There are hundreds of comments (thanks to a bit of Farkage) on this rather disturbing CBC story about a man who suddenly stabbed and killed (and decapitated) a sleeping fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus.

The comments are all debating three different topics:

1. What should the passengers have done? Some say they should have intervened, even at personal risk:
   

   37 adults could not stop this poor child from getting decapitated. 37 adults chose to cowardly permit a haneous murder right under their noses. These 37 cowards may have saved a few scratches on their skin to lose their souls.

   Many many more sane people say that a large man with a large knife in an insane homicidal rage can’t be safely disarmed on a bus by civilians. As it is they barely escaped serious injury.

2. Should the death penalty be brought back for cases like this? This debate, tied somewhat with the debate on how mentally ill criminals should be treated (and whether or not the man in question was mentally ill), doesn’t deal with the facts in this case much.
3. Should we allow concealed weapons on buses? Gun control can’t possibly not be a debate here, even though no guns were involved. My favourite comment:
   

   If Canadians were permitted concealed carry of firearms, one of the other passengers would have plugged that psychopath before he had the chance to cut the poor victim’s head off. Just another example of Canada’s soccer mom gun laws working against the interests of honest citizens.

   See if that guy tries to ever cut MY head off… staring at the barrel of my .357

   Never bring a knife to a gun fight, psychoboy.

   That sounds like rock-solid logic. (Unless of course the psychopath had a concealed firearm and killed his victim in one shot, leading to the same result.)

4. Should police have shot to kill once they got on scene? The victim had already been decapitated by this point, so I guess the odds of recovery were slim. But some people seem to think that summary police execution is justified in cases like this.
   

   What I really wonder about is why didn’t the police shoot the perpetrator as soon as they could? With that many witnesses, the perpetrator showing off the head of his victim, the amount of blood that had to be on the scene,would there be any need for court to determine his guilt?

   Others suggest that’s not a very rational way of thinking:

   There should be some minimum age or education required to post on this news site. How many more people are going to say that we just kill this guy without a trial? What the hell country do you think you are living in?

5. Should we install metal detectors in bus terminals? How far do we want to go to ensure our safety? This far?
   

   Never mind the metal detectors. We can’t be safe until we are all locked up so we can’t harm others or harm ourselves.

   Think how much safety would be improved on planes and buses if we were handcuffed to our chairs by security guards while in transit. This would stop every assault and every hijacking attempt on an aircraft or bus.

   Perhaps the human equivalents of pet carriers are what is needed to ensure our safety. Any time we go out in public, we can be locked into a sort of rolling sarcophagus, and can be wheeled around wherever we need to go by security guards.

   These kinds of measures may seem extreme, but no sacrifice is too great to make for safety.

There. Now you don’t have to spend hours reading the comments.

UPDATE: 1,500 comments and counting in under 24 hours.