What is the difference between being shot to death or being stabbed to death?

Oh, there are plenty of differences, but for the loved ones of those left behind, there probably isn’t enough of a difference to matter. The person they care about is still dead and a person took that life. You don’t feel better because they weren’t shot.

But in New York, it routinely appears as though that matters.

For example, guns aren’t allowed on the subway. That’s supposed to make sure everyone on the subway is nice and safe.

Yeah, that worked out brilliantly, didn’t it?

A youth basketball coach was stabbed to death on a New York City subway Thursday night, the seventh murder victim on the subway system in gun-controlled NYC this year.

The New York Daily News reported 36-year-old Charles Moore was attacked around 10:30 p.m. while exiting the “northbound No. 4 train at the elevated station at E. 176th St. and Jerome Ave.”

Surveillance video showed Moore get the better of his attacker for a second–“[slamming] the suspect into a wall on the subway platform”–then the suspect pulled a knife and stabbed Moore repeatedly.

Moore was rushed to hospital, where he died.

But at least he wasn’t shot, right?

Yes, that argument sounds idiotic. However, that’s a part of the discussion about gun laws like those in New York City that doesn’t really get brought up.

No, this particular criminal didn’t have a gun. So? Did that make him less deadly to Moore? Did that make it any better for him or his family?

Yet what if he’d been able to carry a firearm?

I’m not saying he would definitively have been armed. That’s really impossible for me to ascertain from here. However, he didn’t really have a choice considering how the laws in New York are structured, even now after Bruen.

Yet if he’d have at least had the option, his killer might have paused for a moment. He might have taken that possibility into account and decided not to initiate the attack.

Or what if Moore had been carrying? Then we’d be writing this as an armed citizen story where he went home to his family and the bad guy didn’t. That would have been a win for everyone across the board.

But gun control laws are enacted because people claim they’re necessary to prevent crime. They don’t. At best, they try to draw some kind of moral distinction between being shot and being stabbed or beaten. Laws like that essentially say that if you’re destined to be stabbed or clubbed over the head with a hammer or literally anything else that can kill you, your death is irrelevant. The only murders that matter are those committed with guns.

Of course, no one would articulate it like that, but show me where anti-gunners or so-called anti-gun violence activists show the least concern over stabbing fatalities like this.

They ignore them. They pretend they don’t exist.

At least for now.

And yet New York and other places throughout the country see plenty of these crimes.

Gun laws will never stop these. However, there’s a reason that the number of “gun deaths” is easily outstripped by defensive gun use. People with guns are usually better equipped to deal with guys pulling knives than those who don’t have one.

It’s just that simple.