Germany has long been a country with much tougher gun laws than the United States. But now German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to toughen knife laws in the wake of an Islamic terrorist from Syria killing three people in a knife attack in the city of Solingen. Eight people were wounded.
It wasn’t the first knife attack this year.
In May, a police officer was killed in Mannheim, roughly 130 miles south of Solingen, when six people were stabbed at an anti-Islamist rally, according to The New York Times.
Germany's Interior Minister has proposed allowing only knives with a blade measuring nearly 2.4 inches to be carried in public, rather than the length of 4.7 inches that is allowed now.
Mike Hammond, the legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, says such an emotional response won’t work.
“Basically, after the tougher knife laws don't work, they'll have toughened scissors laws and then there's no end to the inanimate object harm to people and ultimately they will be forced to outlaw everything."
Hammond says the problem is bad people, not bad things. When people are running from a criminal past or who, perhaps, have mental illness are welcomed into a country the chances for this type of tragedy increase.
"Part of the problem with bad people is people who are basically fleeing their homelands and who are released from mental institutions, from prisons, decide that they're going to move somewhere else."
And Hammond says allowing smaller knives is ridiculous.
"Ultimately cooking will be made illegal. And people will be no safer."
