The United Kingdom seems very proud about their lack of firearms, and many members of the UK community — including one former CNN host who can’t seem to win an argument about guns to save his life, but keeps trying anyway — constantly tell me that if I would just get rid of my guns, the United States’ murder problem would disappear.

A lot of their arguments were eye-roll worthy then, but with the latest reports out of London, the advice to disarm is laughable now.

According to Reuters, the Capitol of the UK has now surpassed New York in murders after a rash of knife attacks took the lives of 31 people. Others were murdered with guns despite the strict gun laws on Britain’s books:

There were 15 murders in London in February against 14 in New York, according to London’s Metropolitan Police Service and the New York Police Department. For March, 22 murders were investigated in London, with 21 reports in New York.

The London Times reports that during a six-day span from March 14 – March 20, eight were killed bringing the murder rate up 38 percent since 2014.

The lesson to be learned here is that banning guns will not prevent murder. You cannot legislate evil. If an individual wishes to commit a murder or a crime they will find a different weapon to do so in the absence of a gun.

The problem isn’t the gun. The problem is the character of the person behind the weapon.

Furthermore, as we can now see with the case of London, not having a gun does not necessarily cause fewer murders to happen.

Meanwhile, FBI data shows that firearms have been increasingly used to defend the lives of citizens by citizens since 2012. Likewise, the FBI shows that firearms are the most effective weapon at stopping criminals for law enforcement, which London has stripped from its police officers.

How many Londoners’ lives could have been saved by police if they were equipped with the best method of defense?

Common sense says that when a criminal has to weigh his life against the crime he or she will commit, they will oftentimes choose their life. The mere presence of armed individuals does a lot to change the balance of many a situation.