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| Darren Staples/Reuters |
The slippery slope doesn’t end with the confiscation of guns, but with the destruction of the right to self-defense itself.
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.
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 Home Office, whose functions include collecting crime statistics, acknowledges that knife crime is up sharply.
National Health Service hospitals reported a 13 percent increase in admissions of victims of knife-related assaults between 2015 and 2016. The next year, between 2016 and 2017, there was a further 7 percent increase. London mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted, “No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.”Read the rest of the story HERE.
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