The weeks surrounding, and primarily the weeks following, the MMM, I happened to notice the rather unusual reports of brutal killings, injuries, and other assaults.

I expected this sort of media attention to violence. I read that members of a church were treatened, many injured, by one man (he said that demons had taken on human form and were at the church, so the “voices” commanded him to kill them). I further read how two girls took a “weak and trusting” acquaintence of theirs and brutally murdered her. They took their “example” from another boy who killed his parents (incidently, their only stated reason for the killing? To be “famous”).

Here is the thing that caught me on all three stories: not one of these people used a gun.

Sparing you the details, I observed how the man at the church used a katana and a knife, the girls used regular kitchen and butcher knives, and their hero used a katana to decapitate his parents.

Here is the second thing that caught me about all three stories: none of them occurred in the US. They occurred, every one of them, in London.

And, of course, everyone of these people, including the police, who would have the unfortunate task of subduing sword wielding maniacs, were all defenseless.

What are my observations? Yeah, it must have been the guns.