A LONDON LESSON ABOUT MURDER WEAPONS

London has a problem.  Murder rates are spiking.

But the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, is not calling for stricter gun controls or defaming the NRA.

Here, via this excerpt from Frank Miles’ article at foxnews.com, is why:

London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a tough crackdown on knives Sunday as the city reels from a spike in stabbings that have led its number of homicides to top New York City’s for two straight months.

He tweeted: “No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.” 

The tweet also included an action plan to boost police power and prevent future violence.

London has seen more than 50 homicides already in 2018.

Most of the city’s murder victims have been stabbed to death, as guns are tightly restricted in Britain and shootings are relatively rare.

If the bloody trend continues, London will far surpass the 130 murders in 2017 and reach a number not seen since the early 2000s.

See, London has extremely strict gun laws.  But, instead of preventing murders, it has caused murderers to use non-gun alternatives.

And knives are just one type of murder weapon.  There are others – like vans that plow into pedestrians on the street or bombing London’s subways, (such as the 2005 “success” which killed 52 and injured 700 more).

And you can bet that still other means will be used in the future, as they become more feasible.

The point is, that people who want to murder other people will find a way to do it.  You can restrict one way to commit murder as severely as you care to, but that doesn’t mean murders will stop.  It means that, in the spirit of “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, other ways will be found and utilized.

The lesson here is a simple one – but, sad to say, one that some of us can’t seem to learn:  PEOPLE commit murders.  Not guns, not knives, not vans and not bombs.  PEOPLE.

No gun ever jumped up and started shooting by itself.  No knife ever self-plunged itself into someone’s chest. No van ever spontaneously jumped a curb and ran down innocent pedestrians.  No bomb ever rolled into a subway station and self-detonated.

So, while laws against the use of potentially lethal weapons are certainly necessary, it is ludicrous to think that they, in and of themselves, prevent lethal behaviors.

Simply stated, no amount of laws, however strict and encompassing they may be, will stop people from murdering each other – whether by use of guns, knives, vehicles, bombs or any other means.  All we can try to do is minimize it from happening.

And those who think gun violence in the United States is addressed by passing still stricter gun control laws and condemning the NRA, while not dealing more seriously with the behaviors of PEOPLE who present the most obvious threats (like nikolas cruz, for example), and not supporting more security where such murders are most likely to take place, are fooling themselves.