When debating gun control, many anti-gun folks will point to Europe. In particular, they’ll point to gun crime statistics in Europe and declare gun control a success.

That’s not entirely accurate.

First, let’s remember that bad people can still get guns, as we recently saw.

Second, even if many European criminals can’t get them for whatever reason, it doesn’t actually stop them from doing bad things.

At best, it keeps them from doing it with a gun.

Over at USA Carry, they wrote about just how little that matters.

On October 12, 2023, a French Muslim of Chechen origin walked into a high school in Arras, France, with a knife. He killed a teacher and wounded three other people before being arrested. It is believed the attack was in response to the Palestinian call for a bloody uprising around the world. He had been under surveillance by French authorities since summer on suspicion of Islamic radicalization. While this attack is considered terrorism, it is by no means an isolated incident. Three years earlier, a French teacher had been beheaded by a knife-wielding Chechen man.

Liberals like to point to Europe as evidence of how gun control prevents violent crime. They emphasize the relatively small number of crimes and terrorism involving guns and propose that if all guns were removed from the hands of Americans, as they have been from Europeans, the streets would be safe and free of crime.

What they do not mention is that Europe has a significant violent crime problem. Since getting guns is more difficult, the perpetrators simply use different weapons. And because European citizens are completely unarmed, they are helpless when they are attacked.

Bad guys still get guns there, as we’ve seen more than once through the years, even if they’re much harder to get.

Yet gun control doesn’t stop anyone from hurting others, even those without the ability to get a firearm.

By switching to things like knives, they’re still able to kill people if they want to and they’re able to do so with weapons that are pretty readily available and very difficult to control like they have with guns.

People still need knives to cook with, after all.

“But it’s different,” someone might try to claim, but I’d argue it’s not.

Ask anyone who has lost someone they care about whether they’d have felt better if their loved one had been killed with the other weapon. If they don’t punch you for asking such an idiotic question, I’d be shocked, but assuming they have that level of restraint, most would probably tell you that they don’t care about that in the least. They just want their loved ones back.

European gun control only seems to work because people don’t want you to look at the big picture.

Now, granted, we also know that knife crime is worse here in the United States than it is in Europe as well. Yet the problem isn’t how the US compares to Europe but how Europe compares to Europe.

In other words, as you look at European crime rates, it helps to remember that there are a lot of differences between them and the United States.

They have a problem and that problem is often hidden by American anti-gunners who don’t want you seeing that much of what has happened is that gun control simply shifted the issue to another weapon.

In so doing, though, European governments have made it more difficult for good people to defend themselves.

Criminals can attack with knives. Law-abiding citizens, however, are still defenseless. That’s not attractive to me at all. How about you?