Mass stabbing in Scotland leaves three dead before police shoot and kill the attacker.

An armed police officer at the scene of the incident. BBC News/PA Media.

A mass stabbing in Scotland has left three people dead and the attacker shot and killed. BBC. The attack occurred in Glasgow in the stairwell of a hotel. An armed police officer shot and killed the suspect, while one of the responding officers was injured in the attack. At least four people were taken away in ambulances. The death toll is initial and may rise and no information on the suspect or his motives are available. 

Live updates for this attack are available from The Scotsman

My Comment:

Another mass stabbing in the UK, this time in Scotland. Earlier this week they had another mass stabbing, in Reading, that also left three people dead. In that post I said that more attacks like this are likely due to them being very easy to pull off and basically everyone, even in the UK, has access to knives. 

It looks like officers put this attacker down using violence. The Reading attacker they were able to capture but it doesn't look like this guy was able to be arrested. He had already stabbed one cop so I am guessing the armed officer had no other choice. Honestly, I'm not going to lose any sleep over a guy getting shot after he killed at least three people. 

I won't speculate too much on motive. Terrorism is obviously very likely but we shouldn't jump to conclusions. It could have been an Islamic terror attack but it also could have been for any number of other causes as well. And we can't rule out that this is just some random psycho trying to murder as many people as possible. It's not like mass stabbings are exclusively the domain of Islamic terrorists, as China knows all too well. 

I've always found mass stabbings to be more disturbing than mass shootings. Yes, the potential for deaths in a mass shooting is usually higher, but there is something fairly frightening about someone willing to kill someone in close range like this. Whatever the motive was in this case I have to say that it's a very disturbing incident. 

There hasn't been as many mass terror attacks/spree killings lately. There was the major one in Canada recently, but other than that and a few mass stabbings there hasn't been much. I think the Coronavirus has helped with this a lot, despite the obvious downsides of that situation. It's a lot harder to cause a mass casualty attack when everyone is at home. Plus, many of the drivers of mass attacks, such as Islamic terrorism, are not the threat they used to be. Still, whatever the motive in this case, it shows the threat from this kind of violence has not entirely disappeared.