'Knife thug murdered my son and now I want law tightened to reclaim streets'

ON 14 July last year, my son Damian came home after an evening out, minding his own business. He was heading down towards his own house and he was approached by a thug.

He did not know the time (when asked] and he was stabbed to death.

People say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that is not true. He had every right to be going home.

Barry Gavin, the man who stabbed him, was out on four counts of bail. Two of them were for knife possession, one was for a stabbing and another was for disfigurement.

It was he who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He should not have even been allowed back out on to the streets, but he was. It is quite incredible that the judiciary are allowing it to happen.

Women are not safe to walk the streets, men are not safe to walk the streets, it is a continual fight against the thug – and the thug at this particular time is winning.

Sentencing has to be tightened up to overcome this strange phenomenon.

I would like to recommend that sentencing is made as severe as possible.

The trouble is that I think the judiciary and the politicians are not in the real world.

The reason I petitioned Holyrood is that knife crime has gone out of all proportion – it is prevalent everywhere you go.

But I came to parliament and I saw some end-of-term antics in First Minister's Questions – not anything that really deals with the problems people face. It was like they were just playing games.

When you ask them, the judiciary say that they are limited in what sentences they can pass down, but then the politicians say it is up to the judiciary.

They have got to sit down and pass a law that gets these thugs off our streets and protects innocent, law-abiding people.

I cannot tell you how hard it is for the families.

And it just keeps going on.

My heart goes out to the relatives of the 17-year-old from Inverness who was stabbed earlier this week.

It is so tough for the family.

First you have to go and identify the body, then you have to wait for all the processes to be gone through with the coroner – and it is weeks before you have a body to bury.

Then you have to go through the court process and you see the person responsible getting two years off his sentence because he pleaded guilty.

Damian was only 34. He worked for IBM in Greenock, and he left a family that loved him – his mum and dad, two brothers and two sisters.

My son's murderer will serve a minimum of 15 years but it is no comfort to us as he will have a plasma television and be able to play computer games whilst he is serving his time.

Admittedly, he will be on a lifetime's licence, but it sometimes seems that the rights of the criminal come a long way before the right of the victim. When we find these thugs guilty then that should be it. They should not expect a comfortable life.

My son's murder will haunt our family for the rest of our lives.

We seem to have got it right for guns – if people are caught possessing a gun then they go to prison.

So I ask, why is it not the same for knives?

Last year there were 59 murders involving guns but there were 118 fatal stabbings, and that's just the ones we know about.

I do not understand why it is that if somebody is caught carrying a knife and found guilty, that does not automatically result in a five-year prison sentence.

There needs to be a real deterrent to these thugs. That does not exist at the moment. All too often they say they need to carry knives to protect themselves. But that is nonsense.

If you carry a knife then people need protecting from you and you are only going to end up injuring or killing somebody.

We need a change of culture in Scotland and that needs to start with a change in the law to recognise the seriousness of knife crime in this country.

I am very pleased that so many people have backed this campaign and signed the petition.

It is up to the MSPs now to look at it and come up with something that protects the people they represent from the thugs on our streets.

Mandatory jail terms the only answer, says grieving father

THE father of a man stabbed to death last year has delivered a 16,000-signature petition to Holyrood demanding a change in the law governing knife crime.

John Muir, 69, launched the campaign following the murder of his son Damian in Greenock on 14 July last year.

He is calling for mandatory prison sentences for people convicted of simply carrying a knife.

The campaign for a "Damian's Law" has been backed by people across the country and the petition will be considered after the Scottish Parliament's summer recess.

Damian Muir, 34, was stabbed eight times by 21-year-old Barry Gavin.

Gavin, who had been released on several counts of bail involving other alleged knife crimes, was jailed for a minimum of 15 years.

Now Mr Muir, of Inverkip, Renfrewshire, wants to see all knife-carriers given a "severe" sentence. His petition was sponsored by Labour MSP Duncan McNeil and presented to the petitions committee convener, Frank McAveety.

"The tragic case of Damian Muir, pointlessly and brutally murdered by a known criminal last July, has raised some hard questions for the justice system," said Mr McNeil.

"No-one in a democracy wants political interference in the judicial process but the courts must reflect the seriousness with which our community regards senseless, violent crime."

The issue was also raised by Cathy Jamieson, Labour's deputy leader, during First Minister's questions. Alex Salmond, the First Minister, assured her the Scottish Government was considering mandatory jail terms for people caught carrying a knife.