8 children stabbed to death at Chinese school

[TPaine7]

Source: Yahoo News

BEIJING – A former medical worker allegedly stabbed to death eight young children and wounded five others Tuesday in a bloody rampage outside an elementary school in eastern China.

The attacker struck in the morning as students arrived for classes, mingling with parents at the school gates before suddenly pulling out his knife and slashing children, according to witnesses interviewed on local television.

In the aftermath, doctors treated small children and bodies lay covered in bloody sheets after the attack at Nanping City Experimental Elementary School in Fujian province. Police officers manned a cordon around the school. Some comforted distraught parents.

China has witnessed a series of school attacks in recent years, most blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness, leading to calls for improved security.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100323/ap_on_re_as/as_china_students_killed

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My heart goes out to the families of the dead and wounded. Unfortunately, unstable people can lash out at society and cause lots of harm easily. The causes of their rage are personal, cultural and biological. Unfortunately, no society can stop all of them. Even becoming a nation of prisoners won't work. There are many acts of violence in prison.

Many people mistakenly believe that there are no mass killings with knives. That is not true. And if you ban knives, people like this nut/criminal can easily wreak equivalent damage with many other tools.

You have to socialize, treat, medicate or imprison the person. Banning tools won't work. Tools don't commit crimes.

[Jkid]

1. Knifes: They can still kill.

But the killers can be caught a whole lot easier.

[TPaine7]

2. Why is it easier to catch knife killers?

[Jkid]

7. From a website I know.

To anyone entertaining murderous impulses a gun makes it feasible to attack larger people, multiple people, people from a distance, from secrecy, etc. No one in their right mind would try to rob a bank with a knife. But a gun inspires confidence of success in a would-be bank robber, allowing a crime to occur when it wouldn't have otherwise.

Source: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-gunskill.htm

[anigbrowl]

8. Proximity

If someone shoots at you from across the room, there's not a whole lot you can do about it other than hope they are a poor shot and run out of ammo. If someone attacks you with a knife, of necessity they must be close enough that you can retaliate, although of course you will still be at a disadvantage. Well, they could throw the knife at you but most knife attackers aren't carrying a set of blades.

so all things being equal, I'd rather be attacked with a knife than a gun. As a matter of fact I have been, and managed to overcome my attacker, but it was quite frightening and took me several days to get over the experience even though I didn't sustain any physical injury.

Of course you are right that the basic problem is one of unstable people with violent impulses, rather than the existence of specific weapons. In an ideal world such people would be identified and treated or confined before going on a rampage, but we don't live in an ideal world, and we have to balance a possible increase in public safety with the possible unjust restriction of people who are not actually violent.

[regnaD kciN]

3. If he'd had an AK-47...

...the death toll might have been 80, not 8.

[TPaine7]

4. Yes...

and with special knives called boxcutters, you can kill thousands. Or at least you could before reactive security measures, including armed pilots and hardened cockpits.

There are still fairly easy ways to kill many more than 80 people using common items, but I won't name any.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. I see they're outsourcing victims exploited for pet political issues these days.

[Regret My New Name]

13. ahhhh

[TPaine7]

14. What cause were these victims exploited for?

[ecstatic]

6. How often do mass knife attacks happen?

[anigbrowl]

11. about once a year

that's off the top of my head, not an exact count. Guns are uncommon in Asia but that's about how often there seems to be a knife rampage leaving several people dead. You could check it up on Google News, I just don't want to spend an hour counting right now.

[malaise]

9. Too sad

:cry:

[Echo In Light]

10. Jesus

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

12. Other than mva's, knives have caused the worst trauma I have seen.

I terms of deaths though it's definitely mva's with guns as a distant second. The knife wounds I have seen have been grisly.