Ed covered the terror attack in Sweden yesterday, but the story continues to develop in what should by now be predictable ways. As you’ll recall, a truck (or lorry if you prefer) crashed into a crowd of people just as Islamic inspired terrorist wannabes have been regularly doing around the world lately. An arrest has been made in impressively short order and assuming they’ve got the right guy, a familiar patterns is emerging. (Washington Post)

The arrest came Friday night, when officers apprehended a suspect in the northern Stockholm suburbs who matched the description of a man seen in surveillance footage earlier in the day. Police initially said they were unsure whether the man they had arrested was involved in the attack. But their confidence grew overnight, and on Saturday morning police spokesman Lars Byström told broadcaster SVT that there were “indications that he is the driver.” The police did not give any details about the man. But the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that he is a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan, and is a supporter of the Islamic State. Sweden’s prime minister said on Friday that the attack was “an act of terrorism,” though officials have not commented on an exact motive.

Well knock me over with a feather. The authorities still don’t want to release a name yet officially, but the accused man is an import from Uzbekistan and a fan of ISIS. And here I was just positive that it would turn out to be some ex-pat Tea Party guy from Georgia. That he came from Uzbekistan shouldn’t be too much of a shock since that country is known for their Islamic terror roots along with the rest of the “stans” in that region. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been in operation and growing there for the past twenty years, taking credit for all manner of atrocities.

But this guy was using more than just a beer truck. Or at least he was apparently trying to. Authorities announced that the carnage could have been even worse if he’d managed to competently handle the explosive device he had onboard.

SVT also reported that there was a homemade explosive device discovered in the mangled wreckage of the truck, which was towed overnight from the upscale shopping district that on Friday afternoon became a scene of carnage. With the attack, which also injured 15 others, Stockholm joined a growing list of major European cities where vehicle have been turned into weapons over the past year, including Nice, Berlin and London.

While it’s probably futile to ask, can we finally put an end to these efforts on the left to conflate legal gun ownership and demands for gun control with terrorism? Determined attackers will always find a way to cause large scale damage. If they can’t get their hands on a gun they will turn a car or a truck into a weapon. Pressure cookers are converted to bombs and the materials which people can use to construct such explosive devices are too common to ever lock them all down. And one could argue that a determined driver in a crowded area can actually take out more people faster with a truck than he could with a semi-automatic firearm.

Sweden actually has a fairly robust civilian gun ownership rate for a European nation (nearly 20%) but you don’t see them out on the streets very much. But this terrorist wasn’t using any sort of firearm. Perhaps instead of gun control everyone should start working on… truck control?