Britain’s Failed Weapons-Control Laws Show Why the Second Amendment Matters

By David B. Kopel, Vincent Harinam David B. Kopel, Vincent Harinam

Despite very severe anti-knife laws, Great Britain has been
suffering from a surge in knife crime. Some Britons propose making
the laws even harsher. Others are offering more constructive
solutions to get to the root causes of the problem.

Britain’s experience demonstrates the importance of the
Second Amendment. Under the logic of the Supreme Court’s
District of Columbia v. Heller decision, knives are certainly among the
“arms” protected by the Second Amendment. Courts in
Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Washington are among those that have
recognized as much, with courts in the first two states finding
that particular knife controls went too far and were
unconstitutional.

Although England’s 1689 Bill of Rights recognized the
right to possess defensive arms, that right is now a dead letter,
as are many of the others enumerated in that document. So today,
Great Britain has trapped itself in a vicious cycle of rising crime
and intensifying repression.

The slippery slope
doesn’t end with the confiscation of guns, but with the destruction
of the right to self-defense itself.

By the government’s count, knife crime in Britain rose 36 percent between 2013 and 2017. Some of
the statistical increase can be attributed to changes in the recording practices of police
departments, which have long underreported all sorts of crime. But
the …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute