In a message dated 6/11/01 7:58:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< I think the point was that two killers in Colorado armed with multiple
firearms and explosives killed 13 and injured 23, while one man in Japan
armed with a knife killed 8 and injured 15, i.e., _two_ people with
firearms caused about 1 1/2 times as many casualties as _one_ man with a
knife, which does _not_ support the hypothesis that a person armed with
modern firearms is necessarily likely to kill many more people than a
person in the same situation armed with a knife, since in this case the
number of victims per killer was smaller for the killers using firearms
than for that one using a knife. >>
It's my (possibly incorrect) recollection that none of the explosives
actually went off, so I disregarded those.
In any case, I wasn't arguing the point, just supplying the pertinent data.
I found the judgment on whether it's "a few more" or "a lot more" too
subjective to try to offer an argument for one or the other. :)
As you note, it's difficult to draw a firm conclusion based on just these two
cases. For example, were most of the casualties in both cases killed in
classrooms, where you have a large number of people in close quarters with
only one easily blocked exit? As I recall, some of the people at Columbine HS
were killed in the library and halls, and others outside the school, where
people presumably had a better chance to run away and/or hide than inside a
classroom. But I'm not up on all the details of both killings.
Patrick Sweeney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
