Think it’s hard to buy a gun in San Francisco? New York? You’re right, it is. Because it’s far too dangerous to allow guns in the hands of individuals. Easy access to firearms leads to “gun violence” and even mass killings. Just ask our friends who toil away in the cause of civilian disarmament. And if you think it’s difficult putting your hands on a heater in certain US coastal backwaters, imagine how hard it is in, say, southern China. Merely attempting to secure one is probably enough to get yourself thrown in a labor or reeducation camp. Yet somehow mass killings still happen there, too. From bbc.com: “An attack by knife-wielding men at a train station in Kunming in south-west China, has left at least 27 dead, the state news agency Xinhua says. Nothing is known so far about the motivation behind the attack, in which 109 people are said to have been hurt.” . . .
Got that? About 130 people in a crowded train station. Seconds counted and the secret police were only minutes away. The “knife-wielding men” who planned the attack (no doubt making use of high-capacity assault knives bought via the internet) were surely counting on the fact that none of their intended victims would be able to put up any kind of armed resistance. Translation: no good guy with a gun. Probably no one with so much as a knife either, as packing one in the Middle Kingdom is likely outlawed, too.
Of course, here’s only one rational, common sense response to this kind of carnage: tough, meaningful knife control. Registration of all blades in excess of four inches, those with finger grooves or a choil. Destruction or confiscation of cutting tools that don’t meet those limits. But you just know that, as always, other more enlightened countries – those tranquil places where people can walk the streets free of the fear of senseless, random knife violence – will be out in front of the US in this critical area. If only we were open-minded enough to learn from their example.