James Woods: Britain Disarmed Its People, Now It’s ‘Standing on the Edge of the Islamist Abyss’

Actor James Woods used a Sunday night X post to note that Britain went-all in on disarming its people in the late 20th century and now is “standing on the edge of the Islamist abyss.”

Woods wrote, “Our friends, the Brits, went from relinquishing their right to bear arms in 1997 to standing on the edge of the Islamist abyss today.”

On September 24, 2024, Breitbart News observed that gun control in Britain was instituted in stages, beginning just after World War I and continuing in a reactionary fashion with increasing strictness through the 1990s.

The final phase of the controls was implemented via the Firearm Act of 1997, which was adopted after a man attacked an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, using legally-owned guns. The Firearm Act of 1997 virtually ended handgun ownership and made the acquisition of a certificate to possess a long gun an onerous and time-consuming one.

One immediate result was skyrocketing violent crime. By 2009, twelve years after the Firearms Act of 1997 was passed, Daily Mail Online reported that Britain was “the most violent country in Europe.” They also reported that Britain’s home figures showed “the UK [had] a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and South Africa.”

In addition to violence, Britain’s post-disarmament era has also opened the door to a societal suicide James Woods described as “the Islamist abyss.”

Writing in The Spectator on December 22, 2025, Ed Husain wrote on the Islamist threat to Britain’s future but did so from “abroad” because of the danger he no longer felt safe Britain.
His article began:

I am writing this article from abroad because I do not currently feel safe in Britain, the country of my birth and where I grew up. Why? Because I have written books and articles exposing and warning about the danger of Islamism in the UK.

I am not alone in feeling threatened. Many of our media organizations, universities, charities, government departments and judges live in fear of offending an extremist underworld, which has been strengthened by the disaster of the Israel-Gaza war. The Bondi beach attack is only its latest manifestation.

On September 7, 2024, the Hoover Institution observed, “The cultural carapace of Britishness, which has served as an umbrella term to bind together the four indigenous nations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as immigrant ethnic groups, is breaking apart under the pressure of economic inequality, mass immigration, and radical Islam.”

James Woods used the latter portion of his Sunday night X post to urged Americans to use the British example to remind ourselves of why our Founding Fathers hedged in the right to keep and bear arms.

Woods wrote, “Our Second Amendment is not about the right to go duck hunting, folks. It’s about keeping power in the hands of The People.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.