Amid Push for Knife Control, UK Shows Gun Control Doesn’t Increase Safety

It was widely reported earlier this month that London experienced a higher number of murders over the first three months of 2018 than did New York City—the first time in modern history that has occurred.

The United Kingdom has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the world, so the increased murder rate in the British capital is largely a result of a sharp rise in knife-related crime.

The surge in violence prompted London Mayor Sadiq Khan to announce a massive “knife control” campaign eerily reminiscent of those sometimes proffered in the United States in response to firearms-related violence.

The knife control measures will include the deployment of 300 additional London police officers to conduct “stop and frisk” searches of individuals suspected of knife-carrying, a policing tactic once roundly condemned by Khan.

Emergency legislation also appears set to prohibit knives purchased online from being sent to residential addresses. The U.K. already criminalizes the purchase or possession of various types of knives, and the carrying of any knife with a blade longer than 3 inches in public is illegal unless it is carried “with good reason.” Self-defense is not considered a good reason.

This crackdown on knives, and the surrounding rhetoric demonizing those who would carry them in public, should serve as a warning to Americans disconcerted by the vocal anti-Second Amendment activists in our own country. They will not be satisfied by merely taking away your...Read More HERE