US: 30 shot at school, China: 22 knifed at school

At the same time a 24 year old was shooting elementary kids (18 dead) in Connecticut, this happened in China:

"Chinese authorities have detained a man who injured 22 children in a knife attack at a primary school in Henan province, authorities told state news. Two children are in critical condition and one adult was also injured in the attack, which happened at the entrance of the school. Security at China's schools has been heightened in recent years, following a deluge of similar knife attacks in 2010 that left nearly 20 children dead. The 39-year-old male suspect was arrested on the scene and is believed to be mentally ill."

Apparently you don't need a gun to hurt dozens of people.

 

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Many more fatalities in the US incident, not that I'm against gun ownership.

 

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Tragic. I'll speculate that they folks who killed these children were depressed or angry about their place / future in society so they got revenge or followed their instinct to remove future competition (much like other animals will kill young of their own species that belong to different parents).

 

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I agree that a blanket argument of "all guns bad" isn't attacking the root cause. But it's also true that the range of a knife is a lot less than a hail of bullets. I will add: automatic weapons are for one purpose, and that's to kill as many people as possible, so like a lot of things, there's gun control and then there's gun control.

 

But apparently (per these two stories at least) you do need a gun to kill them.

 

Right on! Over and over again we hear the same thing. Shooter in theater carried an automatic weapon. Shooter in mall carried an automatic weapon. Shooter in elementary school carried an automatic weapon. Can't we connect the dots here? How long will it be till we ban these instruments of murder?

 

Yea you can kill with a knife BUT it takes a lot more determination to do so and its much harder to kill rapidly.

In spite of what people think most knife attacks are non fatal because people don't know what they are doing, they slash and tend to slash at the chest and the ribs protect the lungs and heart. Even if they slash at the abdomen your unlikely to get a fast fatal bleed. There are a few places you can slash and kill but they have to be VERY deep cuts, the femorals or the carotids. Stabbing is more likely to work but again its much harder than people think to stab someone in the chest

Bullets don't have these limitations, a bullet WILL rip through the ribs with ease and then you can move on to the next victim

When it comes down to it,

how many mass shootings have there been?
Whats the cumulative body count?
Whats the kills per min rate?

How many mass stabbings?
Whats the cumulative body count?
Whats the kills per min rate?

Personally I would rather face an amateur with a knife than one with a gun, I would have a chance with a knife (if nothing else I could try to outrun them)

 

"The killer, armed with two handguns, committed suicide at the school and another person was found dead at a second scene, bringing the toll to 28, authorities said."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-connecticut-school-shooting-20121214,0,4678476.story
Funny how all of you automatically assume (no pun intended) that the shooter used fully automatic weapons. Nowhere does it say that the shooter burst into the class room with a SAW or M60 or any other weapon that had a firing capacity of more than one round per trigger pull. Unless of course your definition of automatic entails any firearm that can fire a single round per trigger pull.:shrug:
I suppose this crime would have taken far longer to commit if the shooter had use two of these. View attachment 6031

 

Actually not. In China 2 years ago the killed managed to kill 20 kids with the knife. Read the story again...

2 dozens dead in both? I know, the 2nd accident in Chine had much less or no death so far, but read the story again...

 

As i said it comes down to easy of killing and kills per min

Which do you think has a higher body county and more kills per min? guns or knives?

The kills per min is sadly important because the slower the kill rate the less will die before the police arrive and can detain or kill the offender

 

All it takes is imagination...

"25-year old Tomohiro Kato rams a truck into a crowd of shoppers and proceeds to stab the run-down victims, killing six men and one woman, and injuring 11 others. The perpetrator is currently sentenced to death."

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

"Taiwan - Police in Taiwan say a nursing home resident has confessed to setting a fire that killed 12 people and injured 70 at the facility. Police have not identified the man, who was arrested after the fire devastated the nursing home at 3 a.m. "

http://article.wn.com/view/2012/10/...nursing_home_resident_confesses_to_setting_e/

"Budapest (CNN) -- Police in Hungary say a 24-year-old man killed four people with a sword and injured three others after a family argument."

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.363930-Killing-spree-in-Hungary-with-a-twist

 

By the way I am for gun control. Nevertheless the parallels are striking... Here have some more:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010–2011)


" murdered eight children with a knife in an elementary school in Nanping"

"47-year-old Xu Yuyuan went to Zhongxin Kindergarten[9] and stabbed 28 students, two teachers and one security guard;[4] most of the Taixing students were 4 years old"

"Just a few hours after the execution of Zheng Minsheng in neighboring Fujian Province,[5] in Leizhou,[6] Guangdong another knife-wielding man named Chen Kangbing, 33 (陈康炳)[7] at Hongfu Primary School wounded 16 students and a teacher"

"An attacker named Wu Huanming (吴环明), 48, killed seven children and two adults and injured 11 other persons with a cleaver at a kindergarten in Hanzhong,"

"26-year-old Fang Jiantang (方建堂) slashed more than 20 children and staff with a 60 cm knife, killing 3 children and 1 teacher"

" a young girl and three adults taking their children to nursery school were killed in Gongyi,[19] Henan by 30-year-old Wang Hongbin with an axe"

 

So you have found 3 incidents over an unknown time frame across 3 different countries where guns weren't used which killed a total of 22

Compare that to:

At least 88 dead in ONE YEAR (which isn't even over yet) in ONE country (as far as I saw)

Which are more lethal?

 

I don't know how well this will work but here goes, Note the letter for each entry

The first number is the dead, the second the injured (if you dont like the table here you can read it directly)

First Schools

(Sorry its taking me to long to fix the formatting so screw it)

Now for work

And lastly solders

How many of them have F vs how many have an M and which ones have more deaths?

 

Leave it to the gun nuts to think only about how this will effect their right to have guns. For the record:

"Two 9mm handguns, one made by Glock and the other by Sig Sauer, were recovered inside the school. An AR-15-type rifle also was found at the scene, but there conflicting reports Friday night whether it had been used in the shooting.."---NBC News

 

For pity's sake please educate yourselves. Saying automatic, without the prefix of semi in front of it, implies a fully automatic weapon. Fully automatic weapons are severely restricted in the U.S., and are involved in a vanishingly small percentage of crimes. Please look up the crucial difference here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_firearm

You're free to advocate the banning and confiscation of semi auto weapons (there is absolutely no chance of that happening here), but please take the time to know what exactly you are advocating.

 

Ethics and Integrity

In its most basic terms, this is understandable, just as I used to wince every time I heard about a cop getting shot in a pot raid.

But what bothers me is the disparity. After a mass shooting, conservatives become outraged if anyone raises the issue of gun control; you know, how dare they exploit a tragedy like that.

But, of course, as with so many conservative codes of conduct, it only works in one direction:

Hours after the terrible shooting in a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school, the Michigan House Republicans issued demanded that Governor Rick Snyder (R) sign a bill that would make it easier for people to receive a gun permit and open up “gun free zones,” including schools.

(Beuchamp)​

I guess I'm just an unethical bastard for thinking principles shouldn't be so selectively applied.
____________________

Notes:

Beauchamp, Zack. "Hours After Connecticut Kindergarten Shooting, Michigan GOP Calls For Allowing Guns In Schools". ThinkProgress. December 14,2012. ThinkProgress.org. December 14, 2012. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/20...higan-gop-calls-for-allowing-guns-in-schools/