Fortunately America's Founding Fathers saw the potential for exactly such abuse of governmental authority and addressed it in the Bill of Rights. Still,
eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and we would do well to fear that our goverment could also do something so foolishly expedient as to tamper with the Bill of Rights.
I cannot say that stopping the flow of so many of these modern mass produced 'junk' weapons into Britain will be entirely bad; but the impact upon serious modern bladesmiths and upon those wishing to study and collect legitimate ethnographic and historical military arms of the twentieth century is obvious, even in the unlikely event that the government handles the exemption of antiques competently.