Mass shootings are awful events, but I’ve long maintained that a maniac doesn’t need a gun to carry out a mass attack.

We’ve seen it time and time again, unfortunately.

In Albuquerque, NM, we just saw another such example.

The Albuquerque Police Department has arrested a suspect in connection to multiple scattered stabbings that took place on Sunday afternoon.

In a statement posted to Twitter, the police department from the city in New Mexico confirmed that it had the “lone suspect” allegedly responsible for leaving 11 people injured. The suspect had been riding a bike used for off-roading and had a large knife, according to police, KRQE reported.

“They appear to be random, someone was involved with an accident here on Central, a person just came up and said they were stabbed,” said Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman with the Albuquerque Police Department.

Luckily, no one was killed, but they well could have been and no gun was needed for the attack.

“Yeah, but if they’d have had a gun, all those people would be dead!”

Not necessarily. We’ve seen incidents where a pile of people have been shot, but no one was actually killed in the incident. Most people miss that because these stories don’t make the national news without people actually being killed. They might get a mention on their websites, but it quickly drops to the bottom of the feed and is quickly forgotten.

However, with this incident, we’re still fortunate we’re not talking about 11 killed instead of just stabbed. Knives kill more than 1,700 people in 2020.

The truth of the matter is that crazy people–and I don’t use that term to include everyone with a mental health struggle, but to describe the truly dangerous–will find ways to hurt others.

Plus, let’s also note that this happened in New Mexico, a state that is far from restrictive on guns. Why? If guns are so easily available–and it’s not appreciably easier to get a gun there than anywhere else in the state–why did he use a knife?

When the Albuquerque attacker’s identity is revealed, we may learn more.

As it stands, though, we know that bad people do bad things. They’ll do them regardless of the laws on the books because they’re bad people.

We know that gun control won’t make bad people suddenly become good. At best, they’ll turn to a less efficient weapon like a knife, but they could also turn to something even more deadly, like a bomb. We’re just fortunate that hasn’t happened more.

When we tell people that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, we’re also trying to get folks to understand that this is just as bad as someone being shot. Yes, I’m fully aware that’s too difficult a concept for some people to grasp, but that doesn’t change the reality.

Broken people do bad things. The tool doesn’t change that, so let’s start focusing on the tool using it instead. At least then weapon types won’t matter in the least.