Reprint: Did the Devil Take the 13-Hour Flight from China to Connecticut?

Photos of mass shootings in the US — Lewiston, ME site of latest mass shooting where killer used AR-15 type weapon

Author’s Note: I originally wrote this article right after the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012. In it, I showed the contrast of a similar incident that took place just hours before in China which had a less severe result.

Why is America the only country in the world so saturated with guns? Why do we allow civilians to purchase wartime assault weapons? How much more of these mass shootings can we stand? Now sadly, we add the quiet town of Lewiston, Maine to the list.

*The Associated Press, CNN, and other news outlets reported that on December 14, 2012, just before 8am in central China, a knife-wielding man injured 22 schoolchildren and one adult. There were no casualties, and all the victims were expected to recover. China is 13 hours ahead of the United States which means while the ordeal was taking place in China, it would have been around 7pm (EST) December 13^th in the U.S. where children were probably wrapping gifts, and helping with decorations, while visions of Christmas presents were dancing in their tiny heads.

Unfortunately, 20 American children, along with 8 adults would meet a deadlier fate just 14 hours later in Newtown Connecticut. The similarities between the two devastating incidents are uncanny: the ages of the Chinese children ranged from 6 – 11, the American children 5 – 10; both incidents happened at an elementary school in the early morning and included adults; and both suspects reportedly suffered some mental challenges.

Another strange coincidence is the timeline: it’s about a 13-hour flight from China to Connecticut, and one could wonder if it were the devil himself – bent on finishing what he started in China – who caught a flight to incarnate and shed more innocent blood on this continent. As the Sandy Hook school massacre continues to unfold it’s hard to grapple with and make any sense out of such a dastardly deed that could only have been orchestrated from the depths of hell.

Although some of those injured in China are in critical condition, it could have been a very different outcome if China had no strict gun control laws. In a CNN Hong Kong report, Dr. Ding Xueliang, a Harvard-educated sociologist at the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong said, “The huge difference between this case and the U.S. is not the suspect, nor the situation, but the simple fact he did not have an effective weapon.” Perhaps China is ahead of the United States in more ways than one.