Many argue that if we restrict guns just a smidge, we'll put a complete and total end to mass shootings. After all, they argue, if mass shooters prefer AR-15s, we should ban those and then they won't have such dangerous weapons.
Of course, they forget that Virginia Tech, still the worst school shooting in American history, was carried out with a couple of handguns, but let's put a pin on that one for now.
Especially since we know that an assault weapon ban wouldn't be the end of their anti-gun efforts. by any stretch of the imagination.
But an arrest in Germany over the weekend should raise all kinds of questions about the viability of gun control to stop mass murders.
A Syrian man turned himself in and confessed to stabbing to death three people and wounding several others at a festival in the western German city of Solingen on Friday, police said.
Two men, aged 67 and 56, and a woman aged 56 died in the attack, which has shocked Germany and prompted opposition parties to call for tighter rules on migrants.
German prosecutors accuse the 26-year-old of being a member of ISIS. The militant group claimed the attack through its Amaq news service. However, it offered no evidence to back up its claim.
In a statement, prosecutors said that due to his “radical Islamist convictions, [the suspect] decided to kill as many people as possible at the Solingen city festival.”
The suspect turned himself in following a major manhunt. The Bild newspaper said the man was covered in blood when he approached officers and said, “I’m the one you’re looking for.”
Authorities earlier searched a refugee shelter over the incident. Police also arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with the incident.
During the manhunt, Solingen residents had been warned to exercise caution and be on alert while the perpetrator remained on the run. For hours after the mass stabbing, authorities had struggled to identify the attacker.
A police spokesman, Thorsten Fleiß, said the attacker specifically targeted the necks of his victims. “After evaluating the initial images, we assume that it was a very targeted attack on the neck,” he said during a press conference.
Now, some will claim that only three people killed, compared to something like Las Vegas, is evidence that gun control is beneficial. Let's remember, though, that while it's not mentioned in this piece, eight other people were injured and easily could have been killed if the attacker was targeting the neck. Are you going to tell me that 12 people attacked and potentially killed is a good thing?
There are a lot of so-called mass shootings in this country that never accumulate that kind of bloodshed as it is. Even the ones that are universally agreed to be mass shootings don't necessarily see 12 people potentially killed. Hell, most of what the Gun Violence Archive calls mass shootings don't even see three people killed, much less so many injured.
However, let's also remember that German gun control meant that there was absolutely no chance for any of the victims to defend themselves.
Then we have the fact that Germany has gun control measures in place that would never survive legal challenges here in the United States, making those laws a complete and total non-starter. Even those laws didn't stop a mass stabbing from happening on Friday. Only pure, dumb luck kept this story from being about 12 people being murdered by a terrorist in gun-controlled Germany.
If there are people with evil intentions, they'll find a way to murder as many people as they can. Gun control won't stop them. It'll just push them in a different direction.
Trying to control the weapons is a fool's bargain. It sounds simple, but it never really addresses the problem.
Nothing about that should be surprising, though. This is par for the course, which is probably the real crime here in the US.
