Coverage of the pre-Christmas mass mayhem in Magdeburg, Germany which claimed five lives and left some 200 people injured at a Christmas market, has all but disappeared, and could it be because the perpetrator didn’t use a gun?
According to CNN, which reported a few days ago that the suspect now in custody is a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany since 2006. He is believed to have acted alone.
While the motive remains unclear, what is inescapable, according to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, is that someone intent on committing mayhem doesn’t need a gun.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said the holiday season attack was reminiscent of the murderous outrage in July 2016 against people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. There, 86 people were killed and many more injured by a madman driving a stolen freight truck through a crowd. Add to that the 2021 rampage in Waukesha, Wisconsin when a deranged career criminal drove an SUV into a crowd watching a Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring 62 others, he recalled.
“Time and again we have warned that restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens is a bogus solution to violent crime, whether on a mass scale or an individual act,” Gottlieb observed. “Disarming honest, peaceable people only creates the dangerous illusion that something has been done to protect the public, and the gun prohibition lobby knows it. Their interest has never been reducing crime, but only discouraging and reducing private gun ownership.”
Had this attack involved the illegal use of a firearm, would coverage of the tragedy have continued today, nearly a week later?
“In recent days,” Gottlieb observed, “we’ve also seen news reports about fatal stabbings in Azusa, California, Miami, Florida and Seattle, Washington. A few days ago, a woman in New Jersey was allegedly bludgeoned to death. In Philadelphia, a woman was strangled over the weekend. A woman on a New York subway was set on fire and burned to death, allegedly by an illegal alien who was once deported during the Trump administration.”
News coverage of the horrific subway death has continued, probably due to the heinous nature of the crime. A suspect now in custody faces murder charges.
“I call attention to these crimes,” Gottlieb explained, “because they illustrate how individuals are responsible for criminal violence, not the tool they use. Whether people use guns, knives, blunt objects, vehicles, cigarette lighters or bare hands, it is the perpetrator who is ultimately responsible for their evil acts, and shifting blame to the weapon neither solves the problem nor prevents another, similar crime from happening an hour, day or month later. We don’t try to restrict ownership of motor vehicles, knives, hammers, baseball bats, lighters or any other object which can be used as a weapon. Only firearms, which are constitutionally protected.
“Restricting the right to keep and bear arms, which is protected by the federal and state constitutions is a flimsy sham that is wearing thinner by the day,” he concluded, “and incidents like those in Magdeburg, Waukesha, Nice, Miami, Philadelphia, New York and Seattle only prove that point.”
