After nearly 100 years of gun control London, and the UK as a whole, are looking at knife control as the latest step in trying to dissuade the criminally-minded from carrying out their schemes.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan used a tweet to go after knives with verbiage similar to gun control rhetoric. He said, “No excuses; there is never a reason to carry a knife.”

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. https://t.co/XILUvIFLOW

— Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) April 8, 2018

On April 2, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Britain began an incremental adoption of stringent gun controls in 1920. The controls were ratcheted up during the decades that followed, until the hoops one had to jump through for legal handgun ownership reached a point were doing so became impractical. (The handgun prohibitions were contained in the Firearms Act of 1997.)

In 2009, just 12 years after the passage of the Firearms Act, the Daily Mail declared Britain was “the most violent country in Europe.” It reported that Britain had “a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S.”

On October 21, 2017, Breitbart News reported that rapes in London were three times higher than in New York City and, on April 2, 2018, Breitbart News reported that London’s homicide rate had surpassed the number of homicides in New York City, year-to-date.

London’s homicides are largely being committed with knives so the Mayor is increasingly focused on controlling knives and is granting police “extra stop and search powers for areas worst-affected by knife crime.” The Daily Wire reports that “Parliament is also set to take up heavy ‘knife control’ legislation when it resumes this week.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.