One of the worst things I do in this job is write about mass casualty attacks, like the stabbing incident in Brooklyn on Sunday. Thankfully, the only fatality in that incident is the dirtbag who stabbed four little girls.

But those kinds of stories stick in your mind when you write them. It’s hard to just walk that sort of thing off, even if you’re on the other side of the country from the incident.

So with that still in my head, it wasn’t difficult to think about that as the media celebrated a successful gun buyback in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the same part of Brooklyn where the stabbing took place.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office says 195 guns were collected Saturday during a buyback event at Cornerstone Church in Bed-Stuy.

District Attorney Eric Gonzalez says the goal is to collaborate with the community to make the neighborhood safer.

“One gun can be the difference of a tragedy. Two hundred guns – we know we’re saving lives,” said Gonzalez.

No, you don’t. Studies have shown that gun buybacks have absolutely no impact on crime or criminal behavior.

I just find there to be a certain irony is Gonzalez saying this a day before a mass stabbing attack in the same community in Brooklyn. If anything, it highlights just how idiotic the anti-gun hysteria is.

As noted on Sunday, many so-called mass shootings have fewer injuries and no fatalities, yet are part of the building hysteria in some circles about the right to keep and bear arms.

Meanwhile, violent people will turn to whatever they have available in that moment if they wish to act violently.

In the stabbing incident, police found a knife and a meat cleaver. Does anyone think that those aren’t deadly weapons when used as such?

“But those aren’t designed to kill,” someone might argue, and that’s probably an accurate point. They’re not.

It’s also an irrelevant point. The purpose of a thing originally goes out the window the moment someone decides to kill people. 

Plus, while guns might be intended to kill, who or what they’re used to kill still depends on the person. That includes things like hunting, self-defense, or defense against tyranny. These are all good and just uses of a firearm.

A knife can be used to cut a tomato or a throat. What matters is the intention, and you cannot legislate away intention.

So, Brooklyn held a gun buyback, got a pile of firearms–not much considering the population of New York City, of course–then saw a horrific crime committed the very next day. If anything, this should perfectly illustrate the uselessness of gun buybacks beyond making good press for those pushing an agenda.

No one was saved. Four little girls are in the hospital today because of the actions of an individual who didn’t even need a gun. It was only the presence of a firearm in the hands of police that stopped the evil. I’m not sure if there was anyone else around who could have acted had they been properly armed, but I do know that New York law does little to empower anyone who might have been.

So now nearly 200 guns are “off the streets,” and four little girls are fighting for their lives just a day later.

Sorry, but that just hits different for me.