiots apparently are completely out of touch with reality.