Sophomore goes on stabbing spree; Preparing for war on knives

Earlier this month, Alex Hribal, a 16 year old sophomore at Franklin Regional Senior High School, went on a stabbing spree inside his school. Hribal managed to stab twenty students and one adult, including the school’s security officer, before being subdued by the school’s two assistant principals.
Mia Meixner, a student at the school, witnessed Hribal attacking a freshman.
“And the freshman boy stood up off the ground, and he lifted up his shirt and was gushing blood from his stomach all over,” said Meixner. “It was very terrifying.”
Hribal’s weapons of choice were two 8” steel blades that he mostly likely took from his home. He moved so quietly at first that most students didn’t know what was happening.
“He did it so stealthily that at first no one knew what was happening,” said freshman Josh Frank said. “We heard a girl scream bloody murder. Then two seniors were running down the hall and we followed them out of the school.”
While the whole event is extremely upsetting, usually after some mass shooting at a school, we are bombarded by terrified parents and “concerned” politicians about how to keep assault rifles from reaching the hands of the shooting suspects. But this tragedy in particular opens up a new argument altogether. Where are all the people banding together to get knives off the street?
Knives are involved in 5x more assaults than assault rifles, according to politifact.com. Yet we are still allowed to have these dangerous items in our possession. Shouldn’t the same politicians who are working to get rid of assault rifles also be working to save us from the steak knives that are terrorizing entire communities?
The fact is that most politicians are not as concerned about the outlaw of weapons that can cause mass harm, as much as they are with securing their job in the next upcoming election. Most citizens want to be able to blame something after mass shootings, and politicians use this to their advantage.
This is why we won’t see a Congressman stand up and demand that we outlaw steak knives. It is because of one fact that everyone seems to forget after multiple people are assaulted or killed by some lunatic: guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Instead of pointing the finger at the weapon, we should point the finger at the attacker. Instead of waiting until after a tragedy happens, we need to take steps to ensure that these mass stabbings and shootings come to an end.
People that know the suspects of these horrible crimes often see things or changes with the suspects that could be clues as to what they are planning. But these changes often go unreported until it is too late.
In order to save future lives, we need to inform the public to speak out when they see or hear something wrong or unusual. This is the only way that we can stop future mass shooting and stabbings without infringing on our given right to bear arms.