Well we can add one more to the count. Another example of school violence—a 16 year old sophomore from Murrysville, Pennsylvania went on a stabbing rampage at his high school, injuring twenty students and a security officer before he was subdued by an assistant principle.

These acts of violent are unfortunately becoming prevalent in our society, however, there is a significant difference in this tragic act than in any other that has happened within the last couple of years and that is the choice of weapon.

There has been school stabbings before, but more recently most cases of school violence have involved guns.  This case involved a knife and all twenty-one victims are alive.  They are injured, one is in critical condition, but as of right now no family has been told that they will never see their loved one again.

What happened in Murrysville serves as another argument for gun control. There might always be crazy people in the world, but without a gun, the harm they can cause others is significantly reduced.  Moreover it evinces that guns do, in fact, kill people and it’s not just the manic person holding it that is the issue.

Another lesson from Murrysville is that mental illness is a huge component in this on-going debate. The stabber might not be officially mentally ill, but obviously something is going on—maybe bullying or family issues, regardless something pushed him over the edge and its society’s job to notice these telltale signs before things like this happen.

And there are always signs. No one wants to believe that the little odd behaviors someone does will lead to something big like this, but clearly it can.  One of the greatest preventive measures we can take is to simply be aware.  We have to recognize potentially dangerous behavior and respond to it. Furthermore, a lot can be prevented, especially in schools, by simply being nice to each other and empathic to other people’s issues.

All the news reports say the alleged attacker kept to himself and didn’t have many friends. If someone had reached out to him earlier, this incident might have never occurred.

But we cannot go back and change the past. All we can do is learn from this and be grateful that no one is dead.  As a society we have to do something to fix this problem. We may never be able to completely stop events like this from occurring, but when the choice of weapon is limited the odds are more favorable.