Four months in prison sounds excessive but only if it was his first offence. I did some digging and found this from Forbes:

What’s missing from every report about this I could find, and what is so crucial to understanding this story, however is that Anthony Bray is a repeat offender with a long rap sheet and numerous prison sentences, several of which were for burglary including serial burglary. In 2011, Bray was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison after getting “three strikes” for burgling residences. But his run-ins with the law go back to 1989 and he was in court numerous times throughout the 90s as well.

This has not been reported in IGN, PC Gamer, Eurogamer or The Guardian or any other outlet I could find, all of which ran rather similar versions of this story without the relevant context, though PC Gamer mentioned the Midlands region’s knife violence problems (see below for more on that).

These publications and numerous others describe him as a “Legend of Zelda fan” though there is no evidence to support this. There is, however, lots of evidence that he’s a repeat criminal offender responsible for numerous acts of petty theft and burglary. He’s likely well-known by the police given his decades of criminal activity. The police were probably not thrilled to see someone with this history and reputation walking around brandishing a knife, even if it’s a Zelda replica.

The last wrinkle to this story is the very real problem with knife violence in the UK. Warwickshire is in the Midlands where knife violence is higher than any other region, higher even than in London. There were 5,234 knife offenses in the region in 2023 alone including a number of murders. Perhaps it is through this lens that we should view the arrest and prison sentence of Anthony Bray.

In the US I’ve seen video of white teens walking out in the open carrying automatic rifles, yelling shit like, “Yeah, we’re carrying a fucking gun down the street!” At one point a cop even stops them and talks to them for a bit, then lets them go on their way. Granted, had they been black with obvious toy guns they’d be dead, but in some places openly carrying guns around is apparently a casual occurrence.

It’s dangerous to go alone with a sword! Don’t take this.

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!

Oi