China is a place where there is little respect for the lives of individuals. China has the highest female suicide rate in the world, the highest number of abortions, the second-highest rate of automobile-related deaths, and the highest rate of executions. It is a place where 60 million women are missing because of gender-related abortions and infanticide. It is a place where a man can be steamrolled to death for refusing to let the government tear his house down. It’s also a place where, when someone commits suicide, commentators say things like this:
“If you’re not even afraid of death, why not kill the guy who conned you before you kill yourself? Or get some rat poison and send the whole staff of their company’s to heaven!!”
and:
“If you’re going to die, you should at least pulled a few with you to break your fall [die with you].”
When it comes to looking down their nose at America for respecting life, pretty much the only area where China has the upper-hand is gun control. In a country of 1.6 billion people, there were 21 gun-related deaths in a 2 year period. 27 died today in the United States in one incident.
What happened today in Newton, CT is horrible beyond words. My heart breaks for every family affected by this tragedy. But what really shows just how backwards America’s viewpoint on guns is was when my sister-in-law messaged my husband asking about a very similar event that happened here in China on the exact same day. At a primary in school in Henan, a man with a knife attacked 23 people, 22 of them children. The difference was that none of the children in the Chinese incident died. To be sure, knives can and do kill, but with far less frequency. Even Japan, which has a gun homicide rate as low as two per year, makes Wikipedia’s list of deadliest school massacres is history. The fact is that people kill other people. It is one of the worst things about living in a society with other people. People snap and kill the ones they love or innocent people they have never even met. Any item can become a weapon, be it a gun, a knife, a rope, or a candlestick. But the fact that America’s gun laws haven’t evolved along with guns is what is so frightening and lends to the sheer number of mass gun-related deaths in America each year. When the second amendment was passed over 200 years ago, the only guns used were muskets – heavy, awkward, slow-firing, and slow-reloading weapons. If you look at the list of deadliest school shootings, they all used semi-automatic weapons, something the founding fathers probably didn’t foresee. I’m not necessarily saying that all guns should be taken away, but the archaic laws that have not grown and changed to protect us and our children along with technology and times must do so. Now is the time.