Stabbings at Home

The local news reported a couple of recent stabbings here in town, one with scissors.  As bad as this sounds, no-one died and that wouldn't have been the case if the assailants had guns instead of knives or scissors.  This is a fair sized city and we do have occasional murders, some by gunshot, but this isn't the norm.  We are situated not very far from Toronto where it's a different story altogether.  Their news is filled with at least one murder by gunshot every week.


Living in a large Canadian city means there is more crime but very little of it involves guns and for that I'm thankful.  It's interesting to note that much of our crime stems from alcohol or drug use, the same basic reasons for crime in most of the world.  I suppose inherent stupidity is another major cause for crime but, unless we resort to genocide, we'll just have to continue to deal with that.  Keeping a lid on drug and booze use is at least doable.  


Speaking of stabbing with scissors, my Cindy threw a pair of scissors at Kim when they were about 5 and 6 years old.  They hit Kim just under her eye and scared us all to death.  Now, these were 2 young children involved in a dispute and not grown adults using the same tactics.  Children don't always have the best control over their emotions but you'd think an adult would have matured enough to behave better.


I have no memory of ever deliberately hitting another person (not counting spanking my kids) except in defence and that only happened once.  I abhor physical violence and have evolved to the point where I don't believe in even spanking unruly children any more.  "Time Out" is an excellent alternative and works much better than spanking.


I obviously can't understand how someone could shoot another human being knowing what the consequences of their actions could be.  Regardless of the fact they could kill the person they shoot, they also will almost certainly end up in jail.  Maybe that's where the "stupidity" comes in.


In any case, although no-one would want to be stabbed, they'd have a better chance of surviving than if they'd been shot.  Because of this, I'm thankful for our more stringent gun laws in Canada.