The article addresses the U.K. government's arms export licensing process to try to account for the discrepancy between its rhetoric of responsibility and practice of ongoing controversial exports. I describe the government's licensing process and demonstrate how this process fails to prevent exports to states engaged in internal repression, human rights violations, or regional stability. I then set out six reasons for this failure: the vague wording of arms export guidelines; the framing of arms export policy; the limited use (from a control perspective) of a case-by-case approach; the weak role of pro-control departments within government; pre-licensing mechanisms that facilitate exports and a lack of prior parliamentary scrutiny, which means the government's policy can only be examined retrospectively; and the wider context of the relationship between arms companies and the U.K. state. I conclude that the government's export control guidelines do not restrict the arms trade in any meaningful way but, rather, serve predominantly a legitimating function.