Mass stabbing in China.

[billc]

Much like attackers with guns will seek out places that don't allow guns to attack, will we see more attacks against children by mentally ill people because they are easier to harm with knives and other tools, if firearms are banned?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/12/14/Man-stabs-22-children-at-China-primary-school

A man stabbed 22 primary school students in a knife attack in China on Friday, officials said, the latest in a series of assaults.

The attacker "has been detained", said a spokesman for the Guangshan county government in the central province of Henan, where the stabbing happened.

"Twenty-two elementary school students were stabbed, so was an adult villager" but none of the victims died, the official, who declined to give his name, told AFP.

The state-run China News Service said a man attacked the students with a knife outside an elementary school, resulting in injuries which were "not life threatening". It did not give the children's exact ages.

China has seen several violent attacks against children over the past two years, including a spate of five incidents in 2010 which killed 15 children and two adults and wounded more than 80.

The assaults have forced authorities to increase security around schools and led to calls for more research into their root causes.

Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded rapidly.

Studies have also described a rise in the prevalence of mental disorders, some of them linked to stress as the pace of life becomes faster and socialist support systems wither.

 

[Carol]

That's a helluva question to ask on a day we see an elementary school shooting in Connecticut, eh?

 

[billc]

Saw the one story before the other.

 

[WC_lun]

Something to consider, those attacks on children with knives left more of the victims alive, than dead. Certainly those attacks are horrific, but there isn't quite the loss of life involved as those perpetrated by our home grown gun toting psycos.

 

[arnisador]

There's a public health issue. Mass shootings cause more mass shootings. The knife attack on schools has, sadly, become something of a theme there:
[h=1]School attacks in China (2010–2011)[/h]

A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 21 dead and some 90 injured.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Some sicko attacked kids. Some died. Does it matter how they did it? Is it only important if the kids die? Do only American kids count?
Right now...I'm incredibly disgusted by a lot of what I'm reading about these tragedies. The people going on and on and on about "we need more laws" and "ban guns" and "lock up the crazies" and "put troops in the schools" and so forth.

I said it before. You can take away guns, swords, knives, spears, and so on. People intent on ill will still find a way.

So, argue and politificate away.

 

[arnisador]

Some sicko attacked kids. Some died. Does it matter how they did it?

Well, they cause the most damage when they do it with guns, so...yeah. It does. Until they start using nuclear weapons, this is the nature of the problem.

A few weeks ago a son killed his father at the father's community college in WY, during a class. He used a bow-and-arrow, and a knife. One dead there--another at his home earlier that day.

In China the knife attack injured 22 and killed none.

Today two high-powered handguns killed 26 at the scene and one earlier.

Am I the only one who sees a pattern here?

We keep hearing that these big athletes could just as easily beat their domestic partners to death...*but they don't*. They use guns. The presence of a gun is a huge risk factor for death by domestic violence.

Yeah, firearms are the common denominator. They're not using explosives, fires, vehicles, or pushing people out of windows. The big one is firearms. It's all well and good to say they could use other weapons, but they don't. It's not just the convenience and ease of use and immediacy--it's an up-close-and-personal, see-it-happening, yet relatively safe way to go on a spree. Terrorists use bombs because they're effective. Spree killers have more complicated motives.

It keeps coming back to guns.


"Call me crazy but I see a connection in having a gun & shooting someone and not having a gun & not shooting someone" - Bill Hicks

 

[billc]

Then there is this incident back in 1927...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades(7–11 years of age [SUP][1][/SUP]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliestmass murder in a school in U.S. history and the third-deadliest non-military massacre in U.S. history, behind 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing.
The bomber was school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, 55 who died in a car bomb he set off after he drove up to the school as the crowd gathered to rescue survivors from the burning school.
On the morning of May 18, Kehoe murdered his wife by beating her to death, then set his farm buildings afire. As fire fighters arrived at the farm, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many schoolchildren. Kehoe used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds ofpyrotol which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside hisfragmentation-filled vehicle with his Winchester rifle, killing himself and the school superintendent, and killing and injuring several others. During rescue efforts searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school's south wing. Kehoe apparently had intended to blow up and destroy the whole school.

This atrocity happened long before rap music, violent video games and internet access. No firearm was used and even more innocent lives were taken. The fertilizer bomb that mcveigh used also had no connection to firearms.

 

[arnisador]

So that's the typical scenario, you're saying?

 

[billc]

These killers would kill regardless of the murder weapon available. On my post about the stabbings in China, 22 were injured...this time. With news coverage of these events, even if the killer only has access to edged weapons, they will come up with a way to do more damage by learning how the other guys failed. Take away the guns, and the wife/girlfriend and husband killers will use edged weapons. There is even a television show on I.D. network called "Wives With Knives," a show dedicated to women who kill with knives.

The typical scenario would change when they are forced to kill without guns. Just as in Europe, take away the guns, and the box cutters and knives came out.

 

[arnisador]

The typical scenario would change when they are forced to kill without guns. Just as in Europe, take away the guns, and the box cutters and knives came out.

The homicide rate in the U.K. is less than 30% of ours in the wake of their weapon control programs. You're arguing that better weapons don't matter...on what is alleged to be a martial arts site. Would you take a fight where you had a pair of sai and the opponent had a pair of pistols?