14 Stabbed In A Knife Rampage; Where Are The Reactionary Calls For A ‘National Discussion’?

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Greg Campbell @ TPNN:

It’s been reported that 14 people at the small Lone Star Community College in Cypruss, Texas, have been injured in a rampage perpetrated by a knife-wielding man. While the details of the attack are still emerging and the conditions of the victims are not yet known, there have been no reports of celebrities calling for knife control or any release of videos to “demand a plan” to end knife violence.

The man, reportedly, used a small knife and ran from building to building committing attacks along the way. Four victims have been flown by Life Flight to hospitals, indicating severe, life-threatening wounds. Fox News reported that the attacker was subdued by a student.

Of course, I join the rest of America in hoping and praying for the victims of the attack. This is a horrendous crime, whatever the details, and I hope for zero casualties and speedy recoveries.

But conspicuously absent in the media or blogosphere are the broad, reactionary calls by celebrities or pundits to remedy the malice of a violent attacker with legislation. While certainly there are comments out there, when we juxtapose this recent attack with that of the shooting at Sandy Hook or Aurora, we see the absence of reaction by those who feel that government intervention is the solution to all of society’s ailments.

Certainly, I advocate not for reactionary, knee-jerk statism; but those who feel a tragedy of a rampage warrants a “national discussion” should be howling for a national discussion as violence has found yet another college campus. But Twitter is largely silent. Trending on Yahoo has “Joe Montana son” at the top.

The horrific shooting at Sandy Hook revealed some of the best and worst emotions that celebrities and the media had to offer. Many offered an outpouring of support while many others offered support, but ghoulishly used the opportunity to try and provoke a “national discussion” over gun control, even interviewing traumatized children to promote their point.

In fact, so eager was the press to rush to the beginning of this discussion, the initial reports swarmed with details accusing the bereaved brother of Adam Lanza of being the shooter.

Wesley Lowery of The Boston Globe noted on Facebook in the hours after Sandy Hook, “It may not be the day to discuss (insert political hot button issue), but for those of us in media, it’s certainly the day to discuss how we cover tragedy. Today we’ve created an echo chamber, interviewed children who witnessed a mass shooting, fed speculation, libeled a man who was not the shooter and created confusion. We can do better.”

In the immediate aftermath of Aurora, Brian Ross reported on ABC News that “Jim Holmes,” the shooter at the theater, might belong to the Tea Party. Without doing a modicum of investigating other than looking in the phone book and cross-referencing the common name with a Tea Party website, national journalist Brian Ross slandered a man.

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This rampage of stabbings is excellent cause that owners of concealed weapon 22 caliber zingers should get to know each other and become friends after the fact.

Just need to ban Exacto knives. Might need to just ban the multi-pack. But we might need to ban Art class in general. That’s where children learn to use an Exacto knife. I don’t have the answer, I just wait for the libs to come along and tell us what we need to ban. But we can’t just do nothing. Something needs to be done.

How might the story be different if he’d had ready access to a firearm rather than an Exacto knife?

I totally reject the premise that all potential weapons represent the same degree of potential danger to the public. This notion is patently absurd.

@Greg:

Oh look at the cute strawman Greg brought along.

What if the attacker had been armed with a Klingon disruptor or Star Feet issue phasor? Potential damage is an abstract and is not relevant. If someone wounds or kills you with a weapon you get real damage. It is very possible to receive worse wounds with lessor weapons. (To avoid being gruesome I’ll spare our gentle readers the gory details.) We must be grounded in reality to assess events.

W notice you are eager to propose what possible damage the attacker might have caused if he had been armed with a gun rather than a knife, yet in your hypothetical scenario you completely ignore what might have transpired if only his victims had CCW permit and handguns.

People love to accuse the other guy of what they’ve just done themselves. They seem to think it’s some sort of preemptive debate tactic.

The strawman wasn’t set up by my comment, but with the thread title: “14 Stabbed In A Knife Rampage; Where Are The Reactionary Calls For A ‘National Discussion’?” Basically, I just whipped out the Bic lighter known as logic and set the strawman on fire.

A berserk person wielding an Exacto knife is not as much of potential threat to the public safety as a berserk person wielding an AR-15. This is one of the reasons we don’t send soldiers into battle armed with Exacto knives.

@Greg:

No Greg. Your proposal that it ‘would have been worse if he had a gun’ is not relevant, because he did not have a gun. Nor would it have been relevant to say “what if he was running with scissors?” or “What if he had run them down with a semi-truck?” These are all strawmen arguments.

The attacker that the article wrote about, used an Exacto knife as a weapon and the author posed the question; that with the media being all up in arms about mass violent attacks, why then hasn’t there also been demands that the weapon used in this event should also be included in the “national discussion.’ The whole point that you seem to miss, is that the discussion should be about perpetrators of violent crime, how to stop them or at least slow them down, and how to recognize them before they act. The knee-jerk reaction to ban whatever weapons they chose, is immaterial to stopping future violence, because it isn’t about the weapon. An attacker will use whatever weapon they can acquire and to hell with laws.

Injured is injured, Dead is dead whether you were attacked with a gun, knife, vehicle, bat, club, samurai sword, pipe-bomb, hammer, anthrax powder in an envelope, mail-bomb, chainsaw, ice pick, etc… You can pass laws banning every weapon imaginable and make everyone go around wearing mittens, but criminals will ignore the law and do as they please. The root causes of the violence, detection and prevention is what needs to be researched. All this worthless banning does is disarm the victims and force those predisposed to violence to select a different weapon.

@Ditto: You can pass laws banning every weapon imaginable and make everyone go around wearing mittens, but criminals will ignore the law and do as they please. The root causes of the violence, detection and prevention is what needs to be researched. All this worthless banning does is disarm the victims and force those predisposed to violence to select a different weapon.

So true.
In France it is difficult to get guns….apparently.
But where there’s hate, there’s violence.
So the result is men who get this treatment.
WARNING, it is pretty gruesome what some people do to others over walking in the ”wrong” area.

@Greg:

How might the story be different if he’d had ready access to a firearm rather than an Exacto knife?

It Texas! Everyone has access to a gun! He fantasized about stabbing people. He got to 14 before anyone could stop him. And it was a gun free zone. One teacher with a gun, and that number would have been much lower.
The problem with the gun debate is you want to take guns from law-abiding citizens. An AR-15 is not an assault weapon. It is a weapon in the style of an assault weapon. You and I were both in the military. An AR-15 is not a M-16. An M-16 can fire full auto. Although the new M-16s fire three round burst and full auto. There is a big difference.
But that isn’t the point. What is the use of new laws if the existing laws are not enforced? If the existing laws are only observed by law-abiding people and people that break those laws suffer no consequences, who do those laws punish? If the same holds true for any new laws, who will they punish.

Jim Baker, the NRA representative present at the meeting, recalled the vice president’s words during an interview with The Daily Caller: “And to your point, Mr. Baker, regarding the lack of prosecutions on lying on Form 4473s, we simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/biden-we-dont-have-time-to-enforce-existing-gun-laws-lets-add-new-ones/
So I ask you again, who do these laws punish?

@Ditto, #6:

You’re missing the entire point. Those who favor stronger firearms regulation didn’t bring the Texas stabbing incident up in connection with the debate. Those who oppose stronger firearms regulation did. It’s not our strawman.

Exacto knives have no bearing on the discussion—except for the desire some people have to argue that the number of Exacto knife rampages would be drastically reduced if only everyone were packing a concealed firearm. While that might be true, I suspect there would be serious unintended consequences.

What percentage of law-abiding citizens are prone to occasional misplaced fears, periodic judgement errors, occasional angry outbursts, or impulsive actions that they later think better of? What will likely happen if a high percentage of such people routinely carry a firearm?

I think responsible, law-abiding citizens have a right to possess and carry a firearm. I don’t think getting one and acquiring a permit to carry it should be as easy as buying an Exacto knife.

@Greg:

I think responsible, law-abiding citizens have a right to possess and carry a firearm. I don’t think getting one and acquiring a permit to carry it should be as easy as buying an Exacto knife.

We already have laws for that. In some States it can take 60 to 90 days to get a firearm. Granted, in some States, like my State of Georgia, it’s same day if you pass the background check. My background check took 45 minutes. I have had no trouble with the law, I was in the military so my fingerprints are on record, and I had a top secret clearance. How much longer should it have taken?
You argue that it should be more difficult to get a gun. I argue that the existing laws should be enforced. But liberals aren’t interested in punishing people that break the law, just interested in making more laws.