TLDR: In recent years, as China has suffered from an economic downturn, the rate of random mass attacks has soared. After three random mass killings unfolded in Chinese coastal cities in the last two weeks, some people on social media echoed the official line of harsh punishment, while others called for freedom of expression so that people could express their grievances and the authorities could address their pain in time.
Some also suggested economic reform to boost the employment rate and policy reform, such as social welfare and labour laws, to improve working conditions. In short, people need to see hope for their future.
[…]
However, as anticipated, the Chinese authorities are fixated on their standard social control handbook. While social profiling is common in China through it’s social credit system, on Weibo, many said that the Chinese Communist Party’s grassroots branches have started profiling residents into additional categories, namely, “4-without” (四無) and “5-failure” (五失).
The “4-without” are those without a spouse and children, job and regular income, normal social connections, and assets like property and cars. The “5-failure” are those who “fail” in their investments, lives, relationships, and suffer from mental illness.
**The party branches were told to pay special attention to people labelled “4-without” and “5-failure” as they are assumed to have nothing to lose, and thus might be more likely to harm society. **
However, such a measure won’t relieve the social strain. One social media user pointed out that the two social groups are victims of an unjust system and need assistance, rather than further social labels and control.
Having them screened out, and then what, put in jail? [People labelled] 4-without and 5-failure have not broken the law, and almost all of them are in need of economic assistance. The CCP does not have a comprehensive social welfare system, so how can it let these people who are in trouble get through their difficulties? The CCP keeps giving local governments money to solve their debt crisis, and it keeps pumping money into the stability maintenance system, but it is not willing to spend any money to solve the real problem! Shouldn’t the CCP know which is more effective: damming or dredging the river?
For context, the US with estimates at about 10 mass shootings (only) in one week with a fraction of the population size.
Well there is this thing called a trend. In China the line is starting to go up and it will keep going up until people are helped to the point where they dont feel like commiting mass killings.
This is also a nice reminder that guns are only a small part of the problem. If people want to kill, they will kill. The solution is not disarming the population. This is just an easy political diversion to keep the topic of discussion away from the root problem.
Yes, and in addition to that, I wouldn’t trust official Chinese data too much given negative developments are being censored. any international comparison of official numbers are not meaningful imo. No one knows how much of devastating incidents really happen in China.
Agreed on the first part, hard disagree on the second part.
If you really think a person with one knife can kill as many people as with a or even multiple guns then you are seriously indoctrinated by the 2A bullshit.
Yes, if someone wants to kill people, they will nearly always succeed just due to the element of surprise. But one person with a knife is much more limited in reach and therefore easier to be stopped than somebody with a gun. Which equals to less dead people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_stabbing#2024_Shanghai_Supermarket_Stabbing
If you believe this article, mass stabbings average about 4-5 deaths and 2-3 times that amount injured. Sure that might be less than the average mass shooting but also numbers are irrelevant. The fact that we have people with the intent to do this is the issue.
You can easily kill 100 people with a car but we dont ban cars because of that (maybe we should for other reasons tho). I dont like guns and i dont think they are necessary, but trying to take away guns from people will not solve the problem at all.
Yes and no.
You could do a lot of things, but I haven’t heard of somebody killing 30 people or more in one incidence with a car.
And of fucking course I don’t just want to take away the guns, but provide mental help, social security nets and other things which target the underlying reason.
Still doesn’t change the fact that guns should not be easy to get and not be for everybody.
And additionally: Numbers are very important. Why don’t we allow people to have tanks?
Edit: changed the whole comment, because for me it only showed the first link in the beginning and not the rest of your explanation.
To your first point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack
To me and probably most people it is irrelevant what they get killed by. I dont think anyone prefers being scared to go outside because of knives over being scared to go outside because of guns. The effect is the same, the end of the belief in the social contract.
Question. Do military soldiers go into combat with guns or knives? (Don’t say both, you understand my point).
You aren’t ever going to fully irradicate the problem, the point is making the barrier to entry prohibitively high so the amount and severity of these mass attacks goes down.
There is no acceptable level of indiscriminate violence. Society functions based on the mutual trust that the people walking past you wont randomly attack you. Admitting that the only solution is to make people have less killing potential means that we have given up on the concept of society.
Alright, let’s go in the other direction. Let’s give everyone the nuke launch codes. Admitting that the only solution is a very select few have them is admitting we’ve given up on society.
Ah yes a totally nonsensical off topic straw man. Love to see it. The things i mentioned are very real and not fictional hypotheticals. But i guess thats typical for this topic. Lots of ifs and maybes about this and that but nobody actually wants to look further than an arms reach. I guess the truth that some issues cant be solved with “banning things” is too hard to bear. Just banning things has never ever worked for things like this.
It’s not off topic. It’s only nonsense to you because it isn’t normalized like gun violence in the United States. We can even scale it back… Let’s say mortor rounds and shoulder fired missile/grenade weapons are fully legalized with similar restrictions as current gun laws. What do you think happens then?
You think all that pent up anger would be better suited in the hands of a population with guns?
Damn, are you a ventrilloquist? because you said the words, but implied they came out of someone else’s mouth! Fascinating.
Both is bad, this isn’t a sport.
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I didn’t realize this was an argument? I’m just contextualizing the stats in the article relative to what an English speaking website would be familiar with.