Weapons Matter When Children are Attacked

Students returning to school after lunch on a peaceful day in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, China

As you may already know, there has been a terrible attack on children at a school:

A man with a knife has wounded 22 children - at least two of them seriously - and an adult at a primary school in central China.

The attack happened at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province.

Police arrested a 36-year-old local man at the scene.

It is not the first knife attack at a school in China. And there are worries it won't be the last. As noted on NPR:

"People are saying that this demonstrates their real lack of mental health provisions in China," [Louisa Lim in April 2010] said on All Things Considered. "And also the fact that the social security net has broken down because people are moving around a lot as well. There is a real lack of social and psychological support."

Despite the problems, there is a silver lining. The attackers did not possess guns. Otherwise, China would be even more similar to the U.S. and probably doing more of this and this.