XPost: alt.journalism, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns
XPost: sac.politics
By Clay Aalders via The Truth About Knives
“Absolutely, a murderer can often kill one person or two with a
knife before being stopped. But to really rack up those mind-blowing
death counts – to make sure that many lives are destroyed and
families ruined in the space of five or 10 minutes – you need a gun.
If all you care about is apportioning blame and declaring that
someone does or does not have murderous intent, then by all means,
claim a knife and a gun are equivalent weapons.” Apparently Rolling
Stone writer Amanda Marcotte hasn’t read about the Bath School
Massacre, the most deadly school massacre in U.S. history which was
carried out with explosives . . .
Or she hasn’t spent much time following the assorted knife massacres
in China, like the one at the Kunming Railway Stationthat killed 33
people. Or this one at a Chinese colliery that left 50 dead just
last week. Granted, those are coordinated actions by groups of
Uighur seperatists (jihadis). But one man with a knife can kill
several people like this market vendor who killed 5 in a business
dispute.
THE KNIFE CRIME MAP OF BRITAIN
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https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/knifegraph2710_468x273.jpg>
Mass killings with knives are not unique to China. 500 people in
Nigeria were killed by groups of rioters with machetes. That is
obviously the most extreme example, and was carried out by many
attackers, but there have been machete attacks all over the
continent.
Israel is experiencing what is being called the “knife intifada”.
There have been dozens of attacks, among them one at a Jerusalem
synagogue which left 4 dead and 12 wounded. Israeli spree-stabbings
are not limited to jihadis, a Jewish fundamentalist attacked a Gay
Pride march killing 1 and wounding 4.
In 2001 in Japan, a man attacked an elementary school with a kitchen
knife, killing 8 and wounding 15. In 2008, a Japanese man killed 3
and injured 2 more with his truck, before killing 4 and wounding 12
more with a knife.
A woman in Australia killed her 8 children,by stabbing them to death
last December.
Knife crime in the UK is not typically of the spree variety, rather
is more akin to the vast majority of gun homicides in major U.S.
cities – gang related and of the 1-2 victim variety. But the
aggregate figures are staggering. There are more than 1000 stabbings
and knife robberies each month in London alone.
In the US, the most notable mass stabbing was at the Franklin
Regional High School where 24 people were injured. Thankfully, the
attacker was only 16 and mostly slashed rather than stabbed his
victims, so none of them died. However in a case from Oklahoma this
July, 5 members of a family were stabbed to death by two of the
family’s sons. Another father in New York stabbed his 3 children to
death before attempting to take his own life.
According to the FBI, in 2011 there were 1694 knife homicides, or
roughly 20% the total of those killed with guns. This is followed
incidentally by hands/feet/body strikes (728) and blunt objects
(496). By my math, this add up to 2918 knife/club/unarmed striking
deaths, or about 25% of total U.S. homicides.
My point in all of this is not to claim that a knife is the most
efficient tool to kill multiple people. It isn’t. However, any
object can be used as a weapon. With enough planning, training, or
simply brute strength, melee weapons are perfectly capable of
inflicting unspeakable harm and have in countless cases been the
weapon of choice for a heart intent on mass murder. No amount of
weapon prohibition will stop people from killing others.
This point is lost on those at Rolling Stone. Or it could be that
Ms. Marcotte is being purposefully obtuse. Rolling Stone has shown
that they are perfectly willing to misrepresent facts when it can
advance their political agenda.
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