“If we solve the mental-illness issue, the guns do not matter. And focusing on the guns directs the severely mentally ill to other weapons.” Knives and other weapons are easier and cheaper to obtain than guns. And, much more importantly, we have to stop creating so much of what leads to all the mental illness.
We’re focusing on the wrong thing.
There is much focus this week on the role of guns in mass murders. But the history of such atrocities teaches us that other methods can be just as effective.
I am currently creating an encyclopedia of mass murder in America and have catalogued 504 incidents so far. Common methods used throughout our history include axes, hatchets, blunt objects, knives, hanging, drowning, poison gas, poison, fire, and aircraft (and not just on 9/11). Some of the rarer weapons demonstrate that where there is an evil will, there is a way. Scythes. Blowtorches.
Of course, the axes and hatchets were around because they were needed in an age when people cooked over wood stoves. I can imagine axe-control fanatics in 1890 arguing that “an axe in your home is more likely to be used against you than against an intruder.” And perhaps it would have been true: The “Church of the Sacrifice” slaughtered dozens of families with their own axes in the early 20th century.
By Clayton E. Cramer
