No weapons on the train makes me safer, how?

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A man went on a rampage in the New York City subway Thursday, terrorizing riders with two battery-powered saws and critically wounding a 64-year-old man, police said.

"The suspect encountered a 64-year-old male who was entering the subway station and assaulted the man in the chest before fleeing the scene," said Sgt. Kevin Hayes of the New York Police Department. "The victim was removed and taken to St. Luke's Hospital in critical but stable condition."

The Associated Press said the victim was Michael Steinberg.

Steinberg told reporters that the assailant never spoke. "I think he was out of his mind," he told the AP.

Steinberg was about to swipe his subway card through a turnstile when he was approached by the man with the saws, the victim told the AP.

"He looked at me and before I knew it, he was attacking me," Steinberg told the AP. "The motor kept going on. He was trying to cut through me."

"I screamed for help -- 'Please help! Please help me!' "

The attacker finally stopped attacking him to demand money, then ran out of the station with Steinberg's wallet and the power tools, Steinberg told the AP.

The incident happened about 3:30 a.m. on the platform of the No. 1 train at 110th Street and Broadway, near Columbia University.

Police said the saws were recovered in a garbage can on 110th Street.

"The man grabbed the two cordless power saws off a workbench where a private contractor was working on the subway. They placed their tools in a cutoff area on the subway platform." Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman James Anyansi said.

Police are reviewing security camera videotape.

The attack came two weeks after a Boston man was charged with stabbing four people, three of them tourists, over 13 hours in the subway and in the theater district in Manhattan.

Tell me, again, why law abiding citizens shouldn't be allowed to carry firearms aboard public transportation? Exactly how did the "No Weapons" law make this elderly gentleman "safer"?