First off, in case you have not heard a few days ago a deranged man walked into a gym in Sasebo on the 15^th of December.  He killed two people and injured six before fleeing and later turning the gun on himself.  (Note: his name has been made public but I won't use it so as to deny the shooter any posthumous fame.)  The crime is somewhat unusual in Japan, but it is also not unheard of either.  While gun crime is rare in Japan it does occur, and that in and of itself is noteable as a failure of gun control.  The mayor of Nagasaki was murdered back in April (See a news story about that here.)  As far asking why these things happen, I have found that it usually tends to be wasted and futile effort, it is impossible to know what motivated a person to murder unles they are alive to be asked or they left a such information behind.  Even then the answers given may or may not be truthfull or even coherent.

     This crime and similar events of late have led to calls for the already draconian firearms legislation in Japan to be tightened even further.  The focus on the means of the crime is to miss the entire point.  The how of a crime does not matter to the victim of crime.  The criminal must be apprehended, given a fair and impartial trial and punished as the law provides.  When as in this case it is not possible to punish the criminal, one conducts a full investigation so as to learn what was done right and what was done wrong and how to better hnadle such incidents in the future.

From the Yomuiri Shimbun: Killings raise doubts over gun permit system

     Senior officers at the National Police Agency have been puzzling over how a man who randomly shot two people dead at a sports gym in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, on Friday evening, was able to obtain a permit to own a hunting gun.

     This latest incident, after which suspected assailant Masayoshi Magome took his own life, comes after previous fatal shootings with shotguns this year in Kagoshima and Kochi prefectures.

     In all these cases, the suspected assailants had been granted permits by prefectural public safety commissions to own such weapons.

     This latest incident will inevitably stir debate over whether police forces are making sufficient background checks on those wishing to own guns.

     "The permit system has become emasculated and inspections are a mockery," one expert said.

     According to the NPA, permits had been granted for about 305,000 hunting weapons such as rifles and shotguns across the country as of the end of June 2006.

     Last Sunday, a drunk man used a shotgun to shoot dead a female neighbor and wound a man at the woman's home in Tsunocho, Kochi Prefecture.

     In the latest incident in Sasebo, the suspect is believed to have behaved strangely prior to the shooting, doing things such as calling on a neighbor out of the blue in the middle of the night.

     A local resident is reported to have asked the prefectural police to revoke Magome's gun permit.

     Human nature is largely an unchanging thing, it has exsisted for thousands of years and will far out last all those who are alive today.  The purpose of the social contract between citizen and government is simple, that the government will maintain order and protect its citizens from attack by foreign powers and other duties as agreed to by both parties. In return the citizen agrees to obey the laws of the state and to serve the state when needed.   But the state also agrees to be bound by the same laws and to respect and protect the rights of its citizens, which pre-exsist the state.   Why mention this, simple the difference between gun control in the US and Japan is the understanding of the concept of the social contract and other ideas that spring form the enlightenment and the preceding age of reason.

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