London overtook New York in murders for the first time in modern history in February as the capital endured a dramatic surge in knife crime.

Fifteen people were murdered in the capital, against 14 in New York. Both cities have almost exactly the same population.

London murders for March are also likely to exceed or equal New York’s. By late last night there had been 22 killings in the capital, according to the Metropolitan police, against 21 in the US city.

Eight Londoners were murdered between March 14 and March 20 alone and the total number of London murders, even excluding victims of terrorism, has risen by 38% since 2014.

There are a few takeaways from this that need to be considered, including yet another data point on how gun control doesn’t work.

“But didn’t you just say that New York City has gun control too?”

Yes, I did, and it doesn’t work either. It never has, despite being in place for over a century.

You see, during the time that the Sullivan Act has been in place, New York City’s violent crime rate has gone up and down. Officials there haven’t had the option of just trying to ban guns because they already had, basically. Ownership of firearms is so tightly controlled as to be nonexistent for most people.

Because of this, however, New York City officials have had to look at other things when their violent crime rate skyrocketed. They couldn’t ban guns so they did other things, such as Rudy Giuliani’s use of the “Broken Windows” approach where you crack down on minor crimes to send a signal. It was controversial, but crime dropped in the city during his tenure.

What do London officials do? They want knife control.

They still haven’t addressed the root problem in any way and instead want to focus on yet another weapon. In this case, one that’s been around since prehistoric times. It’s a common tool that is in almost every household in the world, for crying out loud, and they want to treat it like a machine gun or something.

London has learned nothing. They’re still focusing on the weapon, but they can’t seem to escape that when they removed access to firearms, criminals simply adopted another weapon. Any “knife control” will simply push them to yet another weapon at best.

And that’s another takeaway from this. When we Second Amendment advocates claim that removing guns from the equation only presses the criminals to find other options, we’re not making this up. This is exactly what we see in London. No more guns? They go to knives.

Only knives aren’t ideal for self-defense. They favor larger, faster, and stronger attackers over the average man or woman who is out for a stroll. That means more victims. We can see this plain as day. What London is experiencing is what happens when you embolden the predators while disarming the prey.

Good job.