After eight innocents were killed and 15 injured in the October 31 NYC vehicular terror attack, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof suggested the death toll would have much higher if the terrorist had an “assault weapon.”

Think about it–a terrorist ran over eight people, killing them, and wounded another 15, yet Kristof’s response is that it could have been worse were it not for gun control.

Kristof tweeted:

The NYC terrorist had a pellet gun and a paintball gun. Good thing that in NYC he couldn't buy assault rifles, or the toll would be higher. — Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) October 31, 2017

Keep in mind that Kristof works for the same New York Times that responded to the June 14 Alexandria attack by trying to temper Americans’ desire to be armed to stave off mass public attacks. The NYT editorial board admitted that “all people in that situation, unarmed and under fire, would long to be able to protect themselves and their friends.” But after admitting the desire to be armed for self-defense, they criticized the idea of a society where people are actually armed to protect themselves:

Yet consider the society Americans would have to live in–the choices they would have to make–to enable that kind of defense. Every member of Congress, and every other American of whatever age, would have to go to baseball practice, or to school, or to work, or to the post office, or to the health clinic–or to any other place mass shootings now take place–with a gun on their hip.

These things only demonstrate how out of touch the NYT editorial board and Kristof are. The board fails to understand that millions upon millions of Americans carry a gun for self-defense every day in places where their Second Amendment rights have not been curtailed by Democrat politicians. On the other side of this coin, Kristof fails to note that an Islamist with a paint ball gun can more easily terrify law-abiding citizens in Democrat-run cities where Second Amendment rights are suppressed – cities where citizens cannot shoot back.

Far from making the case for gun control, the threat of Islamic terrorists attacking with vehicles and paintball guns actually makes the case for being armed with a real gun for self-defense.

It is a characteristic of the left to live in the theoretical, rejecting the actual in order to embrace the world as they wish it could be. This knee-jerk reaction leads them to talk about “assault weapons” after a vehicular terror attack. It leads them to criticize people who want to exercise their Second Amendment right to self-defense after being unarmed and vulnerable.

This is the same mindset that drove the Brady Campaign to campaign against campus carry the day after Ohio State students were terrorized by a Somali terrorist who drove into pedestrians, then chased unarmed students with a knife.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com