Just a few hours before a gunman walked into a school in Connecticut on Friday and slaughtered 20 small children, a disturbed man with a knife walked into a school in China and attacked 22 pupils.

But not one was killed even though the assailant, was able to wander Chenpeng village primary in Henan province for more than half an hour, according to Chinese reports.

The stark difference in death tolls from these ostensibly similar atrocities has been greeted in China and among US supporters of gun controls as powerful evidence of the efficacy of banning guns. Firearms are almost absent from Chinese society and Chinese police do not routinely carry handguns. According to the UN office on drugs and crime, the murder rate in the US is more than four times the rate in China.