“A man said to be mentally ill attacked 20 people with a knife in southwest China, killing two,” foxnews.com reports. “Two of the 20 injured people taken to a hospital died . . . The remaining 18 were in stable condition as of Monday.” Now you and I would say . . .

It should have been a defensive gun use. Knowing that it can’t be a defensive gun use in China — unless it’s a cop (armed with the funky retention set-up above) or a member of the socialist utopia’s armed forces.

The antis will say it would have been far worse in a society that “allows” its citizens to exercise their natural, civil and (in our case) Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. All the victims would have been dead!

I find this “argument” — that it’s somehow OK when people are stabbed to death and/or horrifically mutilated because more people would have been killed if “bad guys had easy access to guns” — morally repugnant.

The same people who say “If a gun control law saves one life, it’s worth it!” are arguing “If gun control laws sacrifice two people’s lives, it’s worth it!”

Interestingly, Fox News’ report on the mass stabbing ends like this:

Knives also have been used in attacks in the restive Xinjiang region, where authorities said in February that eight people including three assailants were killed and five injured during a knife attack in Pishan county.

Gun ownership is sharply restricted in China.

I wonder why they put that bit in. Playing it both ways?

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37 COMMENTS

  1. The Chines police have retractable chains on their revolvers?

    Are they worried about holster picking?

    EDIT – On second thought, I imagine they are, if a crook wants a gun, steal it from a cop…

    • I seem to recall from an article I read that the Chinese officer’s pistols are chambered in a non-standard caliber that cannot be purchased on the open market. This does not mean, of course, that criminals would not be able to obtain ammunition, only that it is not readily available anywhere.

      • Yep, it’s a proprietary 9mm round. Since legal firearms are so highly restricted anyway, I don’t think criminals are buying any calibers on the open market. They either divert them from factories, smuggle it in, load their own, or buy it off of people who had it stashed away. I recall reading about a farmer who got prison time because he dug up and sold two machine guns that his father had buried decades ago to “defend” the socialist revolution. Cheap blowback operated pistols are made by black market gunsmiths in .32 ACP. Given how .32 ACP was in use in 20th century China (among other calibers), I’d expect a good bit of that to still be around.

    • You’ll find retention like this around the world and if you look closely you’ll find attachment points for it on a lot of handguns.

      It’s not meant to prevent theft, it’s designed to keep the gun attached to you if you drop it. Often it’s done with plastic shock cord.

  2. That’s a common retention system outside the U.S.

    Sometimes gun attacks leave mass casualties and few if any deaths. I’ve read about it in recent times. Usually NYPD or nightclub shootings it seems.

    • I you can keep the active-shooter moving, and avoid allowing them time for couping.
      You are liable to have more Survivors​.
      That was the difference between the Batman and Sandyhook casualties.

  3. Anybody read ‘Stand on Zanzibar’? The author coined a term back in 1968 that reflected this. The term was ‘Mucker’ and was most likely a variation of a Pacific island word ‘Amok’- a term for going crazy and stabbing people in crowds.

    Crowd enough members of a species into a limited area with limited resources and……..

    • Amok. Amok…amok…amok. Dude that doesn’t even sound like a word…

      I can never use it with a straight face for some reason. Congratulations, you used it well.

    • The term “mucker” has been around long before 1968. The Mucker was a book written by Edgar Rice Burroughs (and may have been the premise for a movie or TV series later on) in the early 20th century. The protagonist was a tough guy, settling any dispute with violence. Incidentally, reading this book as a kid in the 70s, I learned what the word pusillanimous means, a term I believe was used in an interview with Nikki Haley concerning recent terrorism.

  4. In China, it isn’t the mass stabbings you need to worry about, it’s the bus fires.

    Well, that and that mass shootings that totally don’t count because they were carried out by police against “terrorists”.

  5. Mass stabbings happen in China more than most people realize and shootings happen as well despite that virtual ban on any gun including most bb/pellet guns.

    Shanghai is no longer the only city in China where the police carry revolvers. I have seen them carried in other lower tiered cities as well. Some police also carry semi-autos (usually Makarov style), and I have seen some carry assault rifles.

    Usually the people you see with guns in China are armored truck guards with shotguns delivering money to the banks.

  7. My uber liberal cousin said this and added, “If it saves just one life, it’s worth it.” Later we were talking about muslim (sic) refugees when she said you’re very unlikely to be killed in a terrorist attack. I said, “But if it saves just one life, it’s worth it.” Do you know what a dead brook trout stare is? That’s what I got from her.

  8. “somehow OK when people are stabbed to death and/or horrifically mutilated because more people would have been killed if “bad guys had easy access to guns” — morally repugnant.”

    This is where we can never agree with them. For them the needs of the many outweigh the needs (read rights) of the individual.

    They believe that if everyone is prevented from being a danger (and therefore must assume that everyone is a criminal or soon to be criminal) than everyone will be safe because the few crimes can be stopped by the police (or gestapo depending on your perspective)

    We believe that distributing the minimum rights to protective powers between all our people itprovides protection for the masses and individuals

    Like I said we probably can’t ever agree with it’s them. They assume everyone is intent on committing crime and must be prevented by the government we assume encountering a criminal is a probability and must be defendable by the individual since the government isn’t likely to be on the scene

  9. Oh the left just won’t say anything about this at all. They’re lie by omission that this never happens by just refusing to acknowledge that it did. CNN is well known flat out say that if THEY didn’t report it, it didn’t happen.

  10. “I find this “argument” — that it’s somehow OK when people are stabbed to death and/or horrifically mutilated because more people would have been killed if “bad guys had easy access to guns” — morally repugnant.”

    It is morally repugnant. Its the typical attempt of the firearms phobic nut jobs to interject their politics into tragedy.

    It also flies directly in the face of tens of thousands of years of history where the edged weapon was the personal arm of choice -and- the realities of modern medical science.
    I do not know how medicine is practiced in China, but I do know that people who make it to the hospital with GSW’s have a very high chance for survival.

    The blanket idea that a gun is more deadly then a knife is BS. Its highly situationally dependent and a knife will kill someone just as dead as firearm.

    Those making this argument are hoping we don’t know that the only REAL advantage of a firearm over a knife is that of range- knives are contact weapons while firearms give you the ability to hit your target without putting yourself in arms reach.

    In fact, when you are up close and personal, in trained hands a knife holds several advantages over a firearm, not the least of which is multiple angles of attack and the ability to quickly disable an opponent with “biomechanical cutting” techniques. Its also much harder to disarm someone with a knife then someone armed with a gun.

    All of this is why police are taught that knives and those wielding them are not a joke.

    • Watch “Forged in Fire” and see the damage those knives and historic reproductions make in their tests.

      And then imagine that damage was done to a person.

      • I’m into krav, BJJ, Kali, etc- I know what a knife or edged weapon is capable of. Carry an Emerson daily, even if I am not wearing one of my handguns.
        I think I may have seen that show, but thanks for the heads up, can’t hurt to go see if I can find it to watch again.

  11. The issue of fatalities with knives is IMHO threefold.

    1) Often the attacker is mentally ill. They’re not really there “to kill”.

    2) These sort of attacks are fast moving and move from one target to the next rapidly rather than focusing on one person until serious damage is done before moving on.

    3) The knife is limited to a large degree by the physical capabilities of the person using it and that person’s knowledge of how to use it.

    All in all if the attacker knows generally how to use the knife, is intent to cause death or serious injury, is in decent physical condition and is reasonably intelligent about how they launch the attack a knife is a devastating weapon.

    • … a knife is a devastating weapon.

      Truer words were never spoken.

      A spree killer who wants to rack up a body count can get a higher average body count with a knife over a firearm if they use proper tactics suited to the advantages of a knife.

      And what would those tactics be? One possibility: ambush victims in one-off affairs where the victims are isolated and no one is close enough to provide helpful identifying information. Another possibility: stab victims one-at-a-time in dense crowds where it becomes effectively impossible to identify the attacker in the masses. (The victim feels the impact of a knife and has no idea what is happening until it is too late to identify the attacker who nonchalantly continues their walk in the crowd.) Other possibilities exist of course. Whatever those possibilities, they are seriously amplified if no one is armed.

      • “Another possibility: stab victims one-at-a-time in dense crowds where it becomes effectively impossible to identify the attacker in the masses.” [Emphasis in original.]

        This is something I’ve thought about when certain posters have claimed knives aren’t as dangerous as a gun. If you were to use a double edged blade with a point like an FS knife, have zero compunction about actually sticking people with it the way that blade is meant to be used, and a general idea of how and where to do such a thing to a person, you could probably kill/inflict fatal wounds on quite a number of people in a venue like a concert and do so before most people realized what exactly was going on. Being identified I see as secondary if you’re nuts enough to do this. The real advantage is in the fact that, generally, the people you target don’t know what’s going on until you’ve actually done something to to them. There’s no real warning that such an attack is coming so the crowd doesn’t panic and start moving in ways that make getting to the next person difficult.

        A lot of it has to do with picking the right blade for the job, understanding how it’s meant to do that job and then you actually being willing to do that job. Those are things that a “spree stabber” is unlikely to understand or care about even if they are crazy enough to ruthlessly implement the blades design against a crowd of people they don’t know.

        • Knives poke holes in people. Sound familiar?

          The difference is that they are muscle powered and must be utilized up close.

          Oh, and it doesn’t take much “muscle” to power them.

          Just another force multiplier.

          The hapless unfortunate who is stabbed to death cares not that he wasn’t shot to death instead.

          The results are all the same to them.

        • Zoss:

          You missed my point. Perhaps I was not clear enough.

          There is enormous variation in the design of blades. This is for good reason: they’re designed for different purposes. Some are meant for stabbing while others are meant for slashing. Some are a mix while some are just tools that can be adapted as a weapon or picked up as an improvised weapon in a pinch. Can you stab someone with a knife meant for slashing or vice versa? Yes, you can but it’s usually not the most effective way to employ that blade against them which reduces the weapon’s utility and in a quick attack that moves from one person to the next very rapidly it probably greatly reduces the chances that you kill or incapacitate each individual you attack.

          There’s more to attacking someone with a knife and inflicting fatal injury that just “poking holes” in them. The knife is designed to be used and even held in different ways that, when understood, greatly increase the effectiveness of the blade as a weapon.

          You can beat a group of people to death with a transfer shovel but doing it with a Morning Star is generally more effective and efficient because the Morning Star was designed to beat people to death whereas the shovel was not. In terms of a knife, you can slash at people like crazy with an SOCP dagger but it’s meant to stab and will be far more effective if you stab people with it the way it was designed to be used. When my neighbor’s kid decided that a meth habit was a good life choice and attacked some people with a lawnmower blade he was every ineffective. It’s not that you can’t kill someone with a lawnmower blade, it’s that it’s not designed as a weapon and in his methed out condition he really didn’t know what he was doing.

          It’s my contention that when you see these mass knife attacks, generally speaking, the person committing the act doesn’t really have a good grasp on what they’re doing and therefore 1) doesn’t choose the best tool for the job and 2) generally doesn’t use the tool that they do choose in a manner that would make the most of that tool in terms of damage done.

          • No I got it, I just thought I’d boil it all down. Yes, a purpose designed knife, built as a weapon, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it will always be more efficient and effective.

            But against soft targets the lunatic armed with a kitchen knife is surprisingly deadly, just the same….

        • Alright we’re on the same page.

          My point is simply that the “anti argument” we see for banning guns is an apples to oranges comparison and that as you’ve pointed out, the effectiveness of the attack will vary enormously based much more on the attacker than on the weapon used..

          • “the effectiveness of the attack will vary enormously based much more on the attacker than on the weapon used..”

            Well, yes, but also the entire totality of the circumstances as a whole.

            but yeah, same page.

            A knife (or a truck, car, sporting goods, household chemicals, etc,etc) in the wrong hands is always bad news…..

        • @Zoss as well;
          . . Once again some one who doesn’t disagree, but wishes to bring up a clarifying/expanding point.
          – Okinawan weaponry in their martial arts was based on the fact that the users could be killed for possession of weapons.
          . The Tonfa was actually the standard removable crank handle of most windlass and other items needed to be cranked.
          . the Sai was a frog and snake hunting trident with the “wings” hammered to the opposite end.
          . Nunchuck was a small hand agricultural flail used to separate chaff from grain.

          – There once was a “tribe” of people famous for their dancing, their Masters would even have them perform for guests.
          . The problem was their Masters never saw the Secret [“they have their special superstitions you know”] dances where those same flips and spinning jumps were turned against each other in war like practice.

          I don’t know if the Alinskyites fear “cultural appropriation” because, If their subjects crossed Japanese; ninjutsu, and Okinawan weaponry theory crossed with modern tools.

          In other words while I agree with every thing you said, if someone has No weapons, or Limited weapons, train with what they do have.

  12. where’s “the resistance” talking his stuff on this???? You know, how this crap never happens in other places, etc.

    • Exactly! But, you know, that wouldn’t fit the narrative s/he/it is trying to push, so… fuhgeddaboutit.

  13. The thing about a gun is that even a six shooter makes a little old lady the equal of a 300 pound knife man

    • . . And as I always say about fixing Gun Controlled Area’s death counts, they should along with the Elderly’s support check.

      . . Send them a box with a Mythological [as in the professional Felons would rather caught dead then thought to be that desperate] “Saturday-night Special”, a single loaded speed loader with FMJ, as well as a voucher for two weeks training and transport to same, plus the ammo for same training plus a offer the load the gun with wad-cutters, and three more speed-loaders with wad-cutters.

      . . I doubt the Chinese would go for it, but maybe the suggestion that the USA could do it for the Chinese as Foreign Assistance might cause some of the Old Guard on both sides of the pond to stroke out.

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