On Wednesday night a fellow on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba took out a Bowie knife, stabbed his seatmate 40 times, decapitated him, brandished the head to onlookers, and then apparently went back to the body and... ate it. This incident has caused concerned citizens to discuss what they can do to prevent this sort of thing from happening in future. Some MPs have suggested the idea of a knife registry—that is, asking people to register every knife they own with some sort of new government agency.
Clearly, that's a great idea, but I'm not sure whether it goes far enough in its attempt to eliminate all danger from all aspects of life. I mean, sure, there are a lot of knives out there. Just yesterday I appeared on my front porch with three razor-edged implements: Two butcher knives and one paring knife. Conceivably, I could have done any number of really bad things with these kitchen tools. I didn't; in fact, I was attempting to get them sharpened by the guy who drives around my neighborhood in a van, ringing a bell and stopping and sharpening knives for just anybody. At the low cost of $5 / knife that means there were a lot of people yesterday going around Little Portugal with newly sharpened knives. Which was a scary thing to contemplate. Did decapitation stats increase in Metro Toronto police's 14 Division? I don't know that for a fact. But they could have. They could have. And that's the point; that's why we need a knife registry. Too many people going around with implements that could cause other people harm.
Like I said, however, the prospect of further random violence got me thinking about another potentially dangerous implement that could be used to inflict harm: Hands. These "hands" are complex anatomical mechanisms on the extreme end of a persons' arms. They can be flattened to deliver a chop or a slap, or, more devastatingly, hands can be clenched to make a fist, which is then used to punch, usually other people's faces. Hands can also choke. And particularly cruel perpetrators have been known to use a hand's thumb and forefinger to do that flicking thing where the attacker gets the hand really close to the victim's ear and then flicks the ear lobe. That fricking hurts. To avoid the possibility of this sort of unpleasantness, the federal government should immediately take steps to create and maintain a hand registry that tracks all potential and future fists of fury.
Finally, the federal government should move immediately to conduct a feasibility study examining the possibility of screening passengers for hands on any public transportation. Not just buses—we're talking passenger trains, subways, streetcars: You name it. And until that happens, I'm going to think twice before taking any sort of transportation that puts me next to anyone else with hands. Because other people are crazy. This decapitation thing, it just goes to show: You can never be too careful.
Excellent post Chris. You might like what I wrote about responsibility: http://davidphillips.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/i_blame_you.html
Posted by: David | August 12, 2008 at 09:49 AM