“Since anyone over 18 with a clean record can buy a rifle in the US, do you consider that not regulated either?”
If you have to show a clean record, then I guess it’s regulated. Unregulated to me suggests that one has to meet no critieria to purchase an item as an adult.
I was trying to illustrate how absurd your statement that since anybody over 21 can buy alcohol, it is not regulated was. I had to take a fairly intense class designed to allow the owner to keep his license and to keep me out of jail just to work in a liquor store in Texas a few years back. Texas has ABC agents using minors to see if they are sold alcohol in stores/bars all the time. Alcohol sales are pretty strictly regulated in the US. From what I have read, knife sales appear to be regulated in the UK. If they are regulated as strictly as alcohol sales are in the US, than it is worse than I had thought.