If we’ve learned nothing else from history, it’s that it will be almost impossible to stop one lone asshole (e.g. ex-Marines Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman) from doing bad things to people in a public place.
As happened in gun-free Sydney AUS over the weekend:
Authorities received calls around 3:30 p.m. local time that a knife-wielding man was attacking people at Westfield Bondi Junction, NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said during a press conference.
Footage obtained by 9News Sydney showed the suspect, wearing a gold and green rugby jersey and shorts, brandishing a long knife and approaching several horrified shoppers.
Point of interest: the “gold and green jersey” is in fact the team jersey of the Oz national rugby team Wallabies — no doubt, the OzGov should ban sale of said jerseys to prevent future events like this from happening.
Or, as Reader Mike L. suggests, the OzGov should institute commonsense knife control laws, like:
- No one needs a knife longer than 18 inches
- No one needs a knife with more than 10 serrations
- No one should be able to buy a knife more easily than borrowing a library book
- etc.
Much praise is being heaped on the “hero” Oz coppette who ventilated said stabby asshole and reduced his body temperature to the “room” setting. Doing her job, in other words, and not going all Uvalde, running away and hiding. And yes, good for her.
Of course, had a situation like this occurred in, say, Arizona, Florida or Texas, there is an equally-good chance that a Concerned Citizen would have applied the same solution as the hero Oz coppette did, perhaps even before he had a chance to stab anyone. (We call that “pre-emptive goblin disposal” — okay, “fear for one’s life”, see next post — but cops usually have to wait until the stabbing actually begins before applying the appropriate trigger pressure.)
As I write this, we don’t know why our Wallaby supporter went all Apache in the mall, but frankly it doesn’t matter because in matters of this nature, he may have had what he thought was a good reason (Oswald), or else because his head was all fucked up (Whitman).
Sic semper dementis.