The Difference between China & the USA

I picked up Friday mornings's Shanghai Daily and there it was "22 children stabbed at school by mad man". The first thing I thought was how wrong can a newspaper get it - even in China.

Then I realized they were not describing the horrible events in the US but something that had happened here in China the day before.

Seems a man rushed into the school, smashed a window and rushed into a classroom. He randomly stabbed 22 student in the stomach face and arms - thankfully none died. Min Yingjun, 36, is in police custody. A report in the Southwest Metropolitan Daily said he had been diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 16. Min's father said his son's condition had deteriorated this year. He said his son often ran off leaving the family unable to find him.

So there you have it - similar incidents with one big difference. In China there are no guns in the hands of anybody except the army and the police. Stop end of sentence. No guns period. 22 kids injured NONE DEAD.

I often criticize many things in this country but the fact is as far as personal safety goes Theresa and I feel safer here than in North America. We walk down streets here in Shanghai with a population of 23 million people that if they were in Toronto or Montreal we'd never go near. We walk at night without fear of being mugged or shot at and much of this comes from the fact we know the only people carrying guns are the police and army. I guess we could get stabbed or hit of the head with a hammer (the weapon of choice for killing here) but the fact is no guns on the street makes a world of difference.

Maybe the answer for the gun issue in the USA is to entice the NRA to forget about selling anymore guns in the USA and focus their energies on changing China's gun laws - why piddle with 330 million people when there's a market of 1.4 billion out there waiting for just what they've got.