By the Second Amendment Foundation
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s brutal stabbing attack in Florida, the Second Amendment Foundation today asked whether Congressional Democrats will now start pushing knife control.
“Five people were brutally stabbed,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The nation deserves to know whether Democrats will hold the suspect responsible, or blame the knife he used.”
Authorities said the five victims were being treated at a nearby hospital.
Gottlieb noted that this is hardly an isolated incident. He pointed to an early-August stabbing rampage in Southern California that left four people dead, and another incident in Massachusetts late last month that left two people dead and a third injured. And in California’s Ventura County, authorities arrested a man for fatally stabbing a woman and her elderly mother two weeks ago.
“Democrats and the gun prohibition lobby have been remarkably silent about these crimes,” Gottlieb observed. “We’re waiting for someone to start complaining about ‘an epidemic of knife violence.’ There are no background checks or waiting periods involved in purchasing knives, and in any given year, according to the annual FBI crime reports, more people die from stabbings than are killed with either rifles or shotguns, so maybe Congressional Democrats will start talking about that.
“The real issue here,” he said, “is that in every brutal slaying, regardless of the weapon used, the perpetrator should be held responsible. But only when firearms are involved do these knee-jerk crusaders demand action, and it is always aimed at guns and the people who own them who had nothing at all to do with the crime.
“We’re calling Democrats and gun control extremists out,” Gottlieb stated. “If they’re satisfied to hold knife-wielding killers individually responsible, the same standard must apply when it comes to crimes committed with firearms. Millions of people who own knives and/or guns have harmed nobody, so Democrats should stop treating them all like criminals.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.