Large quantities of weapons and ammunition have been recovered in the UK as part of a month-long anti-terror operation, the UK’s Evening Standard reports. The raid recovered more than 800 illegal guns—including two machine guns and one submachine gun—100 “other weapons,” over 4,000 rounds of ammunition, and other contraband.
Instead of considering this a wake-up call, law-enforcement officials are framing the raid as a success. Nick Wilcox, National Terrorism Policing Unit detective superintendent, totally sidestepped the failure of his country’s gun control laws in announcing the seizure, saying, “Low firearms availability is a major advantage in the UK” because someone like Muhiddin Mire, who committed a knife attack on a Leytonstone tube station, “could probably have got hold of a firearm and one serious injury could have become tens of deaths.”
Sounds to us like he could’ve gotten a gun pretty easily in the UK, too. The only difference is that in countries with “high firearms availability,” there may have been someone able to stop him if he had.
