[Apollo]

Arterial bleeding can kill in a matter of minutes. Broken bones make it very difficult to fight back. And, a well-aimed stab or slash could kill you almost instantly.

The kids would be too terrified to fight back in any meaningful way. The adults would try, but without a weapon of their own they would have to either improvise one or use their bare hands--and the latter option would be borderline-suicidal. They would also be acting on reflexes and adrenaline, which means that unless they've had combat training they would probably be ineffective fighters.

Even if they rushed him, they would be unable to grab his sword without getting their hand cut off. They would also lack a way to quickly take him down, unless they found something like a hammer or a baseball bat, and that would require them to get close to him--which would likely be fatal unless they killed or incapacitated him in one hit. And all that adrenaline would cause them to think very, very fast, making a miss quite likely.

Admittedly, they would have slightly better chances. But not much better, and it's certainly not impossible that he could have done the same thing.

[Lorric]

Arterial bleeding can kill in a matter of minutes. Broken bones make it very difficult to fight back. And, a well-aimed stab or slash could kill you almost instantly.

The kids would be too terrified to fight back in any meaningful way. The adults would try, but without a weapon of their own they would have to either improvise one or use their bare hands--and the latter option would be borderline-suicidal. They would also be acting on reflexes and adrenaline, which means that unless they've had combat training they would probably be ineffective fighters.

Even if they rushed him, they would be unable to grab his sword without getting their hand cut off. They would also lack a way to quickly take him down, unless they found something like a hammer or a baseball bat, and that would require them to get close to him--which would likely be fatal unless they killed or incapacitated him in one hit. And all that adrenaline would cause them to think very, very fast, making a miss quite likely.

Admittedly, they would have slightly better chances. But not much better, and it's certainly not impossible that he could have done the same thing.

But he would be untrained and running on adrenaline too. All you'd need is a few teachers to grab chairs and batter him down. And if his sword got caught in anything, that would be the end of the road too.

[Thaeris]

How bizzarre - now we've gone to swords.

Lorric actually has partial... basis in his rationalization. If you have the option, take a machete or a cheap sword and go somewhere in which you can maneuver it safely. Some brush out in the back yard will do just fine. You'll note that making precision strikes and clear hits is not as easy as you may have initially thought. Maintaining a high degree of accuraccy for each strike is also a matter to be concerned about. Also note that machetes and cheap swords are often poorly balanced and a bit unwieldy. A balanced, properly maintained and sharp sword is something most people do not have and do not aspire to own. Combine that with training conditions, and you're unlikely to have a lot of deaths on your hands unless the killer is a real nutjob (skilled and crazy).

Now consider maneuvering indoors with the weapon. That's not terribly easy, and the Japanese made use of short swords and knives specifically for that purpose; the most common sword someone is likely to own, the katana, is NOT one of those specialty weapons. Ultimately, effective use of hand to hand weapons is very training-intensive. There is a reason it has taken so long to re-construct what we now know about European martial arts: these very sophisticated fighting forms were forgotten and abandoned not only due to advances in weapons technology, but due to the fact that it is much harder to train soldiers in hand-to-hand combat as opposed to firearms.

[Mongoose]

Not only that, but the factor being missed here is that, even if a swordsman manages to kill someone who's running full-tilt at them, there's a little thing called momentum.  They're going to have an unconscious or dead person slamming into them, which gives someone else a huge opportunity to move in and restrain them.

[MP-Ryan]

I know this is HLP, and therefore I shouldn't ask, but how in blazes did we get onto swords and how is that even relevant to anything?

Good grief.

[General Battuta]

This is ****ing grotesque. As someone with training in modern edged weapons in the context of krav maga, I am absolutely disgusted by them and, by extension, with this little armchair massacre the thread has devolved into.

Anyone who has really worked with weapons should know to be respectful of them and horrified by thought that they will ever need to be used against another human being. None of us here (with perhaps a few exceptions) understand violence or its psychological toll, and no one should therefore feel qualified to game out scenarios about the massacre of schoolchildren with machetes vs. a Sig.

e: I would like to add that most gun deaths of any sort in the USA are self-inflicted, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. Another leading use of firearms is to murder your domestic partner. I am capable of using and familiar with firearms for self-defense, but I had a very real introduction to firearms in my life when, at age six, one of the twins who lived next door accidentally shot his brother to death. Better security and safety in his home could have saved his brother, but so too could the absence of a lethal weapon.

[Nuke]

someone could always pack a chainsaw, or a makeshift flame thrower. thats aside from the fact that the typical profile of a school shooter is someone with above average intelligence, they could easily get there head around a recipe for explosives.

[NGTM-1R]

This is ****ing grotesque.

To which I'd like to add a request for a show of hands, now. How many of you have ever actually handled a weapon? How many of you have ever made an attempt to use it on something alive? (Hunting or whatever.)

\o to both

[deathfun]

Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?

Like Kara said, it's a second amendment tax, and America seems to be continually willing to pay it. Sad fact, but fact nonetheless.

Relevant image I came across. I'm not involved in this argument fyi, just adding tidbits here and there

[IronBeer]

To which I'd like to add a request for a show of hands, now. How many of you have ever actually handled a weapon? How many of you have ever made an attempt to use it on something alive? (Hunting or whatever.)

\o To both as well. I'm quite proficient with the three major classes of civilian firearms, and have successfully hunted several times. All the animals I've taken were done so cleanly and then later eaten. I'm very fond of the weapons my family owns, but more than anything I feel a very dire respect for them.

Regarding other weapon proficiencies, I trained in Taekwondo as a child, but I would not consider that hand-to-hand combat training, and I have no formal training with any hand-to-hand weapons. Additionally, I would consider myself a proficient compound archer as well, though I am a bit out of practice ("proficient" here meaning "comfortable enough with skills to apply to hunting").

I could segue into a continued discussion of the OT, but I won't. I've already said my piece and am done... especially in light of the recent direction change. Swords? Seriously?

ed: clarity

[Black Wolf]

Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?

Like Kara said, it's a second amendment tax, and America seems to be continually willing to pay it. Sad fact, but fact nonetheless.

http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/576322_432421576827473_1667000967_n.jpg
Relevant image I came across. I'm not involved in this argument fyi, just adding tidbits here and there

Strawman. The fact that murders - even mass murders - are committed without guns doesn't make freely available guns any better or any less dangerous.

[Flipside]

Trained in bladed weapons. Thankfully never needed to use one in combat.

As I said before, I am unwilling to go into gruesome details of the kind of damage swords can do because of the subject matter, it is not really the time or the place, but I did however want to challenge the seeming opinion being stated that the chances were the outcome would be the same to that of a gun, for reasons that have already been covered.

Whilst it is true that the pro gun-control advocates need to be careful not to allow themselves to run too far on emotion and assumption, the same is also true of the opposite, those who advocate a more permissive approach need to do so based on cold, hard truth where at all possible. It's the only chance, even in emotional situations like this, that any kind of balance will be struck.

[NGTM-1R]

If we ran this on cold hard truth we'd debate controlling swimming pools, because they kill more kids a year per capita and per individual item than guns in the US.

We're never going to have swimming pool control debates.

"Cold hard truth" has very little to do with this discussion on either side. If were to analyze things by the numbers we wouldn't even get to discussing guns for a long time. Guns, though, are really sexy in the minds of both sides.

[Flipside]

Yup, and in some ways the problem is that it is distracting people from far deeper, and probably further-reaching issues that need to be addressed with regards to the whole situation.

Like most societies, there are issues up and down the line that need to be addressed, and oddly enough, I hope that when the Right Wing move, they are actually against gun restrictions, because that means they are veering more in the direction of considering the mental condition of the shooter, rather than his methodology.

[karajorma]

If we ran this on cold hard truth we'd debate controlling swimming pools, because they kill more kids a year per capita and per individual item than guns in the US.

When you go to a swimming pool or install one in your home, you assume the risk of drowning and if you're sensible you take precautions against it.

 If guns only killed the people who bought them or their families, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Actually we probably would and we'd get people talking about how banning swimming pools wouldn't stop someone filling their bathtub with acid and endangering their children that way.

[NGTM-1R]

When you go buy a gun, you assume the risk of people getting shot and if you're sensible you take precautions against it.

Fixed. (In fact, given that swimming pools cause more child deaths per single pool over the child deaths per single gun, we're doing a much better job at the above than we are at its swimming pool alternative.)

Dead people are dead, the one thing in which pretty much everybody is equal. You're assigning an arbitrary value to their death, despite the things which really make it tragic to most human beings (avoidablity, before time, lack of deserving nature) being essentially the same.

In other words, you have perfectly demonstrated my point that both sides think guns are much more sexy and want to debate them when they're far from a substantive issue by comparison. Pools are good example because people don't think about it. A more obvious one is sobriety groups.

But MADD's not as sexy as the NRA or their opponents though, so here we are.

[Dark RevenantX]

Why are you arguing the finer points of murdering people with various weapons?

You can kill someone with your bare hands.  All weapons serve to make the process faster and easier.  Guns are categorically at the top of the faster/easier list.


Anyway, on the topic of guns...  I can't be arsed to look up the exact numbers but I'm almost 100% sure that if you look at the numbers, you can apply some very basic statistics to the whole thing, and you'll find a couple irrefutable conclusions:
1. Far more people are murdered than saved as a result of gun usage.
2. The relative proportions of people who use guns for defense and people who use guns to murder are such that the likelihood of any given gun crime being thwarted by another gun-user is extremely low.

You can argue about the effectiveness of gun control but as far as I'm concerned you cannot deny that it can't possibly raise the number of violent crime deaths.  In fact, it is almost guaranteed to lower the rates significantly over the long term.


However, mental health improvements would prevent more deaths than gun control could ever manage.

[deathfun]

You can argue about the effectiveness of gun control but as far as I'm concerned you cannot deny that it can't possibly raise the number of violent crime deaths.  In fact, it is almost guaranteed to lower the rates significantly over the long term.

In regards to that, if someone wants a gun, but they can't go to their local store to get one... they'll find other not so legitimate ways to get one

[karajorma]

When you go buy a gun, you assume the risk of people getting shot and if you're sensible you take precautions against it.

Fixed.

Badly. You completely missed the point.

Yes on the number of deaths count swimming pools are an important issue, but in terms of public safety it's laughable to equate the two. I can't drown in someone else's swimming pool unless I decide to go there. I can however be killed by the lack of precautions taken by someone else with their firearms.

But MADD's not as sexy as the NRA or their opponents though, so here we are.

Another false equivalence. There is no pro-drink driving group. So their is no drink driving/anti drink driving debate. It's nothing to do with sexy. It's because there is no one to debate against. Most rational people agree that drink driving isn't legal and should be punishable.

[Flipside]

Well, once again, it's swings and roundabouts. The availability of the guns in the legal market tends to have an impact on the availability through illegitimate sources. I believe many cases in the US involve someone legally entitled to buy guns then selling them on to those who are not, whereas in the UK, the stigma attached to handguns makes it much more difficult to make the initial contact, especially if you are just some Middle-ish Class kid with a high IQ and low social interaction skills, which appears to be at least part of the psychological makeup of the kind of person that resorts to this.

You'll note these shootings aren't being done by 'criminals' in the classical sense, these aren't people who would normally have access to illegitimate weapons, or often even people in groups that would be considered 'prone' to criminal elements as such, and often those that attempt to obtain those weapons for themselves are clumsy and non-successful. It's something far deeper than 'Good Guy/Bad Guy' going on here I think.

Edit :

Also, another interesting perspective on what happens when a school shooting takes place :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20763752