By now, most Americans know that weapon laws in a lot of places are worse than they are here. After all, we can, you know, buy weapons.

Sure, for a lot of us, the laws aren’t as good as they could be, but when we compare them to weapon laws in a ton of places, we’re still coming out ahead.

That doesn’t just get limited to firearms, either.

In fact, as bad as gun laws in the UK are, it seems that’s not the extent of the stupid.

Now, I’m familiar with Matt Easton because I’m also a HEMA practitioner and instructor. It’s what I do for fun and if you practice Historical European Martial Arts, you’re all but required to subscribe to his channel.

He’s also an antique sword dealer, as he noted in the video above.

So, about the weapon laws in the UK.

Look, if you can watch the above video and not see the problem, you’re being willfully stupid. I mean, we’re talking about, among other things, sporting equipment that can land people in prison because they’re not currently practicing that particular sport at the moment.

How is that right?

While swords aren’t practical weapons in this day and age, they still were to some degree when our beloved Constitution was penned. The right to keep and bear arms doesn’t end with firearms.

Yet if we gut the Second Amendment like some want, what’s to stop us from having such insane laws here at some point? Absolutely nothing.

Imagine having to justify the katana you bought to display on your mantle. Imagine having to justify your grandfather’s sword from his time in the Marine Corps. Or what about your great-great-grandfather’s saber from the Civil War?

Worse, imagine having to turn all that over to the government because they decided you could no longer be trusted with them.

That’s clearly what happened in the UK.

For all the talk of what all their gun laws accomplished, they still have enough violence they kept banning things to the point that ex-fencers have to worry if their sporting equipment will land them in prison. And that’s assuming the person in question even knows they have such sporting equipment, as Easton mentioned.

A lot of people in England have these items just sitting in attics.

That’s less of an issue here in the US where fencing hasn’t really been particularly huge, but it could still happen easily enough.

The problem with weapon laws of any kind is that once they start, they’re difficult to stop. Each one being justified in part by the ones that came before it. Over time, a nation that once put artillery in private hands no longer permits its people to have pointy kitchen knives.

The slippery slope fallacy isn’t a fallacy when there’s actually a slippery slope. Weapon laws in the UK are a prime example.

This is what happens when you target the tools used and not the tools using them.

That’s what England did, and now people have to worry about the legality of sporting equipment, among other things.