Actually, The Bow And Arrow Attack Is An Argument Against Gun Control

(AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

The bow and arrow attack in Norway earlier this week was bound to spur some discussion. After all, you don’t see something like that every day. It was a bizarre and tragic incident.

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It also showed that a diseased mind who wanted to kill as many people as possible would certainly find a way to do so, regardless of the laws on the books.

Yet some are arguing that the attack said nothing negative about gun control.

While the attack is already being spun into an argument against gun control, this stance completely misses the point.

Here’s why the bow and arrow attack in Norway isn’t a good argument against gun control

The gun laws in Norway are very strict, regularly regulated, and work very well for the 5 million people who live there.

Automatic weapons are prohibited to citizens unless they are collectors, the youngest age anyone can own a handgun is 21, and there are only a couple of reasons a citizen can get a gun in the first place.

Gun attacks are rare in Norway.

The last time an attack this deadly occurred in Norway was 10 years ago when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people through the use of a fertilizer bomb and two guns obtained legally.

Since then, firearms have not killed more than 5 people within a recorded year and even hit 0 deaths in the year 2017.

Outgoing prime minister Erna Solberg noted in a press conference that mass killings in Norway were rare, and that police now have it under control.

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Well, these arguments have certainly convinced me.

They convinced me that some people don’t get the freaking point.

We have a mass murder event carried out with a bow and arrow, a weapon system that’s been available since the paleolithic era at a minimum. That means a murder weapon capable of killing several people in a short timeframe has been available for people this entire time, and this is the first time we’ve seen a mass murderer use one.

There are two lessons here.

The first is that maybe, just maybe, the reason Norway has far fewer homicides than the United States has to do with something completely different than the availability of weaponry.

The second is that the evil, diseased mind that wants to find a way to kill innocent people will find a way to kill innocent people. If you heavily restrict guns, they’ll use archery equipment. Ban that and they’ll use a knife. Ban those and they’ll find something else.

It’s clear as day that the problem lies in the people who carry out these attacks, not in the availability of weapons for them to do so.

If these people are too dense to see that, then they’re clearly people who should stay out of the discussion.

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Norway and the United States are different in so many ways as to make comparisons of crime statistics meaningless. Yet what we can take away is that heavy restriction of firearms doesn’t stop evil people. Why is this so difficult for some people to understand?

Or do they simply not want to understand it?

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