I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone from England try to tell me all about how their gun laws are far superior to ours. They claim that their gun control makes them so much safer. Of course, I laugh, and only in part because I like to remind them that we fought a whole war so we wouldn’t have to give a damn what some tosser from England thinks about anything.

I also laugh because while I’m hearing stuff like this, I see headlines that suggest things aren’t as rosy as some like to portray it.

Across the West Midlands, violent crime has become unnervingly common. Despite knife crime in the capital making the headlines, it has risen by 103% since 2014 in this region compared with 48% in London, with 14 knife crimes a day so far this year often targeting children of school age. Meanwhile, gun crime is up by a third in the West Midlands, and murder, GBH and other violent crimes increased by 17% in the last year alone. In London, the rises were about 10% and 6% year-on-year, respectively.

Police forces in the region believe some of the recent spates of violence in the region, which includes the cities of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry, were due to rival gangs battling over territory to sell drugs, with falls in the price of heroin and cocaine leading gangs to attempt expansion to increase profits, sparking turf wars. They also point towards a wider climate of fear that compels many to carry knives, often with deadly consequences, while noting the erosion of public services amid austerity and deepening poverty.

To tackle the causes of the rising violence and stop it before it starts, police, health, local government, education and the private sector teamed up to create a new violence reduction unit. It mirrors similar schemes in Glasgow and, more recently, London.

So, let me get this straight.

The bad guys who are the reason England has such strict gun laws and are even enacting knife control laws are still getting guns and knives without much of an issue, but the law-abiding citizens have no means to protect themselves? This is their Utopian society?

If only someone could have told them this would happen.

Then again, a lot of people did. A lot of folks warned the British of just what happens when you disarm the law-abiding. Criminals felt no reason to comply with weapon control laws any more than they did any other law on the books. They’re criminals, for crying out loud. It’s kind of what they do.

Yet the good people of West Midlands are left at the mercy of the merciless. They’re subjected to the Tyranny of the Thug because their governments want to keep them disarmed and docile. The problem is, there will always be those who simply don’t care about laws. They’re interested in power over others for whatever reason. Sometimes those go into politics, but other times they go into crime (yeah, I know, a case can be made they’re the same thing) and seek that power over individuals in short bursts. Regardless, good people are left defenseless.

They’re defenseless because the law said they couldn’t be trusted with guns. Meanwhile, the people who really can’t be trusted with anything are still running around armed.

And this is the life many anti-gunners envision for the United States.