ADD A BAN ON KNIVES, CLEAVERS AND HAMMERS TO ABSOLUTE GUN CONTROL

China probably has the strictest gun control laws in the world. Only the military and the police are allowed to possess firearms. There is an absolute ban on the possession of guns by civilians. That has not prevented the mass murders and wounding of young school children and their teachers in the country.

Here are some excerpts from the Associated Press report on the killings:

An attacker with a cleaver hacked to death seven children and two adults at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, the latest in a string of savage assaults on the country's schools. Eleven other children were wounded.

The killer, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, returned home after the attack on the outskirts of the city of Hanzhong and committed suicide, the local government reported. A motive wasn't known, although reports indicated he and the school administrator may have known each other.

It was the fifth such major assault on young students in China since late March and occurred despite increased security at schools countrywide, with gates and security cameras installed and additional police and guards posted at entrances. Thus far, seventeen have been killed and nearly 100 children and teachers have been wounded.

The string of school assaults began with an attack on a primary school in March in the city of Nanping in Fujian province where eight children were slashed to death by a former community clinic doctor with a history of mental health problems.

The man convicted for that crime was executed on April 28, the same day a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the southern city of Leizhou in Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife.

The following day in Taixing city in Jiangsu province, a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an 8-inch knife wounded 29 kindergarten students — five seriously — plus two teachers and a security guard. Just hours later, a farmer hit five elementary students with a hammer in the eastern city of Weifang before burning himself to death.