Japanese Mafia Responsible for Two Gun Murders in Two Days

Opinione

Japan Daily Press reports the latest incident involving the yukuza in the southern island of Kyushu.

The head of one of Japan’s fishing unions was shot dead on Friday in the southern city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. This was the second fatal gun-related incident in as many days in a country that is not used to violent crimes that involve firearms.

Rare Negligent Discharge in Japan

Opinione

The inability of the 25 year old Japanese man to judge that the object he was holding was in fact an operating firearm with genuine ammunition is a consequence of a man living in a society where individual thought is frowned upon and people tend to follow the rules regardless of how inane they are.

The 25 year old teacher who put the bullets into the firearm thinking it was a toy, believed it was a toy because it is very difficult to own a firearm in Japan and so the teacher thought that since it was so difficult to get a firearm, than the object he was holding was in fact a very real looking toy gun.

 FUKUOKA—A middle school teacher in Kasuya, Fukuoka Prefecture, fired a revolver he had confiscated from a student in the teachers’ room, according to police.

The police quoted the teacher as saying he did not believe the gun was real. Nobody was injured in the incident.

According to the police and the school, the 25-year-old teacher and others found the student had brought an action figure into the classroom last Wednesday. The teacher inspected the student’s belongings and found the gun and what appeared to be live bullets. The teacher then put the items in the teachers’ room.

Japan Murder Rate

Index Mundi

The value for Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) in Japan was 0.40 as of 2009. As the graph below shows, over the past 14 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 0.57 in 1998 and a minimum value of 0.40 in 2009.

Year	Value
1995	0.54
1996	0.49
1997	0.54
1998	0.57
1999	0.54
2000	0.51
2001	0.51
2002	0.48
2003	0.55
2004	0.55
2005	0.51
2006	0.49
2007	0.45
2008	0.51
2009	0.40

Dear Mr. TS, This is called a reverse correlation. Very few guns - very low murder rate.

Gun Control in Japan

Eric Talmadge, Associated Press

Though its gun ownership rates are tiny compared to the United States, Japan has more than 120,000 registered gun owners and more than 400,000 registered firearms. So why is there so little gun violence?

"We have a very different way of looking at guns in Japan than people in the United States," said Tsutomu Uchida, who runs the Kanagawa Ohi Shooting Range, an Olympic-style training center for rifle enthusiasts. "In the U.S., people believe they have a right to own a gun. In Japan, we don't have that right. So our point of departure is completely different."

Treating gun ownership as a privilege and not a right leads to some important policy differences.
First, anyone who wants to get a gun must demonstrate a valid reason why they should be allowed to do so. Under longstanding Japanese policy, there is no good reason why any civilian should have a handgun, so - aside from a few dozen accomplished competitive shooters - they are completely banned.

Virtually all handgun-related crime is attributable to gangsters, who obtain them on the black market. But such crime is extremely rare and when it does occur, police crack down hard on whatever gang is involved, so even gangsters see it as a last-ditch option.

Rifle ownership is allowed for the general public, but tightly controlled.

Applicants first must go to their local police station and declare their intent. After a lecture and a written test comes range training, then a background check. Police likely will even talk to the applicant's neighbors to see if he or she is known to have a temper, financial troubles or an unstable household. A doctor must sign a form saying the applicant has not been institutionalized and is not epileptic, depressed, schizophrenic, alcoholic or addicted to drugs.

Gun owners must tell the police where in the home the gun will be stored. It must be kept under lock and key, must be kept separate from ammunition, and preferably chained down. It's legal to transport a gun in the trunk of a car to get to 1 of the country's few shooting ranges, but if the driver steps away from the vehicle and gets caught, that's a violation.

Suicides in Japan

Wikipedia has the following report:

Suicide has never been criminalized in Japan. Japanese society's attitude toward suicide has been termed "tolerant", and on many occasions a suicide is seen as a morally responsible action. However, the rise of Internet suicide websites and increasing rate of suicide pacts (shinjū) has raised concern from the public and media, which consider the pacts "thoughtless"

Public discussion of the high rate of suicide focuses on blaming the economic hardship faced by middle-aged men. In addition, increase in Internet use (particularly the suicide websites) is partially blamed for the increase in suicide in recent years

During Japan's imperial years, suicide was common within the military. This included kamikaze, kaiten and suicide when a battle is lost.

And this, also from Wiki about Seppuku, the formal name for hari kari.

Seppuku as judicial punishment was officially abolished in 1873, shortly after the Meiji Restoration, but voluntary seppuku did not completely die out. Dozens of people are known to have committed seppuku since then, including some military men who committed suicide in 1895 as a protest against the return of a conquered territory to China; by General Nogi and his wife on the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912; and by numerous soldiers and civilians who chose to die rather than surrender at the end of World War II.

In 1970, famed author Yukio Mishima and one of his followers committed public seppuku at the Japan Self-Defense Forces headquarters after an unsuccessful attempt to incite the armed forces to stage a coup d'état. Mishima committed seppuku in the office of General Kanetoshi Mashita. His second, a 25-year-old named Masakatsu Morita, tried three times to ritually behead Mishima but failed; his head was finally severed by Hiroyasu Koga. Morita then attempted to commit seppuku himself. Although his own cuts were too shallow to be fatal, he gave the signal and he too was beheaded by Koga.

All of this is in response to AztecRed's one word comment earlier today. Whenever we discuss gun suicides in the U.S., you can be sure the pro-gun crowd will bring up Japan.

It would be hard to find a worse comparison. Totally lacking in American culture is the honorable notion of suicide which has always been so prevalent in Japan. Completely missing are the samurai warriors and the kamakaze pilots, the centuries of art and literature that elevate the act of suicide to something absolutely foreign to Americans.

So, please, stop with the comparisons to Japan every time we mention suicide. I ask this out of respect for common sense and logical thinking, and in spite of what Sebastian explained, I have nothing to offer in return.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.