At the Point of a Knife

Trey Smith

On the other side of the world and just hours before 20 children were gunned down in a massacre in Connecticut on Friday, 22 children were the victims of a vicious, similar-minded attack at a Chinese elementary school by a man wielding an 8-inch knife.

Just as brutal and as nonsensical as the murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, the incident in Henan Province, China had an outcome that victim's families now mourning in Connecticut are only wishing they could share.

The sliver but potent aspect of good news? As of Saturday morning, none of those 22 children attacked in China had died from their injuries.
~ from 'None Dead' in China: Sensible Laws vs. Maniacal Attacks by Beth Brogan and Jon Queally ~

It is tempting to say, "Do you see that? An unhinged assailant uses a gun and many die. Another unhinged assailant uses a knife and nobody dies." But it's not that simple. Just because no one happened to die in this knife attack doesn't mean that knife attacks are less lethal. A crazed person could kill a lot of school children with a knife, sword, bomb, poison or some other weapon that is not a gun.

And this returns us to the oft quoted phrase: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." It's just that guns allow people bent on killing others to kill them in larger numbers and more efficiently!

This goes back as well to the prevalence of guns in our society. While a maniacal individual could bomb or poison a number of innocent victims, we rarely see this happen in this country. Why go to all the trouble to secure the needed materials, plot out how and where to plant the bomb or poison, gain sufficient access to make the plan doable, when you can easily purchase a bunch of lethal guns and more ammunition than you could ever hope to use?

Guns simplify the whole process and that is WHY most mass murders committed in the US involve guns.

Compared to citizens in other parts of the world, Americans tend to be lazier. A significant number of us don't like to work up a sweat, if we don't have to. We like to be catered to and, if an activity looks as if it means some degree of exertion, we're more than happy to remain perched on the couch munching potato chips while watching "reality TV."

It seems that a lot of our homegrown mass killers share this same overall mentality. As I asked above, why go to all the trouble of hatching a complicated plan utilizing a bomb or poison, when you can achieve similar results far easier with one or more easy to acquire guns?