Guns Don't Kill People. People With Guns Do.

A few days ago, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, immigration rights attorney and forced-birth advocate Christine Flowers commended Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, who has remarked

..... only a fool can believe that ‘gun control’ will solve the problem of mass violence. The people using the guns in these loathsome incidents are moral agents with twisted hearts.

And the twisting is done by the culture of sexual anarchy, personal excess, political hatreds, intellectual dishonesty, and perverted freedoms that we’ve systematically created over the past half-century.”

Flowers complains "talking about expanding mental health support doesn’t advance the guns-and-racism narrative deployed to make this a partisan issue." We get a rare glimpse of the motivation of some proponents of the mental health dodge when Flowers adds

....the point of (Chaput's) comments was that the real problem in society is a complete abandonment of clear moral standards, and our increasing disrespect for human life. Guns are a part of that conversation. So is racism. So is mental illness. So, for that matter, are abortion, euthanasia, the over-sexualization of children, family breakdown, and all of the things Chaput mentions.

Abortion, euthanasia, over-sexualization of children, and family breakdown have little or nothing to do with gun violence, any more than such ridiculous assertions besmirch Philadelphia Catholics or forced-birth fanatics. (The macho male subculture does pertain, and obviously so, but that is a subject for another time.)

Flowers, Chaput, and others unwilling or unable to confront the problem with firearms will not be reassured of their misconceptions, however, in the most recentoutbreak of violence which may have been induced by mental illness:

A man who allegedly stabbed a woman to death in Sydney’s central business district before attacking others on a busy city street with a butcher’s knife was arrested carrying information about terrorist attacks and extremist ideologies on a USB drive.

But police say the man did not have any known links to terror groups, and that he acted alone. The attacks are not being treated as a terrorist attack, the New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, said on Tuesday night.

The 21-year-old man from Marayong, near Blacktown in western Sydney, jumped on cars and yelled at bystanders to “shoot me in the fucking head” before being restrained by members of the public – later lauded as “heroes” by police – who used cafe chairs and a milk crate to pin him down.

About an hour after the man’s arrest, the body of a 21-year-old woman was found inside an apartment in Clarence Street, in central Sydney. It is understood she had suffered multiple stab wounds.

"Shoot me in the f_ _ _ _ _ _ head" said the man, who exhibited a reckless disregard for human life, and may have been determined to kill anyone and everyone he could.

He wounded one person and killed none, just as some of the twenty children wounded by a knife-wielding assailant in January in Beijing probably are alive only because they weren't shot.  In the United States, that mentally deranged (or not) man probably would have wielded an assault rifle and had the time and means to murder several individuals- maybe even 21.

He did not, however. He had a knife, and there appears to be a lot of people in Australia now alive because the knife wasn't an AR-15.

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