The US President has come under fire in the UK this week after appearing to link a surge in knife crimes there to a ban on guns. Speaking at a National Rifle Association conference in the US, he stated:
“I recently read a story that in London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital right in the middle is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds.”
“They don’t have guns. They have knives and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital.”
British people on social media were more amused than appalled however.
According to the BBC, Trump may have taken his facts from a Radio 4 interview last month with a London trauma surgeon who said he was treating stabbing victims “on a daily basis.”
But Karim Brohi, the head of trauma surgery at the Royal London Hospital, has ridiculed the idea that guns are part of the solution.
“There is more we can all do to combat this violence, but … gunshot wounds are at least twice as lethal as knife injuries and more difficult to repair,” he said.
Knife crime in the UK has jumped by 21 per cent in the past year, but considering over 30,000 Americans were killed by firearms in 2016, we’d ask – who has the bigger problem?
