Same for me in Denmark in the 90's, heck I even remember at one point we're everyone of us got one of those knives to keep in our pencilcase for art class and such, I only remember one single stabbing in all those years, and that was not even with one of those knives, it was because someone with a pencil in their hand slipped and accidentally hit another persons arm with it..

Knife laws have gotten crazy restrictive here since then though, even more so than the UK at this point..

When I was a kid literally every adult I met had one of those small Swiss Army Knives with a knife, file, scissors and some pliers/toothpick.

Now you can't walk around with ANY knife without a "recognizable purpose" like going fishing or something like that, and the knife has to be less than 7cm blade, no locks of any kind, no one handed opening, like switchblades or butterfly knives, now that's even changed, so before you couldn't use knives specifically made to be opened with one hand, now ANY knife that can be opened by one hand, even if it takes 30 minutes, is illegal, which is a clever way of banning literally all knives when you think about it.

I remember being 10 years old and wanting to go fishing, so my friend and I went to the hunting store, bought to (big for us) knives and put them on our belts and walked through town to the fishing hole, no one batted an eye and didn't think anything of it when a 10 year old kid was walking around with a big knife, that whole summer we went around with them, even when we weren't fishing, and later it changed to one of those small SAK's but even pulling one of those out now makes people nervous because there's been so much knife propaganda here, and I'm not even sure knife attacks have gone down that much, whenever I see one in the news now they don't use butterfly knives, instead they just use a kitchen knife, people that like stabbing other people don't care about the laws anyway, it only hurts normal people..

Ugh, that got long and ranty but it's something that really bothers me..