Chinese teen kills 9 in knife attack. This is a Call to ban Knifes in America

Just reading this thread has made me realize how many biased and lop sided people there are against guns and the majority are from outside the USA.

Quite honestly most of the international community just don't get the concept of owning guns and immediately believe that just because you own a gun it makes you more prevalent to go out and kill some one.
The OP has looked to make a point regarding the fact that its not just guns that kill people and it is quite possible to kill multiple persons with pretty much anything at hand. I believe hes making a good point and the stats to show how much more people are getting killed in the USA with guns just cause guns are legal are irrelevant.
Yes its a more volatile society and due to the demographics probably in a way more depressed in certain areas.

However you cant blame guns for this and the arguments from most of you who insist its the only problem are not looking at the big picture. People are killed all over the world in violent crimes from anything from a knife to a baseball bat and from experience I can tell you that an idiot is an idiot and will use whatever they can to do harm.

Now most of you are probably thinking right now that I'm a typical yank ranting away....you couldn't be more wrong. I'm English and yes I am living in the USA within Texas, which I suppose is probably one of the worse places to live if you're anti-gun. Ive been here for 2 years now however I have spent the last 20 years traveling around the world for work and living in multiple countries for extended periods.
I can honestly say I feel as safe here as I did living in the UK or Switzerland and when you have a machette wielding idiot running around its a lot more scary than someone brandishing a gun....this happens in allot more countries than you can imagine.

Finally for all you that say guns are only meant for killing...are you meaning only people because this is nonsense? As pointed out previously they are also used for hunting animals amongst other things therefore providing food for the family. You could quite easily say the same for knives, bows, sticks, clubs, boomerangs and slingshots.....they are all made for hunting, to kill and are all available globally.

Originally posted by LightAssassin
reply to post by SpearMint

 

Please. Stop talking.

As a fellow Aussie you are embarrassing me.

People will kill whether they can get guns or not. Here in Adelaide the Bikie gangs have guns. The drug gangs have guns. The police have guns. No-one else has guns, generally.

We have banned guns yet still the criminal element have them. We have banned guns yet people kill others by king hitting them, by stabbing them, by blunt force objects.

Having a gun makes it easier to kill but also easier to defend and protect yourself. People will still kill whether firearms are available or not. If someone wants to kill, they will do so. They will obtain a firearm anyway even if they are banned.

Please, stop being so delusional.

As a fellow aussie I could not have said it any better. We can own guns as long as they are bolt action or lever action. No pump action shotguns. We can buy heavy caliber sniper rifles though. Good for killing, not much chop for home defense. Why the idiots banned semi-auto .22 I will never know. Before the bans I had a ruger 10/22. All you needed for home defense and would be just as likely not to kill.

The police have upgraded to .40 caliber, the criminals can get anything they want and I defend my home with a folded steel Wakashi (? spelling). Katanas are just too long in a home environment. Oh, and I have a bow, fat lot of good that would do.

P

Originally posted by Manhater
Must of had some mad ninja skills to kill 9 people with just a knife.

Hard to fathom that.

You could kill thirty people with a teaspoon if you were mad enough, I think it's time to start looking at astronaut food before something REALLY bad happens.

reply to post by camaro68ss


I cannot implore how much I love this. Awesome, awesome example... I suppose next on the list after knife regulation is car regulation. Because cars kill as well if not more often than guns. Ban all cars with bumpers,etc...
hah.

Perfect example, thank you.

Did anyone happen to think that in the Aurora shooting, it was in a gun free zone? That guy shoulda known better, maybe he didn't read the sign! /sarcasm
If it had been legal to carry guns in that theater, somebody mighta stopped him before it happened.
The average number of people dying in a shooting stopped by police: 18
The average number of people dying in a shooting stopped by a legally armed citizen?: 2.

Originally posted by Trublbrwing
You could kill thirty people with a teaspoon if you were mad enough.

I'll kill you with my teacup. Heh, Riddick, anybody?

reply to post by smith88


If you listen to the nonesense rebuttal they have for that one......
Cars are way more regulated than guns(yet they kill way more people), so guns should be more heavily regulated. Logic goes out the window I guess.....

Originally posted by WorkingClassMan
Do they want to ban knives or ban idiots from walking down the street with a 20" blade hanging from their belt, because there is a difference.

Why is it all or nothing with America, you can have better gun control without forfeiting your rights to bear arms.

Can you have a rifle/shot gun/hand gun yes IMO
Can you have a M60 no IMO.
Can you have a knife sure, can you walk down a public street with 2 samurai swords strapped to your back hell no.

And who is going to decide what is ok and what is not ok? It's kind of like burning books in at first you ban what most would consider bad then we end up with massive banning because a committee says so. I'm not saying this as some kind of theory...it is fact that has been proven over and over...

ANYONE can kill ANYONE if they truly want too. Look at the Irish Shillelagh as an example of when everything is banned Man still finds a way.

It would be way worse if I took my katana to the mall, than if I took a rifle. I kinda doubt the guy with the knife had any knife training. It's like anything else in the world. A tool in the hands of someone trained and experienced is a lot more effective than some shlub that don't know what he/she is doing.

reply to post by camaro68ss


Not sure if it's been said, but if those citizens were armed many would be alive today.

reply to post by DaRAGE


I love counter strike, that guy's a knify ninja!

I guess Drugs don't really kill people then, it's stupid people that inject that nasty stuff into their veins that kill themselves!

Originally posted by DaRAGE

Originally posted by MushroomWig
I was wondering how long it would take before people jumped on the "Video games are to blame!" band wagon. That kind of idiotic thinking makes me sick. I miss the days where violent movies were apparently the cause of all violence in the world, now suddenly it's been shifted to video games for some reason.

By your logical thinking we should also advocate a ban on all kinds of media because it might "have an effect on our influential children's mind". No more books, TV or movies.

It's quite disturbing that people genuinely think video games are the cause for things like this, I mean it's not like violent acts ever happened before the age of consoles...oh wait.

edit on 2/8/2012 by MushroomWig because: More text added

ARE YOU FOR REAL>???? Could you NOT see that my post was dripping with sarcasm!? Dear God I hope all the people that gave my original post stars COULD see the sarcasm and not actually support the banning of violent video games. Dood, I am a gamer. I love my violent video games. My steam account is 250 games exactly, with Counter-Strike: Source, the game shown in my video, being one of my most played and favourites and me and my buddies play. As for censorship, I hate it. WE currently have a Left 4 Dead 2 zombie horror game that when you shoot the zombies (no blood), they disappear 2 seconds after they are killed. It detracts from the gameplay and the atmosphere. Left 4 Dead 1 it was ok to have them corpses and blood as they were called "zombies", where as in Left 4 Dead 2, they weren't zombies anymore, they were "infected Humans". AHAHAH. CENSORED!!!

I totally got the sarcasm of your post, hence the star I gave you. I suspect the rest of the stars are from people who got it too, or just people who love counter strike!

PM me your steam name, I don't use it much atm but I go through phases of gaming and not gaming. I'm in a no gaming phase right now.

reply to post by muse7


Correct.

have not read this thread through but the first one.
I am from northeast china, I don't quite get it why people use examples from china to illustrate problems in the US. its almost as if people are seeing one world.
XinBin, LiaoNing province locates in northeast China, has a quite different character that of majority han chinese. Depends on how their problem-solution reactions are formed (as TV shows us every day), one can say they are brave people or the opposite, as OP write: crazy people. now to add my two cents here: if one does not become crazy living in china, its by itself a miracle.
system CAN change people. for example, the YangJia guy from Beijing, stabbed 8 shanghai cops to death in 2008. shanghai immediately banned knife since. calling the others weaponizing tools crazy is just as bad as calling gun owning people themselves crazy, if OP even realize that.

Originally posted by SpearMint


And if you don't allow citizens to have guns, those crazy people won't have access to them. Sure people may be better protected in very rare situations, but it's statistically obvious that guns increase homicide, those deaths outweigh the lives saved by a citizen owning a gun.

edit on 2-8-2012 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

You're a fool if you actually believe that. I would have been dead 2 nights ago if I didn't have mine.

Originally posted by SpearMint

And if you don't allow citizens to have guns, those crazy people won't have access to them. Sure people may be better protected in very rare situations, but it's statistically obvious that guns increase homicide, those deaths outweigh the lives saved by a citizen owning a gun.

What evidence do you have that gun restrictions = crazies won't have them? Currently we have laws that restrict felons from owning firearms... yet they still get them.

Would you like to know what else is statistically obvious? If you outlaw guns, people will find new weapons of choice in which to kill. So in essence, your not stopping the killing, your just forcing a killer to choose a different method.

Let me tell you what is obvious to me. It is obvious that laws do not change behavior. Let us take the death penalty as a perfect example. Many inmates on death row have said that the death penalty had no bearing on the crimes they committed. In other words, the penalty of death did not work as a deterrent for the crime. Fact is criminals are declared "criminals" because they break the law. A person who willfully breaks the law, clearly does not care what the law says. So how does making new laws restricting law abiding citizens from possessing firearms stop a criminal who doesnt care what the law is anyway?

Answer: It doesn't.

reply to post by camaro68ss


I don't normally criticize other ATS members but this is an extremely insensitive post.

No compassion, sympathy or thought shown whatsoever for the victims of this horrible crime.

Also it's knives not knifes for your information.

If I could Flag-Down someones post this would be one. This debate has been done to death over the years and is at best at the school-yard level of intellect.

Not something I would expect to see on the ATS homepage.

Originally posted by SpearMint

Originally posted by Mianeye
Lame

Some things are usefull in the daily life of running society, like knife's, car's or whatever...
Gun's are usefull for absolutly nothing..

Exactly this. They are only made for killing, which is reflected in the USA's homicide statistics.

Ummmm, they are most definitely not just made for killing. I shoot for sport, never killed anything with my gun. And i guess all those shooters in the olympics right now are really just training to kill stuff huh?

Love shooting with bows too, and there's not exactly an everyday practical use for those either. Should my bows be taken away too?

And so what if does have an everyday use? Cannabis would help my anxiety and insomnia, but thats not legal where i live. What imaginary boundaries are you trying to imply with something having a daily use or not?

Murder? Pshh, you know they include police shootings in those statistics right? And its not like we live in the stone age, if guns were banned, killers would have a plethora of other, just as easy, options to kill with: Poison, blowguns, personal super heating lasers ( yah for real! ^_^), there own vehicles, bows, knifes, staple guns, lots of other power tools, their good ole fist.....

You can't ban something simply on its potential to cause harm. Nor should the government have the power to do so in the first place. There are dangers everywhere you look in the world, the question in this debate is not danger or potentials, but human rights.

does any one see? whomever died, by any of the ways described on this thread, or not described on this thread, is dead and will always be dead. no law will change it, guns have been invented, this means that no matter what laws are imposed people will still die from guns. people die everyday its a part of life guns or no guns, now that guns are invented we SHOULD ACCEPT IT, and learn as a people to use guns to protect oneself from others trying to make us die, there will always be killers and always those that are killed, stop trying to change the past.

@SpearMint

Also, don't be so naive, if guns were banned they wouldn't even have to use any of those alternatives. Banning guns is not going to make them disappear or even make them less available. I may be missing something here, but last i checked, criminals don't give a damn about the laws anyway.