After Toronto Attack, Activist Asks If Vehicles Are Also ‘Assault Weapons’

BELLEVUE, WA –-(Ammoland.com)- Following Monday’s mass mayhem in Toronto that saw ten people killed and 15 others injured by a madman driving a rental van, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is challenging authorities and the liberal media to start using the term “assault vehicle” or simply call these killing machines “assault weapons.”

“What happened in Toronto Monday was a horrible tragedy,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.

“Fatal vehicle attacks have been increasing. The 2016 Nice terror attack killed more than 80 people. Last year a man driving a rental truck killed eight people on a bicycle path in New York City. Also last year, 13 people were killed in Barcelona, eight more died in a car attack in London and four were killed in Stockholm. If a gun had been the weapon instead of a vehicle, all of those would have been mass shootings.

“How should we define an ‘assault vehicle,’” he wondered. “Is it a van or truck? Does it have a high-powered engine? Does it have an automatic transmission? Can it be fitted with a high capacity fuel tank? Do they all come in solid black, or are other colors available? Can they be equipped with large mufflers to suppress engine noise? Once we define them, should we ban them, require special training to operate them, or just raise the age limit to buy or rent one?

“Or is the problem the individual driver, rather than the equipment he turns into a weapon,” Gottlieb challenged.

“Once you realize how absurd it is to call a car an ‘assault vehicle,’ you see the lunacy of defining, and then banning, so-called ‘assault rifles.’

“Instead,” he suggested, “we need to focus the blame where it belongs, on the deranged, violent person who commits the violent act. We don’t reflexively demonize every other motorist for the acts of a madman, so why do some people insist on penalizing every gun owner for the acts of criminals?

“The time has come to stop this blame-shifting nonsense,” Gottlieb said. “It is deceptive and dishonest, and doesn’t prevent or solve anything.”

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.