Knives or guns

Many innocents have been slaughtered in our history.  In more civilized eras -- say, in 4 BCE in King Herod's Jerusalem -- when it was deemed appropriate to slaughter a lot of children, knives were used. Times were slower back then, and this image of the event wan't painted for some 1,500 years later, so it may have missed some detail.

Cornelis Cornelisz Van Haarlem, 1590, Dutch Baroque painter

China remains relatively civilized.  Just now a man in China's southern province of Guangxi axed three school children to death and wounded 13; and at about the same time, a man in Chenpeng village in Henan province, wielding a knife, killed 2 elementary children and wounded 22.

Contemporaneously, in Newtown,Connecticut, Adam Lanza shot 20 elementary school children and six adults:  all are dead.

A few points, out of many possible points:

∼  We lead the world in mass shootings.  We also have more guns per capita than any other nation.  [A curious phenomenon:  the number of gun sales rise; the number of gun owners shrinks; perhaps arsenals are being built by fewer and fewer folks.] We are followed in gun ownership closely by poor, mad Yemen.  [Probably a non-sequitur, but I note that we also led the World in the number of folks, per capita, in jails and prisons, with Russia a close second.] 

∼  What we know or believe about the youngmen who kill dozens at a time is that they are severely depressed, suicidal,  and furious; that they mask their misery from their parents; that they will talk to a  non-censorious adult about feelings of depression and urges toward suicide; and that many can be helped with appropriate interventions.  Members of Congress have cut appropriations for appropriate interventions.

∼  The youngmen frequently wear black as if in uniform.

∼  The youngmen are not unusually skilled or strong.  Without the advantage guns afford they would be unable to kill many.

∼  As many are killed wit guns on the streets of our great cities and our around our bucolic prairies as are killed in our mass slaughters, but the individual deaths doe't draw much media attention except when famous athletes are involved.  There is a murderous culture of machismic [my word] violence going around that is pandemic.  Perhaps an over-reaction to the great successes of the feminist movements.

∼  My friends and their friends who favor the present interpretation of the Second Amendment are more likely to get beneficial changes in public policy than my friends who are already in favor of  increased gun safety.  Write your Congresspersons, please, and telephone them.  The Country needs your help. If you don't act, action that will be taken is likely to be ill-conceived and maybe harmful to the Body Politic.