Guns are far from the only lethal weapon

By J.J. Schrader, Henderson

Friday, June 26, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Never passing up an opportunity to turn a solemn occasion into promoting a personal agenda, President Barack Obama managed to degrade his “heartfelt sorrow” comments on the tragic Charleston church shootings into a statement on gun control. As usual, his mindset centers not on the deranged shooter, but the fact that a handgun was involved ... as if the gun itself was at fault. Predictably, he called for new legislation to solve this pesky Second Amendment problem of private citizens owning firearms, since mass acts of mayhem like this occur “only in America and nowhere in any other civilized nation.”

Within hours of Obama’s comments, a story hit the wires about a deranged individual in Austria ramming his SUV into a crowd of bystanders, killing three and then proceeding to stab several survivors with a butcher knife. I anxiously wait for the White House to suggest Austria outlaw SUVs and butcher knives and have the U.S. State Department declare Austria a noncivilized country.