What is up with Security in China's Schools?

Almost everyday this week, I am seeing articles or news stories about children in China either getting stabbed or hit with a hammer. Each time I come across something like this, I am left bewildered at how can someone do something so heinous? What types of preventive measures are being put in place to keep this from happening again? This is something that should be very alarming as it is preschool and elementary school aged kids getting seriously hurt and it needs to stop. There have been five such attacks in a months' span and Chinese authorities are at least stepping up security at schools but the number of schools versus police or security force can't be everywhere as they lack the manpower.

According to this video, the increase in attacks is primarily due to the enormous pressure put on people to succeed in China. Seriously? These attackers feel that the best way to stop it is to attack where the pressure all starts, in preschool or kindergarten. I really doubt that they are thinking, " I will help these children so they will not have to feel the pressure put on us later on life", and then go kill them. There is no excuse to attack defenseless little kids who have done nothing wrong. They are innocent children who worry about losing their favorite bouncy ball or where their stuffed animal is when they go to bed at night. To me, this is absolutely ludicrous.

One of the people who had killed eight elementary students on March 23rd, Zheng Minsheng, has already been convicted and killed by a firing squad on April 28th. I do greatly appreciate the swift trial, but they really need to do more to protect the children, rather than speeding up the trial and shooting them. He told the media that he wanted revenge on the "rich" and "powerful". Killing children is no way to make a point.

Another important factor based on the information in the video about and the article is that some authorities believe that the increase in these incidents is due to the "copycat" effect when something like this happens and it is relayed by mass media. We had the same thing happen here in the US similar to when we had the Columbine incident a few years ago, and I believe that people do try to copy other events. We saw a surge in school shootings after the news media continued to play it over and over again such as Virginia Tech and numerous other high schools. Unfortunately for us, it took a lot of innocent lives to beef up security in schools across the nation and it has been some time between incidents.

Hopefully China will be able to come up with effective ways to combat these types of instances happening. In China, they have one of the toughest gun laws in the world, forbidding ownership outside of the police or military. As unfortunate it is for the kids to be stabbed and be in pain, they will at least recover slowly, but being shot would have been worse and the amount of deaths would have been higher. Too bad the US won't be as strict as China. A lot of lives could have been saved.