The United Kingdom is a case study in what a country looks like when instead of targeting criminals or addressing the incentives for crime, the powers that be obsessively focus on tools criminals might use and tighten the screws on an entire society, innocent people included. That's how the country degenerated into a surveillance state that prevents its citizens from carrying the means of self-defense and punishes them for saying anything the authorities consider provocative. After a murderous attack by a violent, radicalized assailant, politicians have decided the problem is access to knives.
Ignore Our Failures, It's About the Knives
"Time and again, as a child, the Southport murderer carried knives. Time and again, he showed clear intent to use them," U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote in a piece for The Sun about Axel Rudakubana, who admitted murdering three girls and injuring others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year. "And yet tragically, he was still able to order the murder weapon off of the internet without any checks or barriers. A two-click killer. This cannot continue. The technology is there to set up age-verification checks, even for kitchen knives ordered online."
