I'd recommend a trip to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, particularly the top floor display of illegal offensive weapons.
MrsBiscuit was quite impressed as I was walking along a display case of items saying "Yeah, and one of those, and one of those and two of them, but mine was the smaller version..."
At the end of the row there's a large sign pointing out that simple possession of anything in the display is worth 5 to 10 years in prison.
I'm fairly sure that wasn't true in the 1980s, or the 1990s would have been quite different for me!