In the wake of the stabbing of fourteen people on the campus of Lone Star Community College in Cypress, Texas, earlier today, opponents of gun control are asking, facetiously, whether we’re going to start cracking down on knives now, too. Variations of the same quip were made by about 12,000 different people on Twitter, so you know it’s good.
Obviously these are just sarcastic jokes, but jokes are still supposed to make sense, and this one doesn’t. “Knife control,” or whatever you want to call it, already exists. Like gun control, it’s comprised of federal and state laws meant to limit the risk posed by unnecessarily dangerous knives and ensure, to a reasonable extent, that knives are only used for legitimate purposes. Most if not all states have bans on carrying or owning knives of certain lengths or styles. As for banning knives altogether, nobody in the political mainstream is actually suggesting that for guns. So … what is the joke, exactly?