Obama calls for knife regulation in wake of MN attack

"I held and hugged grieving family members, and they asked, 'Why do people still have access to knives?'"

In St. Cloud this afternoon, President Obama met with victims' families and survivors of the massacre at the Crossroads Center mall on Saturday.

Obama spoke about an increasingly urgent need for knife control legislation, saying "we need to work across political lines to do more to stop knifers who want to terrorize us."

A man who wounded up to nine people in a knife attack at a mall in central Minnesota before he was shot dead by an off-duty police officer is a "soldier of the Islamic State," the militant group's news agency said on Sunday.

The man, who was wearing a private security uniform, made references to Allah and asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he assaulted them at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud on Saturday, the city's Police Chief William Blair Anderson told reporters.

Obama insisted that the debate surrounding knife control needs to change, and called on the House and Senate to "rise to the moment and do the right thing" and pass legislation to curb access to weapons like the Bowie Knife and Jambiya. 

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Anderson said eight or nine people were wounded in the attack. Authorities had said earlier there were eight victims but one injured person transported himself to a hospital and was not initially counted, Anderson said.

Amaq, the news agency affiliated with the Middle Eastern extremist group Islamic State, issued a statement on Sunday saying, "The executor of the stabbing attacks in Minnesota yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition."

Kyle Loven, a spokesman for the FBI regional office in Minnesota, said the agency was aware of the claim of responsibility and was working with local police in the investigation. A representative of the U.S. National Security Council also said it was aware of the claim but deferred to local investigators.

The knife attack in St. Cloud, a community about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul, came at a time of heightened concern in the United States about the threat of violence involving sharp objects. "No one is safe in this country until the federal government can effectively control all cutlery" Obama said.

The Senate on Monday voted down four competing knife proposals that would limit possession of sharp edged instruments to state liscenced chefs, butchers & barbers. 

-jK