While It's Good To See...

...a pro-gun op/ed in The Washington Post, it comes at the cost of being anti-knife:

On the other hand, never underestimate the knife.

In some places, such as the District, the knife now surpasses the gun as the weapon most commonly used in reported assaults. In the past six months, from September to Feb. 26, there were 397 reported assaults with knives, compared with 278 with guns. This year, there have been more than 110 reported knife assaults and 73 with guns.

There’s a service station at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Sheriff Road, at the District and Prince George’s line, that sells assault knives for about $10. The most popular is a spring-loaded Army-style tactical knife with a nasty, three-inch serrated blade curved like a raptor’s claw.

In a kind of “West Side Story”-style gang fight, a large group of youngsters from two rival neighborhoods met up last month for a showdown in Southwest Washington. When D.C. police arrived on the scene, the brawlers ran off — leaving behind a girl bleeding on the sidewalk.

The fight had apparently been arranged on Facebook, according to police. And the knives used were comparably high-tech. But the business end is still just a blade — as convenient in a kitchen as it is deadly in the streets.

"Assault knives?" The writer is still a hoplophobe, he's just changed his focus a bit, is all.

h/t David Codrea.