True, but there are many exceptions to that, such as ones with curved blades over 50 centimeters in length, i.e. Talwars, Cavalry Swords and quite a few Japanese 'samurai' swords (all that was brought in as law in 2008 to stop dickheads buying cheap knock off Samurai swords for gang fights and the like). There are some exemptions, such as re-enacting, or if you are a Sikh, or if the sword is traditionally forged, if it is made before 1954 etc, but the actual ins and outs of all that would take too long to list in full. Genuine Japanese samurai swords are bloody expensive, I know because I have a mate who is an ex RAF armourer who collects and refurbishes them, and he pays craploads of money for even very battered WW2 ones that he repolishes with freaky (and expensive) specialised polishing stone sets.
Perhaps more to the point (geddit?), swords are not that easy to use and most people would not know how to do so properly. Yeah alright, just brandishing it would be pretty scary, and you can certainly do some damage with one without being D'Artagnan (who was a musketeer anyway) but in fact it would be kind of hard to swing a sword in many homes (most of mine are way longer than an M16, try swinging something that long around on your stairs in the dark and you'll hit the wall and look like an incompetent tw*t), so you'd need a thrusting sword like a toledo or rapier or some such, and would have to learn how to thrust and lunge it properly to have any hope of doing damage to someone, and of course how to parry in quarters, in case someone else was armed with a big stick or whatever. When you learn to use a sword, you learn how to defend yourself with it first!
I've fenced against members of the British Olympic Team (got my arse kicked and rarely even scored a hit, cos I'm fairly sh*t at fencing), so I can promise you that it's a crapload harder than it looks to look even reasonably competent with a sword! I also do a bit of Tai Chi (as a contact martial art, not that poncing about in the park malarkey), which means I do in fact have quite a few swords on the wall in my bedroom, mostly Leon Paul fencing foils, plus some Chinese daos and jians in alloy, low grade steel, or wood for the Tai Chi, but there is no way I'd pick one of them off the wall if I thought there was an intruder in my house, for a start none of them have a proper edge and would probably fall to bits if you really tried to tw*t someone with one of them - the Chinese ones are for Tai Chi, not for going all Akira Kurosawa on someone's ass, and the fencing foils have either a safety tip on them or an electric sensor for competition hit detection - I'd just make some noise and put the light on, then call the fuzz. You can pretty much guarantee most burglars would feck off the moment that started occurring, they are burglars, hoping not to disturb you, not a SWAT team coming to grab you and take you prisoner.
To be honest though, the fact that I have six big dogs, including a big daft German Shepherd with a scary sounding bark, is more of a deterrent than I'd ever be with some toy gun or a plastic Excalibur.
In addition to which, if you attacked someone with a sword in your house, I can pretty much guarantee you would be going to jail, I know that too, because a guy I knew a few years ago (used to be a doorman on a pub I go to, nice guy too) was upset about not seeing his kids, and being affected by the body building drugs he took, mixed with alcohol, and obviously against his better normal judgement, went round to her house with a samurai sword and threatened her, when the police showed up, he attacked them, badly injuring one of the officers when he stabbed the sword through the windscreen of their patrol car. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and lost his appeal against the sentence too, which means he'll probably be sixty when he gets out of jail, and it's a real shame too, because anyone who knows him will tell you what a top bloke he is, someone who actually cares deeply about the well being of others, and how out of character that act was, but that's what love can do to you, and more to the point, what one reckless moment can do to your life.
Use of swords belongs in movies and sport, and that's it.
