UPDATE (03/07/24, 17:28 PM BST): Anthony Bray appears to have a number of past offences, including burglary.
Right, so, you’ve read the headline. A man has been arrested by Warwickshire police and sentenced to four months in jail after walking down a town centre street carrying a replica of the Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda.
As detailed in a release from the rozzers (that’s slang for police if you’re not from the UK), Anthony Bray of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, recieved that sentence after being charged with “possession of a bladed article in public”.
That amounted to carrying the “small replica” of the Master Sword from Zelda, which the release identifies as having a six inch long blade, down a street in Nuneaton on June 8, with officers approaching Bray after he was spotted doing so on CCTV.
Bray claimed that he had bought the sword online as a fidget toy. However, the police argued that “despite its intended purpose, it was in fact a sharply pointed item which could be used as a weapon and might put others in fear of it being used against them.”
While Bray admitted that the master sword “could be perceived as threatening” by others, he also told the offricers that he wouldn’t have used it as a weapon. As well as the aforementioned four months in prison, he’s required to pay a victims’ surcharge of £154, which is about $196.
While it’s important to emphasise that we here at VG247 are clearly not lawyers or experts on the prevention of crime, that penalty does maybe seem a bit steep at a glance given it was a toy sword, assuming this is all Bray did and that he wasn’t, for example, also violating some existing order against him.
Our very own Alex Donaldson, known among many other things for owning a fair amount of video game-related stuff, also has a replica Master Sword, and asserts that the blade on it, while longer than the three inches that looks to be the big sticking point in UK law, isn’t exactly sharp. Then again, that is very much assuming that the sword Bray had wasn’t different in some way.
Regardless, explaining the reasoning behind the measures taken, Sargeant Spellman of Warwickshire police’s Patrol Investigations Unit stated: “We take a zero tolerance to bladed articles in public, and Bray has fallen afoul of this. It is possible to find fidget toys that aren’t six-inch blades. It is possible not to walk down the street holding them out in front of you. With a bit more self-awareness, Bray could have avoided contact with us completely.”
So yeah, maybe don’t make plans to host an open-air, cosplay-focused Nintendo convention in the centre of Nuneaton any time soon.