It's an awful day for schools: 22 children involved in China stabbing incident.

A knife-wielding man injured 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China as students were arriving for classes Friday, police said, the latest in a series of periodic rampage attacks at Chinese schools and kindergartens.

The attack in the Henan province village of Chengping happened shortly before 8 a.m., said a police officer from Guangshan county, where the village is located.

The attacker, 36-year-old villager Min Yingjun, is now in police custody, said the officer, who declined to give her name, as is customary among Chinese civil servants.

A Guangshan county hospital administrator said the man first attacked an elderly woman, then students, before being subdued by security guards who have been posted across China following a spate of school attacks in recent years. He said there were no deaths among the nine students admitted, although two badly injured children had been transferred to better-equipped hospitals outside the county.

A doctor at Guangshan's hospital of traditional Chinese medicine said that seven students had been admitted, but that none were seriously injured.

Neither the hospital administrator nor the doctor would give his name.

Children likely between 6-11 years old

It was not clear how old the injured children were, but Chinese primary school pupils are generally 6-11 years old.

A notice posted on the Guangshan county government's website confirmed the number of injured and said an emergency response team had been set up to investigate the attacks.

No motive was given for the stabbings, which echo a string of similar assaults against schoolchildren in 2010 that killed nearly 20 and wounded more than 50. The most recent such attack took place in August, when a knife-wielding man broke into a middle school in the southern city of Nanchang and stabbed two students before fleeing.

Most of the attackers have been mentally disturbed men involved in personal disputes or unable to adjust to the rapid pace of social change in China, underscoring grave weaknesses in the antiquated Chinese medical system's ability to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness.

In one of the worst incidents, a man described as an unemployed, middle-aged doctor killed eight children with a knife in March 2010 to vent his anger over a thwarted romantic relationship.

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http://news.ca.msn.com/world/china-stabbing-spree-hurts-22-schoolchildren

This story's been a bit buried under the Connecticut one, but everyone has to be acknowledged here. I don't really know what to say... this is just so wrong. And to happen twice on one day... yeah, idk. Damn.

This is just ridiculous. CHILDREN. What sick **** would want to harm a child!? I'm really on edge at this point. There's a special place in hell for these kind of people, honestly. Sorry if this post is harsh for some of you, but I don't even think it's harsh enough. I'm holding my tongue on what I'd really like to say.

Oddly enough, I'm wearing a shirt that my aunt got for me in Guangzhou, China. Guess I picked this shirt for a reason today? I don't know. My heart goes out to these children and their families. I hope all these children will be alright. Luckily it doesn't seem that there are any deaths in this case, and I hope it remains that way.

Poor kids, wow. Again, what kind of awful person does this to children? I just dont understand. I cant take hearing about 2 of these things in one day ;_; At least none of the chiildren were killed in this incident and most it seems werent badly injured, although it's awful that they were injured. Im glad the man was caught and stopped before more could be harmed.

At least these children are only injured and not dead. It could have been so much more worse.

And again, the last little bit about China's antiquated and medieval medical system doesn't do enough to diagnose and treat mental illnesses, therefore enabling incidents like this, irks me. Why am I not surprised.

For everyone who says that with tighter gun control, people could do the same with knives or baseball bats.

Well, here we have knives. But, at least they're still alive.

Those poor kids. I'm glad they're alive and they were able to stop the man who did this.

I get the feeling that mental illness is really stigmatized in China. (Not that it isn't in a lot of places.) I would wager that's part of the lack of mental health services that undoubtedly could play a role in helping people.

Of course this is China and you get the feeling that it doesn't often care about helping its people. I mean, to their credit, they put guards at schools, but that feels more like a temporary fix.

Sydian said:

This is just ridiculous. CHILDREN. What sick **** would want to harm a child!? I'm really on edge at this point. There's a special place in hell for these kind of people, honestly. Sorry if this post is harsh for some of you, but I don't even think it's harsh enough. I'm holding my tongue on what I'd really like to say.

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These aren't normal people anymore. These are sociopaths, a real mental disorder. Understand that.

Not only do I feel bad for the children, I feel bad for all the people who killed the children, because they aren't being controlled by their real selves. And I can tell you, after a while, your real self just starts shutting down. It's painful. You have no control over it, and you just give up.

It's not to say they're innocent, but it's a real problem the world needs to know. They shouldn't get the blame - their community should take part of the blame too, however small.

Also on a less serious note I hate this because now visiting schools is such a pain in the ass. I would honestly like to see a real Chinese school - how about let me in?! AHHH

These aren't normal people anymore. These are sociopaths, a real mental disorder. Understand that.

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I understand that, but I'm not retracting my statement.

Edit: And yeah, I know you didn't ask for me to. I can read.

I get the feeling that mental illness is really stigmatized in China. (Not that it isn't in a lot of places.) I would wager that's part of the lack of mental health services that undoubtedly could play a role in helping people.

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Not sure how relevant this is, but I do know they adopt special needs children more than the ones that are well. The children that are well likely go to other Chinese families willing to pay the fines of having more than one child, but all special needs kids, to my knowledge, go for adoption. And as far as I know, they are only adopted internationally, not to other Chinese families.

droomph said:

It's not to say they're innocent, but it's a real problem the world needs to know. They shouldn't get the blame - their community should take part of the blame too, however small.

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You'll need to define what you mean by "their community" before you start pointing the finger of blame.

It's pretty idealistic to think that we live in a world where a 'community', should such a thing even exist a lot of the time, will take proper care of the mental wellbeing of its own people. It is not, and as far as I know never has been, the responsibility of a community to look after anyone; it is a person's own responsibility and, failing that in cases such as these, their friends and family. Unless that's what you meant by 'community', I really don't think that any community can take the blame for his actions. You also don't know that this community, letting us assume it's actually there, never tried to get help in the first place. I can't say I feel like any blame is placed on them.

TRIFORCE89 said:

For everyone who says that with tighter gun control, people could do the same with knives or baseball bats.

Well, here we have knives. But, at least they're still alive.

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Finally someone shares this thought. And the more "gun control" we have the more smuggling, unregistered guns, etc as the law is only followed by law abiding citizens. that there will be and regardless even if this "gun control" works, the only thing people will do is find another weapon to do so. If I was enraged I'm not going to stop and think about the consequences of having a gun, I'm going to use anything I get my hands on and go batcrazy with it.

droomph said:

It's not to say they're innocent, but it's a real problem the world needs to know. They shouldn't get the blame - their community should take part of the blame too, however small.

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I hardly see how the community is to blame. If people were aware of this man's mental state, then yes, helping or trying to get him to help himself (via booking himself into a mental hospital or something, seeing a licensed professional, something that can help him without placing too much of a psychological burden on him, further adding to the problem) would be the right thing to do. However, some people just aren't like that and to put the whole community at fault, however small, is not the right thing to do in my opinion. Sometimes, you genuinely can't tell if a person is mentally ill. If you can't tell if a person is mentally ill, or a sociopath (as you said), then how can they be blamed? What's that Wednesday Addams' quote?

"I'm a homicidal maniac - they look just like everyone else."

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I don't think it's good to blame a community, or society, when something like this happens. But at the same time there is room and potential for a community to do something to help people suffering in one way or another. Obviously your neighbors can't help you if you're mentally unstable, but they can be nice to you when they interact with you, and just do those little things day-to-day that could make life more bearable. Also, as a community, they can ask their city councils and officials and all those people to do something about problems. They can try to speak out for helping people in their community who need help.

dcjboi said:

Finally someone shares this thought. And the more "gun control" we have the more smuggling, unregistered guns, etc as the law is only followed by law abiding citizens. that there will be and regardless even if this "gun control" works, the only thing people will do is find another weapon to do so. If I was enraged I'm not going to stop and think about the consequences of having a gun, I'm going to use anything I get my hands on and go batcrazy with it.

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I think you misinterpreted what Triforce was saying, which was that the argument stating people who can't get guns will just use knives to kill isn't a good argument because here we have a man who had a knife and no one died.

dcjboi said:

Finally someone shares this thought. And the more "gun control" we have the more smuggling, unregistered guns, etc as the law is only followed by law abiding citizens. that there will be and regardless even if this "gun control" works, the only thing people will do is find another weapon to do so. If I was enraged I'm not going to stop and think about the consequences of having a gun, I'm going to use anything I get my hands on and go batcrazy with it.

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Notice how the psycho with a knife didn't kill anybody, and the psycho with a gun killed 27.

The only reason this story even made any headlines in the US is because of the Connecticut story. Worse things happen every day in some areas of the world that receive little to no media attention. But, let's talk about this story specifically.

Yes, it sucks. The government needs to make it easier for crazy people to get help before it's too late. But it won't happen. This and Connecticut will be used to make us feel like such good, caring, empathetic people while the politicians grandstand and talk about how next time, next time it'll be different, because we're passing X bill that does absolutely nothing but has a really progressive-sounding name. Make sure to do your part to prevent such tragedies by voting for us again and funding our political campaigns! This will continue for about a month tops before these two stories drop off the radar entirely in favor of the new big story. And crazy people will continue not to receive help and a nontrivial number of those will go on to cause all sorts of tragedies.

Pardon my cynicism, but it's hard to feel anything but disgust when nobody wants to go near the real issue because it requires a sustained and unpopular solution that costs a bit of money. And if there's one thing people hate, it's investing in something that won't have an immediate and noticeable impact.


Addendum:
I have a major problem with people demonizing the "bad guy" (in any crime). I think that kind of thinking is extremely destructive and serves only to make the person doing it feel better about themselves. Our first duty should always be to do our best to prevent bad things from happening. We need to better understand the people that do these things so we can help them before they do wrong. And yes, failures are inevitable, but in that case, our second job should be to try and fix them. It is absolutely unacceptable to just lock them in a cell and forget about them; we must study them. This is especially true for legitimately crazy people, but even people who aren't crazy, people who are just rotten, evil jerks, we should try and turn them from their ways. In doing so, we simultaneously help an obviously troubled mind and additionally learn more about why that person came to be that way, which helps with our first duty.

Now, that's not to absolve them from responsibility, not at all. Criminals absolutely should pay for their misdeeds (for their entire lives if the crime was severe enough) but they should pay in service to their victims and our job should not be finished until they are neither insane nor evil. Locking criminals up and forgetting about them does nothing to help the families of victims and only serves to make us forget what happened, something we absolutely must not do. Having those criminals work toward helping the families of the victims (financially, for example) at least does something useful for the family.

Our current system works, but not as well as it could. It could be so much more effective, if only we'd actually put some effort into understanding what causes problems in the first place. But nobody wants to work to understand criminals or fund those who do, and nobody wants to spend money or talk about bettering the system. That's what I always take away from these sort of tragedies: people really, truly just don't care.

It's like what happened in Beslan, Russia IN 2004. It's horrible that this kind of thing happens to young and innocent children :( They've harmed nobody.