Have you ever thought about how people used to kill each other before guns?

Thinking about the people who are seeking gun control, there seems to be a uniting thought that murder (or at least mass murder) wouldn’t happen if there weren’t guns. Yet, people have been killing each other since there have been people. (Which really seems to legitimize the old saw, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”)

But how did people do it before guns? Heck, how do they do it now without guns?

Plowing into crowds of people with your vehicle seems to be the weapon of choice these days. That, or a machete rampage through the streets or a crowded building.

There’s also chemical weapons (if you’re a dictator), or arson, which is a good way to kill a large number of people in one place. Back in the day, if you really wanted to kill a lot of people, you could just do your part in spreading whatever plague was popular at the time.

Just a token amount of research into this led me to this article from Slate, which points out that explosives killed more people per incident, 20.82, than gun assaults, 4.92. Turns out killing people with your bare hands doesn’t get the credit it deserves, either.

The common denominator here isn’t the weapon of choice, but the desire to kill. If you really want to solve murder, perhaps we should be looking at the root causes: mental health, desire for fame, environmental factors, and parenting. Gun control or not, if you have any amount of creativity, there’s always going to be a tool for the job.