I CAN'T STAND IT! I CAN'T STAND! I JUST CAN'T STAND!

[blacknblue]

Warning. Fervent ranting and inappropriate language ahead. Do not read further if you are easily offended.
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Second Warning. I am serious. Major Ranting ahead. It is entirely possible that this thread may be removed after I post it. If so, I will accept the mods decision and not complain. But I am unable to restrain myself. Again, the ranting below contains language that is inappropriate for children or people of tender sensibilities.
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Okay. You have all probably heard about this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/ap_ ... CR5Q.s0NUE

A young man in Tokyo killed seven people with a knife. He apparently drove his truck into the crowd and then jumped out, stabbing people at random. He wanted to die and take as many people with him as he could.

From the Associated Press:

"...Tomohiro Kato, the 25-year-old man accused of ramming pedestrians with a truck and then stabbing 17 bystanders in Tokyo's popular Akihabara district on Sunday, posted the messages on an Internet bulletin board from his cell phone, a police spokesman said.

The police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol, refused to release the Internet messages, but news reports said they were posted in a message board thread titled, "I will kill people in Akihabara," hours before the stabbings.

"I want to crash the vehicle and, if it becomes useless, I will then use a knife. Goodbye, everyone," Kyodo News agency quoted one message as saying.

That was followed several hours later, the report said, by a chilling message sent via cell phone that read: "It's time." The attack began 20 minutes later..."

Straightforward enough. It seems like yet another of the same type of thing we have seen over here. A deeply troubled young man who slipped through the cracks. A sick mind, a lonely, hurting youth who buckled under the pressure of his damaged brain and finally exploded into killing madness. Like other mass murderers, he gave plenty of warning beforehand if only someone had been there to give a damn. Tragedy. And to me it is ALMOST as bad - almost but not quite as bad - to realize that this could have been prevented as seeing it happen at all.

But now we reach the part that has set me off. This is where my reactor reaches critical mass.

From later in the same article linked above:

"...Government officials scrambled to respond. The ruling coalition held an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to come up with ways to secure crowded public spaces, and the government is considering limiting access to large knives like the one used on Sunday.

'Obviously, the suspect possessed the knife without a legitimate reason," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said. "I think we have to seriously consider what we can do to step up the restrictions.'..."
[/i]

Here we go folks. Brace yourselves.


Holy F*cking BULLSHIT!!!

I have never in my entire LIFE heard such miserably insensate imbecility from out of the mouth of a g*ddam politician! Did it never occur to these brain dead inbred cretins that if everyone in that crowd had been carrying a gun this twerp's stabbing rampage would have lasted approximately thirteen seconds? For that matter, if everyone, or even ANYONE in that crowd had been carrying a SWORD that rampage would have been cut short (pun intended).

If anyone had been carrying a baseball bat Mr. BooHoo-Poor-Me-I-Am-Tired-Of-Living-Even-Though-I-Am-Young-And-Healthy would have been woefully disappointed in the impact he made... when he hit the M*th**f**k**g pavement!

But in all fairness, these lollypop licking refugees from preschool that are apparently responsible for passing laws in Japan will have some effect on future crime. The next mass stabber will need to use a long screwdriver.

Or perhaps he will need to peel a piece of sheet metal off the body of a car, or the case of a computer, or a refrigerator, or some other appliance, and wrap the end of it in duct tape in order to turn it into a deadly weapon. This is certain to slow him down by at least fifteen minutes. Perhaps even half an hour. A worthy goal indeed.

And of course, lest anyone doubt that weapon control laws are the way to go, the latest figures from the FBI:

http://thenorthernlight.canadaeast.com/article/320130

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ... 90411/1361

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/09/crime.report/

"...Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr told the AP the report "suggests that violent crime is decreasing and remains near historic low levels, which is a credit to increased cooperation among federal, state and local law enforcement.'..."

Note that over the last few years, gun ownership in the USA is on the rise.

I supposed the people in Japan will need to eat their sushi "on the hoof" so to speak now. Since there will no longer be any legal way to skin or slice it. Alas.

[Distracted]

Whew!

Okay, BnB... take a deep cleansing breath.

Japan is not the US. There is a very long tradition there of limiting weapons to only those members of the populace who need to use them. This is why karate was invented. The idea of limiting access to knives above a certain size or of a certain type to only those people with a legitimate reason to own them is perfectly reasonable if taken within the cultural context.

Would it have prevented this boy from killing everyone if he were sufficiently determined? No.

Is it a useless response? Maybe.

Consider the culture, though. The suicide rate in Japan has always been very high. Suicide was for a long time considered an honorable way to die, and perfectly acceptable, if not socially REQUIRED in certain circumstances. One killed oneself, though, not others. The "take as many people out with you as possible" idea was frowned upon except in time of war. So if we remove the large knives from a mentally disturbed person's environment, will he change his focus, or go build his own homemade weapon? I don't know. It seems likely, though, that if it were made more difficult for him to arm himself he might have changed his mind and just killed himself instead of committing mass murder. That way, he dies honorably.

[TPoptarts]

[Elessar]

Warning. Fervent ranting and inappropriate language ahead. Do not read further if you are easily offended.
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Second Warning. I am serious. Major Ranting ahead. It is entirely possible that this thread may be removed after I post it. If so, I will accept the mods decision and not complain. But I am unable to restrain myself. Again, the ranting below contains language that is inappropriate for children or people of tender sensibilities.
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Okay. You have all probably heard about this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/ap_ ... CR5Q.s0NUE

A young man in Tokyo killed seven people with a knife. He apparently drove his truck into the crowd and then jumped out, stabbing people at random. He wanted to die and take as many people with him as he could.

From the Associated Press:

"...Tomohiro Kato, the 25-year-old man accused of ramming pedestrians with a truck and then stabbing 17 bystanders in Tokyo's popular Akihabara district on Sunday, posted the messages on an Internet bulletin board from his cell phone, a police spokesman said.

The police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol, refused to release the Internet messages, but news reports said they were posted in a message board thread titled, "I will kill people in Akihabara," hours before the stabbings.

"I want to crash the vehicle and, if it becomes useless, I will then use a knife. Goodbye, everyone," Kyodo News agency quoted one message as saying.

That was followed several hours later, the report said, by a chilling message sent via cell phone that read: "It's time." The attack began 20 minutes later..."

Straightforward enough. It seems like yet another of the same type of thing we have seen over here. A deeply troubled young man who slipped through the cracks. A sick mind, a lonely, hurting youth who buckled under the pressure of his damaged brain and finally exploded into killing madness. Like other mass murderers, he gave plenty of warning beforehand if only someone had been there to give a damn. Tragedy. And to me it is ALMOST as bad - almost but not quite as bad - to realize that this could have been prevented as seeing it happen at all.

But now we reach the part that has set me off. This is where my reactor reaches critical mass.

From later in the same article linked above:

"...Government officials scrambled to respond. The ruling coalition held an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to come up with ways to secure crowded public spaces, and the government is considering limiting access to large knives like the one used on Sunday.

'Obviously, the suspect possessed the knife without a legitimate reason," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said. "I think we have to seriously consider what we can do to step up the restrictions.'..."
[/i]

Here we go folks. Brace yourselves.


Holy F*cking BULLSHIT!!!

I have never in my entire LIFE heard such miserably insensate imbecility from out of the mouth of a g*ddam politician! Did it never occur to these brain dead inbred cretins that if everyone in that crowd had been carrying a gun this twerp's stabbing rampage would have lasted approximately thirteen seconds? For that matter, if everyone, or even ANYONE in that crowd had been carrying a SWORD that rampage would have been cut short (pun intended).

If anyone had been carrying a baseball bat Mr. BooHoo-Poor-Me-I-Am-Tired-Of-Living-Even-Though-I-Am-Young-And-Healthy would have been woefully disappointed in the impact he made... when he hit the M*th**f**k**g pavement!

But in all fairness, these lollypop licking refugees from preschool that are apparently responsible for passing laws in Japan will have some effect on future crime. The next mass stabber will need to use a long screwdriver.

Or perhaps he will need to peel a piece of sheet metal off the body of a car, or the case of a computer, or a refrigerator, or some other appliance, and wrap the end of it in duct tape in order to turn it into a deadly weapon. This is certain to slow him down by at least fifteen minutes. Perhaps even half an hour. A worthy goal indeed.

And of course, lest anyone doubt that weapon control laws are the way to go, the latest figures from the FBI:

http://thenorthernlight.canadaeast.com/article/320130

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ... 90411/1361

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/09/crime.report/

"...Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr told the AP the report "suggests that violent crime is decreasing and remains near historic low levels, which is a credit to increased cooperation among federal, state and local law enforcement.'..."

Note that over the last few years, gun ownership in the USA is on the rise.

I supposed the people in Japan will need to eat their sushi "on the hoof" so to speak now. Since there will no longer be any legal way to skin or slice it. Alas.

The Japanese would probably say that for the 13 people that died at his knife because none of them had a gun, as a result of their lack of gun culture, there's some number of thousands of deaths each year that don't occur.

Even though violent crime is decreasing in the U.S. doesn't mean it's lower than in countries with no guns.

I've never argued that having a gun culture doesn't mean more violent crimes, simply that it's part of who we are as Americans and that having that right is worth it to me. I think it's a hard sell to make the case that widespread gun ownership does not negatively influence rates of violent crime. I've seen plenty of reports and studies to the contrary, but to be frank they usually say in little tiny print at the bottom, "Funded by the National Rifle Association", or "America's Hunters and Shooters Association". It's very hard, and in my opinion nearly impossible, to come by unbiased statistical data on gun ownership vs. murder rates. The simplist statistic (which could include other factors as well, but is useful for some basic understanding) is that the U.S. does have vastly higher violent crime rates than other countries with strong restrictions or no guns. But, we also have higher rates of non-gun related crimes, suggesting there's just something about our culture that breeds violence. I'm am American and proud of it, but I'm not going to lie to myself in the face of inscrutable evidence either. I don't know for a fact that injecting guns into Japanese culture would be a good thing, or any culture.

Guns are a Pandora's Box that we've opened and with it opened and some people carrying them, it's safer on the individual level to carry them, as a result of some people carrying them. That's different from saying that it's safer for an entire country to switch to carrying them from a situation of not carrying them.

The Japanese were conquered in battle and a BIG part of the culture being so submissive today is a result of the restrictions that we, the Allies, placed on having a standing military or even a reasonably well-armed police force for fear of uprising or subsequent military threat to us.

Germany and a lot of European countries are the same way. Firearm ownership and manufacture was strongly regulated following the War, and it's very much a part of why the culture has "grown up" without them and doesn't want them.

It's not for me, but I'm not gonna tell em it's wrong.

[Alelou]

That's a very thoughtful analysis. Good points.

[blacknblue]

Thoughtful analysis. Unfortunately, completely incorrect. Check the BBC website. Don't take my word for it, check the BBC web site. Then check the CBC. Then check the Australian news services.

The BBC in particular is loaded with interesting data that shows how, when they passed their misguided laws outlawing guns in the UK, the rate of gun violence IMMEDIATELY started skyrocketing. Currently the UK has a significantly higher per capita rate of gun violence than we do. They also have a significantly higher rate of house break ins where the owners are at home. Apparently robbers prefer not to break into homes where the owners are sitting there waiting for them locked and loaded. Who knew?

Don't believe me. Assume I am lying please. Go look it up for yourselves.

Later addition:

I am not communicating effectively.

What you said about post war reconstruction is accurate. But it does nto apply to what I was trying, in my fumbling way, to say.

It isn't the weapons as such, or the restrictions on the weapons specifically that bother me. It is the way that the politicians had a knee jerk reaction to immediately and automatically reach for the screws and tighten down on people's freedom yet a little bit more. Why? Because it is so much easier to make a useless propaganda gesture, a gesture that incidentally strips away a little bit of the individual freedom from the people in a society, than it is to take a deep breath and actually try to deal with the stress caused by overcrowding, poor economic conditions, high academic demands, and all the other factors that drove that young man into madness.

Those politicians in Japan are cut from the same stripe as the slimy cowards that infest our own capitol. God forbid that they should actually stand up and speak the truth, acknowledging that sometimes people must be held accountable for their own decisions and their own actions. Never!

Instead, they started talking (no doubt with a straight face) about tightening down on THE OWNERSHIP OF KNIVES!

Think about it. Knives. The effective difference between a butcher knife and a hunting knife is the fact that a hunting knife has a sheath, whereas a butcher knife has a drawer. They serve basically the same purpose, to cut up meat. A fighting knife is, for all practical purposes, an elaborate hunting knife.

The state of Mass., recently tried to get a law passed, I don't know if they succeeded or not, that would have required the registration of all machetes.

A machete is a yard tool folks. It is designed and intended to cut bushes. But some people use them to cut people. Therefore, the TPTB in Mass. wanted to clamp down with the power of the Almighty State and control who should or should not be granted the privilege of owning a sharp yard tool. I kid you not.

Where does it end? The next logical step is to require a license to own a baseball bat.

It ends when we reach the point that White described in one of his fantasy books. Where there was a sign posted over the entrance to the ant's nest.

ANYTHING NOT COMPULSORY IS FORBIDDEN

[JadziaKathryn]

I dunno, bnb, I haven't heard a lot about gun violence since I've been Down Under. Except, of course, from the astonished Aussies who wonder how I dare leave my house at home. Some of them seem to think that the whole U.S. is a combination of Virginia Tech and East L.A. You should've seen their faces when, newly arrived, I said I actually felt less safe here 'cause the police don't have guns.

The Sydney Morning Herald National News currently has one gun-related article, where there's a mystery over how a couple died, but he appears to have shot himself while hanging. This, sad though it is, isn't really uncommon, overwhelming gun violence.

(There is, however, an astonishing article about a mistrial because jurors were doing Sudoku.)

But, Distracted and Elessar have good points about culture. Where American culture has historically fostered personal independence, the Australian focus has historically been mateship. ('Mate' in the British sense of friends, not like a bondmate!) So if you have that, maybe you're less likely to kill someone.

[Alelou]

I don't know what Britain is like now, but back in the day the bobbies didn't carry guns and I never felt safer in my life then walking around there. I even hitch-hiked there (though I have to confess that wasn't a 100%-feeling-safe activity thanks to one creepy lorry driver). I don't know if they had gun laws back then because there was no debate about it but I just assumed they did. Judging from BBCA, it's just not that safe anymore, but then it's silly to judge from tv shows.

That doesn't mean I'm not ready to believe that once guns are brought into a culture thanks to criminal enterprises, more people having guns might actually reduce crime. There are also other reasons to have a gun in many parts of America -- i.e. bears.

I agree that when you start banning everything that could potentially turn into a weapon, that just gets silly. But Distracted made good points about why Japan might ban a knife, which has symbolic meaning there beyond what it does here. It's not likely the Japanese will start arming themselves with knives for safety during their commute in any case.

[blacknblue]

The whole issue isn't the knives. OR guns or whatever. The issue is freedom. The issue is bowing down before the god annointed power of the State.

Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Do you think that any politician anywhere would have the balls to stand up and say something like that now? Politicians today base their entire careers on pandering to fear. Fear of foreign invasions, fear of economic loss, fear of losing government benefits, fear that someone will crash a plane into something, fear that some nameless and faceless person, somewhere, somehow, will do some unknown but horrible thing to HURT YOU.

And the only way you can keep that from happening is to willingly sign away all the of your rights. IF you don't give away all of your rights, then your neighbor won't give up all of THEIR rights. And if they don't give up all of their rights, they might HURT YOU.

Hurt you how? Dunno. But you can never tell with those sneaky, evil, faceless, unnamed THEM that lurk out there somewhere. Better to be safe than sorry. After all, you don't really NEED the right to free speech, freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to privacy, the right to habeas corpus, the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.

Surely you don't really NEED those rights. Do you??? Not when compared against the monstrous evil that might strike you if THEM, the evil faceless mob of THEM, whoever they might be, were to use THEIR rights to sneak up and HURT YOU unless the Almighty State is granted is Godgiven Authority to regulate every aspect of everyone's lives. After all, we can trust the politicians can't we? They are all good and honorable people, aren't they? And the civil servants are all competent, hard working and dedicated people who are truly focused on doing the best job that they possibly can.

SO give up your guns, and your knives, and your machetes, and your kitchen knives (yes. In the UK there was a recent push to ban kitchen knives. I shit you not. A national medical association seriously and publicly proposed banning kitchen knives because of the recent spate of stabbings with kitchen knives. Look it up on the BBC.), and give up your right to free speech, and freedom to print what you want, and freedom to post on bulletin boards like this one, and freedom to write fan fiction, and freedom to travel and gather in conventions because they might be used as fronts for plotting against the government. Give it all up so that you can be safe and happy.

But THEY will still find you you know. Nothing can really stop THEM. Because the truly evil, horrible secret is this. THEY don't really exist. THEY live only in your mind. And the only way you will be free of the fear that THEY might hurt you is if you come to understand the fear originates within your own soul. Cast it out, and be truly free. When you do that, you will no longer be driven to take my rights away, and you will no longer be willing to give up your own.

Then THEY won't be able to hurt you anymore.

[Asso]

Mhhh...
I think... different cultures, different ways to think, the same human brain.

[Lady Rainbow]

I don't usually get into these discussions, but I gotta say something.

If you want to own a gun, at least know how to use it and store it properly. I can't tell you how many news stories over here (in North Carolina) talk about kids who accidentally shoot themselves and others because their parents' guns weren't secured right. There was a news blip about one little 3 year old who got into her grandmother's purse AT A SAM'S CLUB and accidentally shot herself with her grandmother's handgun.

For the record, I am a Virginia Tech alumna (Class of 1995) and I was stunned like everyone else about the shooting there. I had actually lived in West AJ (the dorm) and had classes at Norris (the engineering building). There was (still is, though the ruckus in the news had died down a LOT) a huge debate about the ease of gun purchase, waiting periods, background checks, etc. Virginia is pretty much a pro-gun state, though (just like North Carolina)...so I'm not sure just how effective their proposed "reforms" will really do.

And like my aikido sensei pointed out to me once, "You can use anything as a weapon if you really wanted to." Even if you outlawed guns and bladed weapons, even the most "innocent" of objects can be used to kill someone.

[blacknblue]

I don't usually get into these discussions, but I gotta say something.

If you want to own a gun, at least know how to use it and store it properly. I can't tell you how many news stories over here (in North Carolina) talk about kids who accidentally shoot themselves and others because their parents' guns weren't secured right. There was a news blip about one little 3 year old who got into her grandmother's purse AT A SAM'S CLUB and accidentally shot herself with her grandmother's handgun.

The grandmother was criminally negligent.

For the record, I am a Virginia Tech alumna (Class of 1995) and I was stunned like everyone else about the shooting there. I had actually lived in West AJ (the dorm) and had classes at Norris (the engineering building). There was (still is, though the ruckus in the news had died down a LOT) a huge debate about the ease of gun purchase, waiting periods, background checks, etc. Virginia is pretty much a pro-gun state, though (just like North Carolina)...so I'm not sure just how effective their proposed "reforms" will really do.

Unless I misunderstood the news stories, wasn't it a case of the existing laws not being followed properly? The boy was declared by a judge to be a danger to himself and/or a danger to others. Therefore he should not have been allowed under VA law to buy a gun. But some civil servant was too lazy to get up off their damn ass and do their job. So the paperwork did not get filed, and the database did not get updated, and gun shop did not get any warning flagged next to his name when they ran the background check. Am I wrong?

And like my aikido sensei pointed out to me once, "You can use anything as a weapon if you really wanted to." Even if you outlawed guns and bladed weapons, even the most "innocent" of objects can be used to kill someone.

Thank you. Your sensei sounds like a member of the minority of people who have sense enough to find their own way to the bathroom without supervision.

In prison, they took the silverware away from the inmates to stop them from making shivs out of the spoons. But they still manage to strip pieces off their bunks, or find some pieces of scrap metal, or alternate weapons. Somehow, they manage to continue killing each other. If the Almighty State cannot prevent convicted felons who are locked down inside a steel cage from obtaining/making weapons and killing each other with them...

Shutting up now. Done.

[CX]

I grew up with unsecured, unlocked, and usually loaded guns in the house. I never blew any part of my anatomy off or had any other kind of accident with them. A miracle proving that God has my back? Dumb luck? Not really. My parents explained that they were not toys, and that I was to not even touch them. Even though as a child I never fully understood the danger a firearm could pose, I knew that my parents would spank my ass until it was so sore I couldn't sit down if I even went anywhere near where they kept the guns. Later on, I gained the knowledge and understanding I have now of firearms. We still keep loaded, unlocked firearms in our house, mainly out of practical use because we tend to use the shotgun and the .22 a lot to shoot things like gophers, grackles, and the occasional skunk, fox, and badger. My cat would be dead a year now if dad had been forced to get the .22 out of a locked gun safe and then had to load it. My mother never would've been able to deal with those skunks by herself if the .22 hadn't been ready to go just by flicking the safety off because she's never been able to work the action on it. Gophers and other vermin are targets of opportunity, and the opportunity usually isn't all that long.

[thecursor]

Though I myself am a gun owner and a strongly believe in personal self defense, I can't exactly fault a government for wanting to try to do something after a tragedy like that. Part of the problem of democracy (and I'm going to sound like Stalin here) is that substantive change moves too slowly for many because the natural seperation of power that comes with liberal democratic ideals. But politicians need to understand that public policy moves at it's own pace and no amount of wheeling and dealing is going to change that. What the Japanese seem to be doing is a natural reaction to do something, anything, after a major tragedy.

Eventually cooler heads prevail (I know it doesn't seem that way but they always do) and the real solutions find there way to the top...in time.

[CX]

The problem is that any changes are going to be reactionary and based in emotion, and do nothing to actually combat the problem it's supposed to address.