Tuesday, May 25, 2010

School Killings In China

Anyone who follows the MSM will have heard that America is an evil place because our “gun culture” has led to the murder of vast numbers of school kids. By comparison, the rest of the world is a peaceful Garden of Eden where nothing bad ever happens. Of course, this is a lie, but it fits the narrative the MSM wants you to believe. Nothing shows this more than the non-coverage of what has been going on in China in the past couple of months.

For starters, let me remind you that despite the high profile that the media loves to give school shootings, they are incredibly rare. In the last five years in the United States, there have been five shooting sprees in schools that resulted in three or more deaths. A total of 50 people were killed in these five shootings (32 at Virginia Tech and 18 during the other four). This compares to 2.5 million deaths in the US annually. Thus, while each of these is indeed tragic, this is hardly a common occurrence as the media would have you believe.

Moreover, pinning this on our “gun culture” is pure politics. Indeed, all we hear from the MSM for weeks when such a shooting happens is how it could have been prevented if we banned guns. Of course, this is a lie, and they know it. But they are looking to exploit this tragedy and no lack of logic on their part will stop them.

If you want proof that this is not the result of our “gun culture,” look at Europe. In the same five year period just discussed, anti-gun Europe had four mass killings at schools. These resulted in 49 deaths. Almost the identical number as in the United States. Thus, while the media plays up the idea of US “gun culture” being the cause of school killings, the reality is quite different.

(I am not including things like Beslan, where terrorists killed more than 340 people in a school or Afghanistan where there were more than 80 school attacks this month alone to keep girls from being educated.)

Further, consider what has gone on in China, something that is not being reported in the MSM. On May 12th, seven children were hacked to death in a kindergarten in Shaanxi. Eleven others were injured. In April, more than 50 children were injured or killed in a half dozen similar attacks. On March 23, in Fujian province, eight children were killed. These incidents are becoming so common that the Chinese have started putting armed guards in their schools with orders to shoot suspects on sight.

The current thinking in China is that this is a response by people who feel powerless to oppose their system and that these killers choose to strike at the most vulnerable in response. This strikes me as false just as the gun culture argument is false. The reality is that some people are just sick. And the idea that we should remake society, e.g. eliminate guns in the US or more closely monitor dissidents in China, to stop these people is ludicrous.

What we should take away from these events are that (1) we should not politicize tragedies, (2) we should not attribute the acts of the deranged to political groups, political causes, or groups of people, and (3) we should be more watchful of people with mental conditions and we should look to intervene earlier and with greater care.

Finally, we should take away one last fact. Some things cannot be stopped. If a lunatic is intent on hurting people, they will find a way. Thus, we must expect these things to happen. Therefore, we should consider ways to improve our protections in the event something like this does happen. Indeed, it must be pointed out that each of these killings could have been stopped sooner if we had not tried to keep peaceful, innocent people from protecting themselves through the possession of firearms.

10 comments:

LawHawkSF said...

Andrew: And let's not forget the hundreds of thousands killed by machete attacks in Rwanda, Burundi, the Philippines, and now Thailand. Of course they weren't all school children, though many were. Guns should definitely be kept out of the hands of seriously disturbed individuals, but guns don't pull their own triggers any more than machetes wield themselves.

When you remove from the statistics the number of criminals killed or seriously wounded in the commission of their crimes, America has a fatality rate by gun slightly above Luxembourg. Government bans on personal gun ownership don't stop criminals from getting them, and it leaves oppressive regimes with the only legal guns in town. Just ask the Brits, whose violent home-invasion robbery rate has gone through the roof since their ban on owning firearms.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, The other thing the anti-gun lobby does is to add in gun suicides into our gun death rate, but then exclude suicides in other countries' death rates.

You've hit the point I was aiming for. We need to be more careful about mental illness, but blaming guns is not the real problem and is, in fact, counter productive.

Tam said...

Out of my cold, dead hands...

AndrewPrice said...

Well said Tam. There is no reason that average Americans should be disarmed. All that does is make our country less safe.

And we cannot let the people with an anti-gun agenda continue to exploit these tragedies for political purposes. That is politics at its most despicable.

CrispyRice said...

Holy crud, Andrew. It never ceases to amaze me how much news we never hear unless we seek it out.

Another good article!

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Crispy, yeah it's amazing what they choose not to cover isn't it?

I've seen a lot about bizarre violence in Europe and Asia that never gets reported here. Germany apparently is facing a series of very violent attacks from lone crazies. Plus, apparently, suicide by train is so common that it goes on every day over there.

USArtguy said...

"...a response by people who feel powerless to oppose their system..."

Not to overlook insanity or excuse the violent acts of someone murdering school children, but I think that has more to do with it than anything else.

My brother told me about some history show he saw a few years ago where China had long ago outlawed, basically every means for people to protect themselves. This was the thing that ignited Kung Fu. When the authorities began to get their butts kicked by the populace, they were forced change some of those laws. (The specific details in that second-hand-from-memory example may not be accurate, but the gist of it is correct.)

Disarming a people will only work for so long before they create another way to protect themselves.

AndrewPrice said...

USArtguy, I think you make a good point in general and I see that too -- the more the government tries to take away people's ability to defend themselves, the more they find ways to fight back.

But a handful of school killings really cannot and should not be attributed to any movement. These people are just nuts. If this were a nationwide thing or a terrorist group was sponsoring it, then I would agree with the political theories. But as it is, these are just unstable people -- just like when it happens in the US.

That's why I think we need to stop letting the media get a free pass on blaming this on "gun culture" -- because it's nothing of the sort. And their claims are only intended to make us less safe.

darski said...

I think some consideration should be given to the "One child" policy in China. Children had to be demonized by the regime to force their policy on the people. The killers are responding to a major focus of Chinese society.

AndrewPrice said...

darski, I think you're right that crazy people seek out things that society puts into focus. That's why so many of them stalk celebrities. And I certainly don't discount that they are targeting children because Chinese culture has beaten them over the head with the one-child message.

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