Drops of Blood on School Bags

On Wednesday, a student shocked an America used to school violence, with indiscriminate stabbing. In a high school in Pittsburgh, children were as usual going to their classrooms in the morning, when a 10th-grade student began stabbing children around him. Before he could be stopped, he moved into the hall injuring students as he went. It took half an hour to control him; during this time, he had injured 20 students, all between 14 and 17 years old. Although police arrested the attacker immediately, no information about the reasons behind this attack has been released.

It had been confirmed that a knife was used. However, no information is available on what kind of knife it was or how the attacker got his hands on it. Incidents of school violence in America have increased to dangerous limits. Usage of a knife in this case is a new thing. Usually, we hear about incidents involving indiscriminate gunfire. In such an incident in 2012, 20 first-grade students and six school employees lost their lives.

Such incidents have become so common in America that there were 359,000 incidents of school violence in the year 2010. Of these, 91,400 were reported as serious violent incidents. In all respects, these figures paste a terrifying picture of American society. The environment associated with raising these children is definitely behind this, but easy access to weapons is also an issue. However, the biggest factor is that the U.S. Congress has not been able to even make the slightest move on President Obama’s attempt to improve the situation by stopping the open sale of such weapons. The major obstacle for this is considered to be the powerful arms lobby in the country, the lure of whose funding and votes cannot be ignored by any party.