7 dead, many injured in truck and knife attack.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/08/japan.attack.ap/index.html


In 3 minutes, Tomohiro Kato stabbed 17, killed 7 and injured others with his truck.

"A man police said was on a murder mission plowed into pedestrians with a truck in a crowded Tokyo neighborhood Sunday and then stabbed 17 people in three minutes, killing at least seven in a grisly attack that shocked Japan."

"The lunchtime assault -- on the seventh anniversary of a mass stabbing in Japan in 2001 -- sent thousands of pedestrians into a panic in Tokyo's crowded Akihabara district"

"A witness also told NHK the suspect dropped his knife after police threatened to shoot him. Amateur video filmed by mobile phone showed policemen overpowering the bespectacled, bloodied suspect."


As this madman shows, a firearm is not required to hurt a large number of people, and once again a firearm is used to finally stop the madman.

Our societies are not meeting human needs or there wouldn't be such madness on the increase in so many places.

With an aging population and good social services, the environment for this kind of madness tohappen more often is not suppose to exist.

I suppose it could be a statistical anomoly, though. Or it could be that the world is taking America's "go down in a blaze of glory" solution for personal problems as inspiration.

It is the constant go-go-go culture, achieve, achieve, achieve, that seems to burn people out. No time to stop and listen to one's heart, experience human BEING instead of human DOING.

That, and all the electric gadgets which all create electro magnetic fields.... Some day, if humans survive long enough, we're gonna find out that all those fields really toast our own fields. We are all short circuited by the pollution of all the fields/impulses. It has to take a toll. We run on electric impulses too. Someday, they will find we have been shorting out our own systems with all the clutter we created.

Further proof that knives need to be strictly regulated. Any felon can easily walk into Target or Walmart and purchase one of these deadly weapons without any questions whatsoever. In this day and age there is hardly even a reason to own such a deadly weapon what with all our processed foods and all. The government can just require all food manufacturers to pre cut all food into convenient bite size morsels. Only licensed professional chefs have any real need for such a deadly weapon and even their possession needs to be highly restricted by the government to prevent a mentally defective chef from suddenly going on a mass knife attack. Did you know that it's perfectly legal for anyone to sell a used knife to someone at a garage sale without any type of background check? Crazy, I know! Ownership of plastic knives should also be restricted. Anyone with a couple cans of spray paint can take a plastic knife and make it look like the real thing. How are the police supposed to tell the difference? I hope Japan will learn from this tragedy and at the very least create a national database of all knife owners and purchases so that the government can eventually confiscate these weapons to make their streets safer. Think of the children!

"National database of knife owners"

Welcome!

would suck. I can't even really imagine it.

I've seen one or two people cut up in a fight, and one dead guy, but well over a dozen? This must have looked like a freakin war zone.


I participate in a FEMA program called CERT, Community Emergency Response Teams, we do first response after earthquakes, stuff like that.. we have no scenario that even resembles the aftermath from this thing. I wouldn't have enough first aid stuff in my truck to even make a dent in this. Knife wounds are messy. Very, very messy.

Damn.

Last week there was a particularly horrific mass murder in Calgary; a man killed his wife and two children, and their tenant, and himself. Only a baby survived. The first witnesses are never going to get over what they saw.

The articles I'm finding aren't conveying the horror:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080530.wcalgary-killings0530/BNStory/Front/home?cid=al_gam_mostrecom

and I can't find the two-page article, I think in the Globe and Mail, discussing the effects of events like these on police, in depth.

While knife murders may be particularly gory, I think the effect on the police and emergency workers who found the family murdered by rifle shots to the head, discussed here recently, was not likely much less severe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=170446&mesg_id=170446
(for ref, not to make any point)

They have about two attacks on this level every year in Japan, it's such a problem that there is a company who is marketing knife proof clothing for children.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1350591.htm

Yeah.

I found this interesting:

Japan was shocked in 2001 when former psychiatric patient Mamoru Takuma killed eight students with a butcher's knife at an elementary school in Osaka.

Takuma, who had said he had a grudge against the children of elites, was executed in September.

Aside from the fact that he was obviously still in need of treatment, it's just kinda ironic that he stated a grudge against élites ... which would be who is buying those "T-shirts designed for elementary school pupils ... priced at $US380-$US445 each depending on the size", from a company previously specialising in "escorting children", ... if anybody is.

It is unfortunately difficult to find accurate homicide statistics for Japan, apparently due to under-reporting. In any event, I think I'd find it hard to describe such incidents as "pretty common".

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aa877WWGtdBc&refer=japan

The old rising income disparity being one factor. In line with what is said in articles like that, my suspicion would be that in a society where success is more necessary to identity on a more basic level than in some other societies, the elimination of opportunities for success creates very high stress levels.

Quite a different phenomenon from a society in which some people have simply never had any expectation of success, while living in the midst of obscene wealth. In that case, crime, including violent crime and crime-related homicide, rather than "snap" killings, presents the bigger challenge.

Indeed, this does seem to be the third such attack in half a year, in a country with a population of over 125 million. The phenomenon doesn't actually seem to be engulfing that society. But it does appear to be a serious one, in that particular context, where different kinds of homicides are more serious problems elsewhere and are not a significant problem in Japan. Things are different in different places, eh?