In the aftermath of a recent attack in which a Syrian Islamic extremist wielding a knife murdered three innocent festival goers and wounded eight others, authorities in Germany are pushing forward with a plan to ban knives.
According to a report at nbcnews.com, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack by Issa Al H in the western German city of Solingen, a city of about 160,000 residents where a celebration of the city’s anniversary was taking place.
“Due to his radical Islamist beliefs, he decided to kill as many people as possible, who he considered to be non-believers, at the Solingen city festival on August 23, 2024,” the prosecutor’s office said in official statement. “There he stabbed festival visitors repeatedly and deliberately in the neck and upper body with a knife.”
The Islamic State-run Amaq news agency later said in a statement that the attacker targeted Christians and is a “soldier of the Islamic State” who was seeking “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.”
Just a few days after the attack, Olaf Scholz, the country’s Social Democratic Party Chancellor, announced the proposal to ban knives at most public events.
“Knives are to be banned at most public events including markets and sport as well as on public transport, and there will be a blanket ban on flick knives,” the BBC reported in late August. “Foreigners ordered to leave the country will have to be deported more quickly and efficiently, And anyone facing a jail term for knife crime would face fast deportation.”
Germany has one of the strictest gun control policies worldwide. Of course, that is what kept festival goers disarmed during the attack and unable to teach the attacker the old adage about the fallacy of “bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
As the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) pointed out in a recent news item about the proposed knife legislation, when citizens aren’t allowed to protect themselves and have to rely on the government to do so, things don’t always work out well.
“Many Americans are likely to find the notion of knife controls absurd, and for good reason,” the report stated. “If officials can’t keep makeshift edged weapons out of prisons, how can a country like Germany expect to stop evildoers from getting their hands on knives?
“However, others might recognize the frustrating parallels between Germany’s recent knife control effort and America’s battle over gun control. When authorities fail in their duty to uphold the law—whether out of incompetence, lack of resources, or, as is increasingly the case, a conscious political decision—it’s often the law-abiding who end up facing new restrictions.”
The German knife ban proposal, of course, comes at the same time some U.S. knife laws are being overturned based on the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Just last week in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth’s Judicial Court, the highest court in the state, ruled that switchblades fall under the same Second Amendment protection as firearms do and cannot be banned by the state.
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