The Patriot Post® · 'Knife Violence' Hits Australia

Australia may have largely done away with guns, but that hasn’t stopped it from suffering murderous mass attacks.

Over the weekend in Sydney, a 40-year-old knife-wielding man attacked people in a shopping mall with murderous results. The attack was finally stopped by a police officer with a gun, who shot the perpetrator dead as he lunged at her — but not before he had killed six and wounded a dozen others.

While no motive has yet been determined, the attacker apparently suffered from some form of mental illness. (They don’t say.) Thus far, police have ruled out any terrorism connections.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, and once again in Sydney, another knife-wielding individual attacked a bishop as he was delivering a sermon. The attacker, a young man, strolled up to the front of the Assyrian church, produced a knife, and started stabbing.

Fortunately, parishioners quickly responded, subduing the perpetrator. The bishop, while wounded, was not killed and is expected to make a full recovery. No word on the motive of the attacker other than that he reportedly said the bishop “was getting involved in my religion, so I came to get involved in his.”

Both of these incidents are sad commentaries on humanity. People, for a variety of reasons or issues, will too often seek to harm others. Indeed, this has been the case with humanity since the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden.

While the tools for murder may be anything from a rock to a knife to a gun to a vehicle, what has always mattered was the result of the attack, not the implement used. Only a society that rejects the fundamental fallen nature of mankind would be so deceived as to believe that the instrument used in the commission of the crime was the fundamental cause of the crime.

And yet, that is precisely what politicians in the West have been preaching over the past few decades. When an atrocity such as the mass attack at the mall in Sydney occurs, the focus of many goes to the implement used.

Back in 1996, a man wielding a firearm murdered 35 people in the Australian state of Tasmania. The shocking event was used by politicians to implement severe gun control laws, including a state-mandated gun buyback program. Law-abiding Australians effectively lost their right to self-defense and their right to bear arms. Unfortunately, unlike American citizens, Australians do not have a Second Amendment.

Of course, leftists in the U.S. would love nothing more than to see the Second Amendment repealed and the American public disarmed. In their mind, only the state should have the right to bear arms, which is why Democrats have occasionally pointed to the Australian model.

Will politicians in Australia take advantage of these latest murderous attacks to further disarm Australians? Just last year, Australia’s state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, passed restrictive knife crime legislation. The law, which was billed as a necessary safety measure, doubled the penalties for “knife crimes” and other knife-related offenses.

Clearly, these knife laws failed to stop these attacks because they focused on the tool rather than on the fact that there are individuals who will engage in evil acts. In the case of the mall attacker, if it had not been for a fast-responding armed police officer in the area, the death toll may well have been substantially higher.