In search of a consensus on "terrorism"

[GGT]

Is there something particularly mystical about this machete that made it more dangerous and destructive than say a butcher's cleaver, a golf club, or a crowbar?

Ever seen a machete? Ever seen a machete wielded at your middle school teacher and chop off her fingers? No, probably not. If you had, you wouldn't compare it to a butcher knife, golf club or crowbar.

[Enoch the Red]

Ever seen a machete? Ever seen a machete wielded at your middle school teacher and chop off her fingers? No, probably not. If you had, you wouldn't compare it to a butcher knife, golf club or crowbar.

I somehow think that it's the assault on the teacher that would have the lasting impact on the students, not the particular implement that was used. If somebody staved the teacher's head in with a crowbar in front of a class of middle school aged children you think that it would be somehow better than if they saw their teacher got his/her fingers chopped off with a MACHETE?

That when the students got home their parents would say, "Thank God that madman didn't use a MACHETE! That would just be barbaric."