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Sword attack

arcticpenguin said:
with items from store shelves such as barbecue utensils and rubbish can lids
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Soon to inspire a major film starring Jackie Chan...
 
Pool Boy often has to travel with a sword for his second job. Even before 9-11 he had a time carrying it on. Since it was his fathers sword he will never check it, plus, what do you put it in? Usually a friendly former flyboy is in the cockpit so it flies with the crew. But now he has the fun of walking through the airport with it. (It does have a case, but you can tell what is in there).
 
ginsu wedding

Just think, if these had been my jelous old boyfriends, this could have made the evening news.
 
mjv said:
Thank goodness someone showed up with a hand gun and stopped his murderous rampage. Darned if those things don't come in handy sometimes...

Maybe we should ban swords...because there can be only one...purpose for them.
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Of course if he had gone about it properly and turned up with several handguns, he might have managed a far better score then two! That's hardly going to get him on the high score table, is it?
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:


Of course if he had gone about it properly and turned up with several handguns, he might have managed a far better score then two! That's hardly going to get him on the high score table, is it?
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Handguns!!!

To do the thing properly you need an assault rifle. A sword... In the US!... Well really!.... He just wasn't trying and nobody in the US likes a loser.

Personally I think it was a cry for help.
 
I talked about this at work today, I had this mental image of a fruitcake with a kamikaze head band charging around the store swinging a katana.

I was thinking, what if a group of shoppers stating hurling cans of beans at this guy. I think getting hit in the face with a can of beans would be quite painful. If the beans didn't work you could slow him down by throwing molasses at him (or bleach).

I guess if it were a Ginsu katana it would be able to slice through the can of beans and still be sharp enough to dismember a shopper.

It is sad that 2 people died, but it is very funny is a sick sort of way.
 
It's time we outlaw swords. There is no constitutional guarantee of a right to bear swords! I say we collect them all for our safety.

Or not. :)
 
3-toed-sloth said:
I talked about this at work today, I had this mental image of a fruitcake with a kamikaze head band charging around the store swinging a katana.

I was thinking, what if a group of shoppers stating hurling cans of beans at this guy. I think getting hit in the face with a can of beans would be quite painful. If the beans didn't work you could slow him down by throwing molasses at him (or bleach).

I guess if it were a Ginsu katana it would be able to slice through the can of beans and still be sharp enough to dismember a shopper.

It is sad that 2 people died, but it is very funny is a sick sort of way.
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It depends what aisle you are standing in when it happens. I can't imagine that the feminine hygiene products aisle would be all that useful for defending oneself from a sword attack. On the other hand, if you were in household cleaners, a bottle full of ammonia would be a stunning defense.
 
People get scared, and sometimes so scared that they fail to act rationally. I doubt that any of the injured and killed every trained for such a scenario. When scared, people will not handle situations that they haven't trained for very well.
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:


Of course if he had gone about it properly and turned up with several handguns, he might have managed a far better score then two! That's hardly going to get him on the high score table, is it?
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Probably not as satisfying to the kid as killing with a sword was. Someone like this is very scary, as with a gun it's easy to distance one's self from the act. With a sword or any melee weapon, killing is more personal and intimate.
 
Yeah, just as well he didn't have firearms.

One big difference between a sword and a firearm (for those obsessed with people's right to keep them) is that swords can generally only hurst people within a couple of metres of you. Firearms can hurt people hundreds of metres away. Therefore the potential number of victims is greatly reduced.

Sorry, I'm not in the mood to see the funny side of stories like this.
 
Amen Byzantine Magpie!

I have never been in a real sword fight, although I have fought several times with stout wood swords without wearing any sort of protective gear. Once I had to wrestle a gun away from someone who was about to commit suicide, and I can tell you that these sorts of things are extremely scary.

So I can only imagine the level of fear the poor people who had to face this psycho, therefore I also refuse to make jokes about this event.
 
I just keep picturing Lancelot's saga in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and laughing my behind off. I'm sorry if this makes me insensitive... I just can't help it.
 
Crossbow said:

So I can only imagine the level of fear the poor people who had to face this psycho, therefore I also refuse to make jokes about this event.
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I'm sure it was traumatic, and it was sad, and people died, and yet I insist on my right to make jokes. It's a means of coping.

Maybe you could climb to the top of the shelves and lob bags of charcoal down on him.
 
arcticpenguin said:

I'm sure it was traumatic, and it was sad, and people died, and yet I insist on my write to make jokes. It's a means of coping.

Maybe you could climb to the top of the shelves and lob bags of charcoal down on him.
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Well AP, maybe we just have different ways of coping.

There is approximately 6 to 8 liters of blood in the average human body and the person who was decapitated probably spilled all of his on the floor of that grocery store.

Imagine for a moment going to your grocery store isle where they sell two-liter bottles of soda products. Anyone ever see the mess that results when one of those bottles falls to the floor and breaks open? I have: it makes a big puddle, the floor gets sticky, the stuff gets on your shoes which in turn make a good bit noise when walking around getting the rest of the groceries, the wheels of the cart make long tracks, and so on.

Now imagine that if three or four of those bottles were filled with blood and all of then fell to the floor and broke open. That was just one of the things that happened on that day.
 
Crossbow said:

[...]

Now imagine that if three or four of those bottles were filled with blood and all of then fell to the floor and broke open. That was just one of the things that happened on that day.
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Dude, I was having such a lovely day until I read that. :(
 
Frostbite said:


Dude, I was having such a lovely day until I read that. :(
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Sorry about that!

I was getting the distinct impression that my earlier posts were not being understood.
 
some employees, arming with items from store shelves such as barbecue utensils and rubbish can lids, tried to defend themselves
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Why didn't anyone hurl a can of soup at this clown? A well-shaken can of coke can be a deadly weapon.

BBQ utensils!

These people are asking for death against even a replica katana.
 
As one who practices Medieval/Renassaince sword arts quite extensively (And its nothing like Role Playing/Monty Python/or any movie ever made portray it to be) I find this incident unfortunate. Its happened several times in the past few years, and because its quite unusual always makes the headlines. It also elicits a knee-jerk ban swords outcry. For every pyscho out there there are 100's of responsible owners and practioners out there that own and use these items responsibly. In cases of people like me doing test cuts on various items to try and get a sense of how our anscestors used these weapons, and how exactly the techniques were employed. Its like Gun registration, its a grey area. I would have no problem registering any of my bladed weapons if I thought in reality it would actually make society a safer place. But as with gun registration, this just isn't always the case in practice.

Heavy cans and other things might have been used for defense (and probably quite effectively so) but as mentioned, most people either freeze, or just run, in the face of situations like this. It wouldn't have to be an authentic blade persay. While it would be very likely to break within a few hits of real targets a crappy replica would still work if he knew how to swing it right. The shape of the blade and speed do most of the work in cutting with swords.

I also agree with the sentiment that if he was more mentally unstable, using a melee weapon would very much more satisfy that kind of urge. Two main reasons why ranged weapons came more and more into the fore is because they could kill more effectively and from a distance, and also you could train more people to kill others from a distance rather than close up. Getting splattered with your foes blood and seeing the up close results of what you're weapon can do to the human body require a much different and more unique mindset than the alternative.

While I can appreciate the humour of some people, I also agree with Crossbow, knowing what the effects of these weapons would have made that scene look like is more than grisly, and I feel very sorry for anyone who lost someone to this incident. On the other hand I also regret it because it ends up being another hurdle that serious practioners and serious students of the arts have to overcome to justify what they do.
 
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